It is not in vain that wolves are favoured as the central figures of tales and fables. And the myth of the werewolf was not born out of the blue, either. The human being respects the wolf. And fears it, too. He fears it because he knows that he can’t dominate or domesticate it. So he feels a certain respect – albeit laced with fear -towards the lord of the steppes which is altogether a world that doesn’t belong to him. The wolf is an ‘other’ that the human cannot degrade and that’s why he is attracted to it. Mythology and in particular the myth of the hybrid entity – whereby he unifies himself with the wolf – feeds on this attraction. The human reflects his own characteristics, or rather the qualities he wishes he could have, on to the wolf: pure power, fearlessness, resolve, endurance, solidarity, ferocity, lust… The human cannot resist the idea of becoming a wolf. And dreams of re-acceptance into the mythical night he was ousted from.
On the other hand, as Thomas Hobbes proclaims “man is a wolf to man” (“homo homini lupus”). The man is already a kind
of wolf in terms of relating to the other, harbouring a tendency to attack as soon as he detects a frailty on thepart of his opponent. His social relations are based on
the survival instinct and these relationships develop in the structure of the herd. All that is built on top of this basic structure, culture, economics, science etc, loses its
significance in the face of threat. Anything is possible to ensure that one is and remains part of the herd. “Wolves,” however, are connected through the (Deleuze gang rather than the “herd”
& Guattari). The members of the gang a solitary individuals that are united around a single common objective. The and has a leader but this leadership is open to dispute in each of gang’s actions. So the leader must reclaim the position of leadership whenever necessary. Consequently, each and every member of the gang should be won over. In contrast with the herd, the gang excludes the permanence of the hierarchical structure. So it is quite natural that a person of the herd should be attracted to the gang of the wolves. For almost twenty years now, I have known a gang of wolves like this. I follow the wolves of Ahmet Muderris4u in different venues, canvases, papers and walls. I met them in a workshop in a city in the midst of the steppes. And this is how I put that encounter into words: “The wolves whose howls we listen to from time to time in the steppes of our selves, with their teeth flashing and their laughter, seducing our hearts with insolents acts, were manifesting in front of my eyes, tall and slender… Gazing at these wild and deterritorialized wolves, one feels the desire to join them, to be saved from our urban humdrums, to be hounded.”
It was in that workshop where I entered this alternative world they created with their tall and slender (size 0) bodies, open mouths, sharp teeth, insolent testicles or hips, curled lashes and bowties. The wolf sculptures that sprung into action with the momentum of elasticity were dancing with the phosphorous canvas wolves with mischievous eyes and ready laughs. The wisdom of the graffiti wolves that are stripped off their colours and enjoying their figural freedom, were turning into letters narrating the story of the gang (Lyotard). Afterwards, I saw them manY times in action, “taking a trip downtown.
I wittnessed many of their gang hits.They blended in amongst us and hit our imaginations.In the meantime, they’ve preserved their truth and evolved. Some of them armoured themselves in “glamour” shine and became the stuff of glamour pages; nevertheless they did it by blowing a festive wind that laid bare the pathetic nature of our kitsch magazine pretence. Some of them caricatured us, drove our society of spectacle to its logical ends, and ridiculed us all by pressing our noses into our inertia (Debord). Some of them phosphorated into orange, green, purple and red, transformed into cut-ups becoming almost pure stares and peeped on us. But figural wolves in letters and lines continued to write the tale. A figurative wolf parable of existence drawn in one stroke.
Like a never ending refrain… a parable that is built with conjunctions, a non-commanding parable… “A long story of many knots” (Carroll)…The time of the wolf is the the time of the steppes… A horizontal, endless time-space dimension that is interrupted here and there with the silhouettes of bushes, rythmicized with the hills, disorientating with horizon-inebriation, and where the road lies just about everywhere… Consequently, a “retrospective” on the wolves of Ahmet MuderrisoOlu is out of the question… This is a flowing narrative that flows in all directions. A wolf parable. So the only thing I can achieve with my writing here is to accompany the parable, to liberate the figures in your minds…
The universe of MuderrisoOlu is minimalist. The wolves come to life in the momentum of the strokes, whether it be sculpted or drawn. I once said: “The political function of minimalism is dissidence. It drills holes for reality to seep through the wall of pretence that is foreever re-designed and so the fresh air comes in, filling your minds.” This is exactly what Muderriso Olu’s figural wolves do. They act in opposition to the “the society of spectacle” that prisons us in the one-man ghetto of inertia (Debord). They drive us into action by confronting us with our very own selves in our most “animal”, “alive” and bare states.
In the first article I wrote about these wolves, I said: “They strike us with their proximity to us, they dismantle us – their reverse in form – with their similarity.”The universe of these wolves
establishes a “social plastic” and creates a therapeutic effect on us (Beuys). As social sculptures, these wolves filter the shaman’s balm into the depths of our social wounds, through the means of communication which they put in motion. Communication is the primary skill of these wolves. Interactive communication. Between multitudes. In this way, they overturn the logic of pretence and show. It is impossible to see them and not communicate. They bleed “the gay science” through their own nature (Nietzsche).
Inertia-fighting wolves.
A nomadic gang of the wise creating “temporary autonomous zones” within our lives, opening up steppes in which they can move towards thought (Hakim Bey / Siyah
Kalem) Mischievous and insolent, energetic and fun, perverted and dissident wolves…
Get out of the ghetto and join the gang…
Istanbul, 09.11.2010
