SCATTERED STORIES

Scattered Stories is a three-part installation series that withdraws the relationship between material and memory from the plane of representation, reconstituting it instead as a direct practice of trace production. Within this framework, the shoelace is no longer treated as a merely everyday object, but as a material carrier of forced movements, interrupted routes, and incomplete trajectories.

The shoes and shoelaces used in this work were collected from the ruins left behind after urban conflicts in the Sur district of Diyarbakır—where a predominantly Kurdish population resides—as well as from the remnants of migrant crossings washed ashore along the Aegean coast. These objects re-enter circulation as material residues of individuals and communities whose lives have been disrupted and whose narratives have been fractured.

The central concern here is not to produce representation; rather, it is to investigate how remnants generate meaning precisely where representation proves insufficient. Instead of constructing a narrative, the series situates itself at the threshold where narrative begins to unravel.

The trilogy unfolds this process of disintegration across three interconnected registers: body, space, and movement.

In the first phase (Scattered Stories), the body does not appear as a unified entity, but as the trace of a withdrawn presence. The linear silhouettes affixed to the wall do not represent the figure; they organize its absence. The body loses its volume, leaving behind only a contour—a line of tension. The shoelace undergoes a parallel transformation: it ceases to function as a device that enables walking and becomes instead the material residue of an interrupted movement. Thus, the first phase does not depict presence; it constructs the morphology of disappearance. For details: https://www.seckinaydin.com/post/blog-toplulu%C4%9Funuzu-b%C3%BCy%C3%BCt%C3%BCn

In the second phase (Scattered Stories; Home), this disappearance shifts from the body to space. With the figure withdrawn, what remains is not a lived environment, but the emptied organization of one. The house emerges not as an architectural whole, but as a constellation of traces whose boundaries have become indeterminate and whose functions are suspended. Familiar domestic elements persist only as linear outlines; they neither contain nor protect anything. The home is thus transformed from a site of shelter into the spatial form of irreversible loss. At this stage, the series also suspends notions of belonging and ownership: the viewer no longer enters a space, but encounters the absence of space itself. For details: https://www.seckinaydin.com/post/scattered-stories-home-2017

In the third phase (Scattered Stories; Humanitarian Corridor), the disintegration articulated through body and space extends directly into movement. The viewer is no longer an external observer, but becomes a body compelled to navigate within a structure composed of shoelaces. While the notion of a “humanitarian corridor” is commonly associated with safety and protection in international discourse, this installation exposes the fragility of that promise. The corridor ceases to function as a guiding structure and instead becomes a mechanism that continuously suspends direction.

More critically, the work reveals the political contradiction embedded in the concept itself: although humanitarian corridors are theoretically established to protect life, in practice they often become instruments that regulate, direct, and at times even intensify the distribution of violence. Passage here does not guarantee safety; rather, it emerges as a controlled, precarious, and perpetually interruptible condition. The viewer does not simply move through a physical corridor, but is positioned within a politically structured regime of movement.

Taken together, these three phases do not construct a linear narrative; instead, they propose a system in which continuity is methodically dismantled. The body is reduced to a trace, space dissolves into absence, and movement itself becomes unstable. Throughout this process, the shoelace shifts from a device of connection into a line of tension that renders rupture and interruption visible.

Ultimately, Scattered Stories does not represent loss—it produces the conditions of its emergence. It does not offer a completed story; rather, it situates the viewer within a field where stories are interrupted, directions disperse, and meaning appears only in fragmented form. What is experienced here is not a narrative, but the threshold at which narrative can no longer be sustained. For details:

https://www.seckinaydin.com/post/scattered-stories-hummanitarian-corridor