Based on the lived experiences of two bondings with a roof beam during a temporary residency in Brussels and a stray dog at an archaeological site Aşağıpınar Höyük, I look into possibilities of bonding as a practice through drawing. Both bondings describe each particular process through which I gradually meet the surroundings in tactile proximities. I discuss that these processes suggest an interplay between emotive and material aspects of bonding. Evolving through a series of experiments of drawing, writing, and three-dimensional studies, this lecture presents three sets of explorations: textual (experiences), material (preparations), and spatio-temporal (narrations). These works elaborate on this interplay by seeking embodied relations between materials, tools and techniques of drawing with regard to tactile proximities, suggesting embodied spatio-temporalities and in-between spaces. I discuss that each individual work reconfigures the space of the drawing, as well as the experience of drawing, engaging in a discussion on matter, materiality and corporeality. Through the experiments, I argue that this drawing practice offers a liminal space of possibilities within the artefactual works by which a drafter finds a way to approach space by desire for an embodied materiality. With methodological explorations of drawing, writing, and three-dimensional studies, I reconfigure embodied rituals of drawing as a practice allowing the drafter to encounter the autonomous spaces within drawing, inquiring there on interspaces between bodies and places.
Short bio| İpek Avanoğlu
İpek Avanoğlu is an architect-researcher based in Istanbul. Her research practice pursues drawing in exploration of spatial possibilities orienting towards personalized spatial design methodologies. She received her M.Arch.II degree from The Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, M.Sci. and B.Arch. degrees from the Department of Architecture, ITU. As part of her PhD studies, she has been a visiting scholar at KU Leuven through the Erasmus+ program and International Scholar program. She has co-instructed the workshop ‘A Feast on Tableness and Visceral Hands’ at the 17th Venice Biennale Italian Virtual Pavilion curated by Arts, Letters & Numbers, with Bahar Avanoğlu (2021). She is the co-organizer of the group exhibition Unbuildings: Remnants, Devicings, Chancings, Hollowings, Leaving at Versus Art Project (2024). Her PhD research on ‘bonding-practices’ has been exhibited and published internationally in curated exhibitions, journals, and design-research symposiums. Her work has been recently exhibited at Angels & Angles Pavilion in Copenhagen (2024). She is a research and teaching assistant at the Department of Architecture, ITU, Istanbul, Turkey.
