The first question asks how I define these three practices—teaching, researching, and art-making—or how I engage with them myself. I’ll start by saying that I am a designer by training. I studied product design, but I often struggle to call myself an artist or to describe my work as an artistic practice. That is something I wrestle with. However, I no longer work with products in a traditional sense. Instead, I explore material culture and the built environment, looking at how humans interact with these realms—how we connect with the matter around us.
These themes form the core of my three practices, and they all stem from a desire to question, understand, and situate myself within my surroundings. There is also a critical aspect to my work, even though I hesitate to use that term. My work often emerges from a place of searching for alternatives and questioning the status quo.
My research exists in a space between academic and artistic inquiry. It doesn’t fit neatly into either category, which sometimes makes positioning myself—especially in practical matters like funding—a challenge. My approach is fluid, blending elements of both academic rigor and experiential exploration. I learn and research by experiencing, often using methods like autoethnography and first-person accounts. Observing myself and learning from my own lived experiences play a significant role in how I conduct research.
Currently, I teach in the design department at an art academy. While my work still relates to products, we take a broad approach to design, more akin to art education. My official title is ‘context teacher,’ a term I strongly connect with. Essentially, I teach theory, but rather than simply delivering lectures or assigning readings, my role is to help students make connections. I guide them in understanding that design, like all creative practices, never exists in isolation—it is always embedded in social, political, and environmental contexts.
I also co-teach making classes, where I work alongside a more hands-on instructor. While they focus on materials and techniques, I engage with students on how their work is situated in the world—how they contextualize what they create.
One of the courses I teach is called Alchemy, a name I really appreciate. I didn’t choose it, but I inherited the course, and it fits well. The class is about research and transformation—how to turn inspiration and information into something new, much like alchemy itself.
When it comes to art-making, I see it as the least visible of my three practices. Currently, my artistic work largely functions as a means of communicating my research and teaching—through books, publications, exhibitions, and public programs. Over the years, I have become more comfortable within a collective art practice rather than working autonomously. The idea of being a solo artist presenting work in public is daunting to me. Instead, I find deep meaning in collective forms of art-making. In this sense, our collective, Sympoietic Society, is essential to my practice—it provides the space and support I need for artistic engagement.
I really like the compost pile metaphor—how everything decomposes and merges to create something new. However, when I think of a compost pile, I picture distinct ingredients breaking down and transforming together. In my case, these three practices are not separate to begin with; they are interconnected from the start. They are co-dependent—each one strengthens and complements the others. If one were missing, the others would be weaker.
A metaphor that resonates with me is that of symbiotic microorganisms—living together, influencing each other, and adapting in response to their environment. They are not always equal; sometimes, one practice dominates more than the others, but they all contribute to a larger whole.
Practically speaking, my teaching is deeply tied to my own curiosities. I am fortunate to have a teaching role that allows me to bring my personal interests into the classroom. Often, teaching becomes an excuse for me to research topics I want to explore. Since teaching is my main source of income, it also provides a structure and resources for research.
Conversely, I have also become interested in researching the act of teaching itself—looking into alternative pedagogies and integrating them into my classes. Over time, I have started to see teaching as an artistic practice in its own right. It requires creativity, improvisation, and performance. My lectures involve storytelling, engaging students, and activating discussions, all of which feel like an artistic process.
Interestingly, I have always been uncomfortable with performing in public. However, through teaching, I have slowly gained confidence in this area. I hope that one day this newfound ease with public speaking will also feed back into my artistic practice.
Additionally, I try to bring artistic elements into my teaching. For example, I incorporate meditation exercises and other embodied learning techniques into my lectures, though I still consider myself a student in this area. It is something I want to explore further.
I often find myself questioning the purpose of my artistic practice—how it reaches people, how it impacts the world. Teaching, on the other hand, provides an immediate sense of purpose and connection. In a way, my students’ work becomes part of a collective artistic body, and I see my role within that as deeply meaningful.
What a beautiful question. More-than-human beings teach me how to be a better human—how to care, how to appreciate life. I came to this realization later in life. Growing up, I didn’t see them as teachers, but now I consider learning from them to be a lifelong process.
I believe they create art—perhaps they are art. They also teach me how to see art in the world around me. However, I don’t think they conduct research in the way humans do. Research is about making sense of things, forming connections, and communicating ideas. More-than-human beings already exist in a state of deep knowing; they don’t need to conduct research.
In my teaching and research, I try to create accessible ways for people to learn from more-than-human beings. I emphasize non-anthropocentric perspectives, and I love seeing when that resonates with students.
My artist friends and my collective, Sympoietic Society, inspire me deeply. I learn a lot from the experience of being in a collective, even through its challenges. My students also inspire me, particularly their fresh perspectives and criticality.
As for places, Finland’s sea, water, snow, and ice have been my teachers. They introduced me to ideas of interconnectedness. My hometown, Istanbul, is another great inspiration—a complex being in itself, full of human and more-than-human interactions. It taught me about pluriversality and the coexistence of multiple ways of being.
I see our collective as a learning community. We teach and learn from each other without formal roles. Our research is deeply intertwined with art-making—we explore ideas through creative practice rather than traditional academic research.
For example, during our year-long project on Rotterdam, we gathered so much experiential knowledge, yet I still don’t know scientific facts like its exact elevation. That speaks to the kind of research we do—it is embodied, artistic, and deeply meaningful in its own way.
