Manifold | Bihter Sabanoglu

Key Ingredients for a Successful Performance: Mister Maurel, Tzimiskes, Deathwatch Beetle

Key Ingredients for a Successful Performance:
Mister Maurel, Tzimiskes, Deathwatch Beetle

I. Ahead of the Performance: the Pressure Drops, Clouds Gather

“At first sight, it would appear odd that one should experience a sensation of heat when the external temperature is identical with his own surface temperature."

I received an unexpected proposal from the artist Gözde Mimiko Türkkan. She wanted me to perform alongside her on September 9, 2022, on the second floor of the Union Française building. In front of her guests, we would be fighting a Muay Thai match that would obey the criteria of a regular boxing match: five three-minute rounds separated by a two-minute break each. There was to be no intervention from medical personnel in case of injury, no trainer providing tactical advice from the ringside, nor winner or loser. In between rounds, Mimiko would read out from a previously drafted text. As the rounds progressed, these texts – which generally started as recitations of the ludicrous-sounding stage names (Valentina the Bullet, Ronda the Bully, Lucy the Princess of Pain, 12 Calibre Paige, Iman the Charming Killer, Iron Knee Nong Rose, and so on) of female and transgender individuals who earned a living from Thai boxing, all read aloud repeatedly – would progressively raise the difficulties faced by these fighters, evoking those who had turned to this profession out of necessity after being ostracised by their families for undergoing gender transition, those who had run away from prostitution or struggled with starvation. My role was only ancillary; I was to contribute to neither the textual creation nor the overall conceptual framework. There was not the slightest expectation related to my being a writer. My voice would not be heard; neither would any word that came out of my pen be read. I was merely asked to be a part of the performance by using my body and my body alone. I was to be an entity that consisted solely of my arms, legs, and torso, or, to put it otherwise, of the blows and punches this bulk and limbs could deliver, including those knee and elbow kicks commonly used in Thai boxing, which can be highly dangerous. The performance was to be curated by Halil Altındere, notorious for his sensational artworks. Then again, claiming that I was urged to turn into a contentless automaton would be exaggerated: we would not be performing pre-agreed-upon choreographic movements but allowed to fight freely, albeit on the condition that we do not go so rough that our bodies would risk permanent disability. Several pairs of Muay Thai fighters’ flamboyantly coloured shorts and sports bras had already been procured, and a hairdresser had been hired to prep our hair into box braids. The only thing I had to decide upon in the shortest timeframe possible, provided I would accept the offer, was the stage name I would be using to be embroidered on the back of the robes we would be wearing while walking from the changing room to the ring. Mimiko, for her part, would simply fight as Mimiko.

It was late August; my lenses stuck tighter and tighter to my eyes as they drew moisture up from the air around me. People often feel as though their throat is being constricted in humid weather, but the feeling that one’s eyes are being squeezed from the inside, that one’s eyelids are being pushed into their sockets is a much more severe condition if you ask me, and an awfully alarming sensation as well. In such weather, my eyes, affected with -11D nearsightedness, become an even greater source of suffering for me. While agreeing someway to take part in this performance, which was to take place in front of hundreds of people, my eye condition reminded me of other bodily issues. I knew that the use of anxiety medication, slowing down the heart rate, was proscribed while doing high-intensity sport movements, which speed up one’s pulse. NO! How was I supposed to appear in front of an audience without Dideral? Would I sweat a lot? Who knew how hot the temperature would be in the exhibition hall where that many people would be cramped up during the performance?

Once home, I did some research, and as I jumped from one page to the next on the Internet, I stumbled on a book titled Du Zéro Physiologique – On Physiological Zero – by a scientist called Christoph G. Zlatarov. I had never heard of the term “physiological zero” before, but I soon learned that this was the name given to the temperature at which the human body feels neither hot nor cold. The book explained that this value was positioned a few degrees lower than body temperature and may vary depending on the nature of the surrounding environment. The Literary Digest had reviewed another work on the same concept by a physicist named Maurel: “Mr. Maurel determined his ‘physiological zero’ by immersing his body in baths of different temperatures, but he does not seem to have measured his own body surface temperature directly, relying instead on the records of measurements made by divers[sic] earlier authorities. (…) Hence, the phenomena of calorific radiation toward the exterior or interior, (…) may respond to numerous (…) factors, influenced by pressure, humidity, etc., from outside, and by bodily chemical actions, the conductibility of the tissues, etc., from inside.”

