Weaving His Story In Scattered Frames - How To Draw IstanbulMy interview by Lab Kultur Europian Webmagazine:
www.labkultur.tv/en/blog/weavi…Kadir Akkara Yardımcı is a professional working in visual communication design and uses the internet to share with others his artworks. They mainly consist of drawings of cities and places he feels strongly about: Moleskine Istanbul City Notebook and Cityscapes for Becoming Istanbul are drawings on Istanbul. We interviewed Kadir on his art and his relationship to this city.Could you please tell us about yourself; what did you study, what is your profession and what is your relationship to drawing?I was born in 1977 in Bolu but I am originally from Ardahan and I have been living in Istanbul ever since I could remember. I studied machine design at high school, art teaching at university and visual communication design during my post-graduate studies. I was interested in fanzines that are the distinctive production of my generation and I made fanzines.
At the age of 20, for about a year, I did comic strips at a humor magazine that no longer is published now. In short, I have always dealt with visual expression and at the end these processes directed me to graphic design. I always drew something and went after those things the stories of which have been scattered into small parts. I could not deal with comic strips again after I quit working at the magazine, but the nature of novelesque visual expression that scatters into frames, was just my cup of tea.
Have you ever exhibited your drawings, or do you rather make drawings for yourself and then share it with others digitally?I participated in a few exhibitions but in the faraway past, therefore in this sense I might say that the idea of exhibition is quite new for me; I am reflecting on it. However I consider my works as belonging to the printed medium and this originates from a habit coming from my past experience at the humor magazine; to publish, to distribute, to circulate...books, magazines, letters and the internet. I produce first of all for myself, and then honestly for someone else and enable the story/series to be observed until it is completed. And for this, I see no better broadcast medium than the internet and letters.
What sort of opportunities do digital platforms, be it blogs or social media sites, offer?I can only speak for myself: the sense of independence and to be able to observe diversity in every sense is very important. You can produce on your own, announce it and communicate it to others. You can have your own audience.
However there is a sense of information lethargy originating from the internet's nature. It is as if no one is excited in the face of what they see, in other words we imagine and design but we cannot develop feelings. An art work can carry on its existence on the internet's surface as a JPEG image or a "Data" since its multi-layered building blocks at the background become totally invisible.
You cannot develop a strategy against it; you close your eyes and throw the stone as far as possible and then observe the ripples it creates. It seems like having limited resources used to nourish people more. Like old tapes, those veteran tapes every second of which had been listened to and whose writings on top have been erased.
What is your relationship to Istanbul?I never grew away from this city; besides my military service I spent almost every stage of my life in this city and its every stage also passed through me. I grew up, it grew up; I got bent, it also got bent.
Although it is a sea-city the sea is there almost only for transportation. However Istanbul used to have beaches and you cannot explain this to anyone today. Of course someone who comes belatedly, whether s/he is educated of not, might not know or imagine this. I was used to agglomerated small houses and being, playing in narrow streets; my drawings do not exhibit a criticism in this sense, on the contrary they imply that one finds/creates a way out in all circumstances and that one weaves his/her own story. Sterile and immobile conditions might force people into depressions.
If you could change five things in Istanbul what would they be?I would reopen the Women's Beach in Moda, because there one would go into the sea not from the shore but from a utopic platform that was erected on water. I would save Kurbağalı Dere (the creek with frogs), on which poems were written back in the days, from being the waste channel of industry. I would stop the maritime transport on the Bosporus because they say it is the primary source of pollution. I would replant trees on Istiklal Street and line up the tables on the streets again. And as Tom Robbins suggests in Jitterbug Perfume, I would erect giant skyscrapers each representing one of all neighborhoods, and thus enable everyone, rich or poor, to occupy less city surface by living there.
What is your favorite place in Istanbul and why?Taksim. It has always been a distinctive and a rich place. I have been going to Taksim since I was ten years old; I have witnessed its experiences and it has also witnessed mines. I cannot bear not seeing it, just like a lover. I sense the most that I am in a city while I am there; because I love the crowdedness and the chaos.