Kıymet Daştan (b. 1980, Turkey) is an artist based in Istanbul. She holds an MA in Design from the Domus Academy in Milan, Italy, and a BA in Sculpture from the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, Turkey. She recently completed the fellowship of Homework Space Program at Ashkal Alwan fine art association in Beirut, Lebanon (2019).
Her experiments with form stem from conceptual projections and generate questions about memory, legacy, and conflict between systems and social roles, while exploring the poetic horizon of materials. She is looking for imageries of fragmented memory among the circulated and repeated symbols and signs of everyday life.
Memory Burn*
"Burn" is a colloquial term meaning to write content onto a CD, DVD, or other recordable discs.
This ongoing video series, called "Memory Burn", puts a light on the paradox of digital media’s capacity to preserve our memories as well as the history of our world. It is also a paradox that cuts across the vulnerability and pervasiveness of digital media. The series also looks at the material itself, as a memory through process. Which kind of memory does it carry after it is literally burned? Can we see oil’s burned texture, how it becomes like this? What are we looking at? Is there anything left? What would it look like if we tried to materialize forgetting? Does forgetting have a value in itself?
The glamorous appeal of the burning CD, like a colourful eye of an unknown memory, complicates our love affair with the ‘digital’.
What about our position in this uncomfortable zone?
I AM AFRAID TO FORGET - I AM AFRAID TO NOT FORGET 2019 CD (type-7 plastic, aluminium, silver, gold), mirror, burning glass, water, a digital image, HD video 17” loop / Dimensions variable On - going project Open Studio, at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut / Lebanon
Memory Burn #5
Memory Burn #8
Iam afraid to (not) forget incorporates an experimental procedure resulting in the loss of the materiality of memory - in this case, CDs - as a starting point for reimagining the relationship between materiality and thought, the human and the non-human. The new forms, materials, and sculpting techniques are inspired by the Mineral Museum in Beirut. The process involves research and open-ended experiments on the memory of materials, objects, and environments with the aim of examining how digital media modifies social dynamics and rituals. It maintains a focus on the processes through which obsolete memory technologies are destroyed and their traces are erased, as well as on how memory is recorded, replaced, or deleted. One outcome of this process (comprising such actions as burning and tearing) is a multitude of pseudo-geological, crystalline disfigurations titled “MEMORY BURN.” Through gestures of destruction, what is created is a new, memory-laden object.
Memory Burn #7
Memory Burn #2
Memory Burn #1
The new forms, materials, and sculpting techniques are inspired by the Mineral Museum in Beirut. The process involves research and open-ended experiments on the memory of materials, objects, and environments with the aim of examining how digital media modifies social dynamics and rituals. It maintains a focus on the processes through which obsolete memory technologies are destroyed and their traces are erased, as well as on how memory is recorded, replaced, or deleted.
Ongoing project
(I am afraid to forget - I am afraid to not forget)
LADEN 2019 Installation / Mixed materials ongoing project (I am afraid to forget - I am afraid to not forget)
OBLIVION STONE 2019
