Hollow Art

Culture has become empty. Almost all cultural concepts have been turned into commercial commodities. They are bought and sold. If people are just having fun, there is no problem. They continue to be produced. Content has lost its importance.

Culture is a concept created by feelings and thoughts. It is the way people express themselves. Sometimes it is music, sometimes painting. Sometimes it is sculpture, sometimes poetry. Sometimes it is theater. When I was in middle school and high school, I would wear a tie and jacket to the theater. City theaters, state theaters and some private theaters were always on my radar. Starting in October, I would follow the plays in the newspapers every month and buy the tickets for the plays I would attend at the beginning of each month. Thus, all my winter months were filled with art.

During my university years, we had rehearsals every Wednesday evening and Saturday morning at the Istanbul State Opera and Ballet Youth Choir. In those days, all opera performances and concerts were free of charge. Art occupied a significant part of my life, and I enjoyed it very much.

I remember my high school literature classes with a very special taste. Literature and mathematics were my favorite classes. At Kabataş Boys High School, the literature subjects taught by Oktay Tuncer and Aysen Erensoy were almost like theater. Every poem, every novel was digested as if it were lived.

Theatre begins with ancient Greece. The magnificent and majestic architecture of amphitheaters tells us how important theatre was in ancient Greece. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are the giants of theatre of that era. Their works inspire Romantic Europe. They affect not only theatre but also every branch of art. Humanity can sometimes forget its past contributions to its own civilization. Moreover, for several centuries. It takes a long time for a magnificent Greek theatre to come under the command of humanity again in another civilization format.

Theatre is a culture developed by the West. Although some of the ceremonies that the Turks performed in Central Asia resemble theatre, they have little to do with the foundations of theatre that the West created, developed and understands today. I cannot say that the theatre that we can call traditional Turkish theatre satisfies me very much. In other words, I have always thought that genres such as meddah and orta oyunu (folk tuluat theatre) are extremely weak in terms of both content and visuality compared to the theatre genre produced by the West. For this reason, they have not attracted my attention.

Criticism is in the spirit of art. Theatre also has a philosophy. The fact that it has different genres reflects its own philosophical colors and forms of expression. For this reason, theatre and many other genres of art have always disturbed some people, especially politicians, in every society. It is also for this reason that poems, novels and theatres could be banned in different countries, in periods when different cultural and political understandings were dominant.

Is every work of art very important and valuable? Of course not. Any theater or other art form that does not have freedom, peace, equality and justice, democracy, human rights, love of nature and animals in its philosophy or that goes against these concepts is worthless, if not unimportant. It may not be unimportant. Because, some worthless things can have a high impact on societies during certain trauma periods. In this case, anything worthless can find a place for itself at an important point.

In today's pop culture-dominated world, culture has become empty. Emotions, thoughts, and art, which is the way they are expressed, have become commercialized. By today's expression, I mean especially after the 1980s. In other words, I mean the sick period when it was thought that almost every social concept or event could only find meaning through capitalist processes.

Could the rapid development of technology and information technologies have damaged or destroyed art? It is a fact that visual elements, solely and exclusively for entertainment purposes, have permeated every moment of human life. It is also a fact that the art we produce has become rapidly accessible and watchable due to the tools that instantly transmit visuality to every part of the world in a digital environment. However, poetry is still poetry. Novels are still novels. Theater is still theater.

Maybe we don't go to the theater wearing suits like we used to. Concerts may not attract as much attention as they used to. I look at the way young people in their 20s approach and perceive art in particular. The methods of watching, following and creating have changed, but the artistic forms of expressing feelings and thoughts are the same and will not change.

Everything, everything aside, this world is now very crowded. The diminishing resources need to be used more efficiently to feed the crowd. In a more savage and capitalist world, art is not made for art's sake, but for the people. In other words, whatever sells. Let's not get hung up on formats. Okay. But, content is managed with what remains from the past.

When I think of the past, Tolstoy comes to mind. Tolstoy because of his work What is Art? He defines art as the transfer of the artist’s feelings and thoughts to the viewer, listener, and reader. However, under the conditions of the 19th century, he also complains about the emptying of art. He does not sympathize with this process, which has become the entertainment of a wealthy class and is supported by art schools. In fact, he uses expressions such as worthless and nonsense for the works of some great names. What Tolstoy said about 150 years ago goes back to Adorno’s cultural criticisms.

I am also trying to interpret, through my personal observations, the hollowing out of art in the capitalist world, through the eyes of Tolstoy and Adorno. It is a very deep subject.