Kaya Erdinç

A silent video installation, loud hand attempts to document an intimate collaboration between myself and philosopher Bibi Straatman, with who I closely read several texts from the Christian mystical tradition, in particular The Interior Castle by Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) and how her exploration of privacy has much to offer us today, during an age in which it is becoming more and more difficult for us to explore the vast breadth of interiorities that we hold within ourselves and among each other.

In the mentioned text, the fostering of an inner dialogue is posited as a necessary attribute for any citizen to start speaking, confidently, in public. And this, in Bibi’s view, was the kind of work Teresa already started, intuitively and bodily, during her life in the 16th century.

The starting point of the installation is a portrait filmed on Super 8, set in Bibi’s garden in Burgundy, France. Accompanied by a long prose poem that acknowledges the particularity of the relationship I have cultivated with her, it invites the viewer to reflect on the societal pressure to be transparent and open, rather than private and unknowable.