We will only relay a few fragments, 2023
Images are from the Istanbul Encyclopedia.
On the occasion of the exhibition No Further Records: Reşad Ekrem Koçu and Istanbul Encyclopedia Archive at SALT Galata (Istanbul, Turkey), Merve translated articles from Reşad Ekrem Koçu’s (1905-1975) Istanbul Encyclopedia from Turkish to English. The exhibition focused on the articles that had remained in the design stage.
Koçu was quoted to acknowledge the heft of the task of the encyclopedia and expressed hope for others to pick up where he had left. Responding to this call for continuation, Merve organized a workshop to draw a manifesto of values of translation for the encyclopedia with the participation of a group of translation enthusiasts and professionals at SALT Galata on August 26, 2023. Central to this workshop was the concept of potentially two-directional haunting between the author and the translator.
The second attempt at a translation was published as part of the e-pub eponymous with the exhibition. For this text, Merve used only sentences from the encyclopedia articles to compose a script for a walking performance on the streets of Galata that Koçu so often returned to as a subject. Some proper nouns were omitted, but the sentences are wholly borrowed from the original texts. This text titled We will only relay a few fragments is another translation of and via Koçu and exists only in Turkish for now.