Towards the end of August, I was to attend the Congress of Byzantine Studies, which had been relocated from Istanbul to Venice for political reasons, and, after visiting the biennale, return to Istanbul by early September. While I had dreamt of enjoying some respite before starting my second novel, I now had to engage in a fight the minute I got back. I fancied myself as John Tzimiskes, one of the warrior emperors of Byzantium, notorious for his strength, with a smile on my face. According to the Armenian chronicler Matthew of Edessa, Tzimiskes (Armenian: Chmushkik)’s ancestry hailed from the town of Çemişgezek; which is why the city was named after him, “Çemişgezek” translating to “the birthplace of Chmushkik”. He had Venetian blonde hair and blue eyes, just like myself. For a moment, I contemplated using Çimiskis – the Turkish pronunciation of Tzimiskes – as my stage name, but taking on a male moniker in a performance that hinged on a female fighter would probably have proven inappropriate. Inspired by the ethnic group I find myself a member of, and which those who know me well regard as the main reason for my ferocity, I eventually decided on the epithet of “La Tatare”, somewhat also alluding to my identity as a Francophone.

II. The Day of the Performance: Sweat, Stickiness, Shortness of Breath, Risk of Mould Exposure, Troubles with Electrical Devices

“Stifling weather is often associated with a cloudy sky, low-pressure areas, and high humidity rates. When exposed to stifling weather, people often experience difficulty breathing, feel weak, and may even suffer from headaches. These distresses are caused by a decrease in the oxygen level in the air available and increased stress on the human body due to high humidity rates.”

As I left my house in the Tomtom neighbourhood on the stifling September evening when the performance was due to take place and began climbing the close to 45-degree steep slope of the Postacılar Yokuşu connecting my street to Istiklal Avenue in order to reach the Union Française building by walk, I became more aware of my body than I had ever had. I had taken part in competitions in various disciplines, such as boxing and taekwondo before, but those encounters, held in a purely sportive context, and where the sole purpose was to anticipate the opponent’s moves and act one step ahead by means of mental or physical reflexes, had absolutely nothing to do with a performance occurring in front of a seasoned art audience. This time, my very body was to be turned into a material that may be reshaped and fashioned into art. Both the weather and the stress from the upcoming performance were compressing my chest as though a vice.

In Kurosawa’s Dreams, a young boy disobeys his mother when she calls him home on a hot, rainy day, insisting on staying outside instead. Glancing at the sky and noticing ominous clouds looming in, she orders the boy to come inside as soon as possible, failing which he might be caught and cursed by the kitsune, who perform their marriage rituals precisely in this kind of weather. Not listening to his mother, the boy takes refuge amid the greenery and humidity, as though under their spell, hiding behind the trees and watching as foxes walk by under a human appearance. The foxes eventually notice the child’s presence, and present his mother with a ceremonial knife, telling her that he will have to take his own life for witnessing things he ought not to have seen.

I walked on, as though mesmerised by the building where the fight was to happen, the “Union Française” – or “French Union” – one of the last achievements of architect Alexandre Vallaury. A three-storey, neoclassical masonry building in Belle Époque style, comprising a large hall occupying the centre, and conference rooms, library and offices on both wing sections forming the three areas the plot had been transversely divided into. Its foundations had been laid on February 9, 1894, through the letter Léon Berger addressed to the French residents in Constantinople, which contained a sentence stating something along the lines of “Oy, fellow countrymen! Each colony in Constantinople possesses a building where its members can gather; why shouldn’t the French have one too?” Today, it hosts “dancing familial evening gatherings”, as well as the reunions of various associations carrying dubious names such as the Tuesday Breakfasts Appreciation Society, or the Commercial Geographical Union.

As I stepped inside the building, I was greeted by an anxious-looking attendant who ushered me into a room on the ground floor where a kettle, instant coffee pouches, and tea bags were available and told us we could change clothes here. Inside this room, three square metres in surface, Mimiko and I, drenched in sweat, changed into our fighting outfits: side-slit Thai shorts allowing for high kicks, sports bras, shin guards, boxing gloves, and a mouthguard apiece. Mimiko also wore some sort of socks to prevent her from slipping on the leather ring.

Upon reaching upstairs, I was quite startled to see hundreds of people waiting for us. Crowds were even dangerously dangling from the balcony on the top floor, cheering and taking photographs. Packs of spectators were there, formed by the likes of artists, art critics, and members of what is commonly referred to as the high society. As it appeared, people were curious to watch this fight/performance occur inside an exhibition space.

Before the performance started, we did warm-up routines with Mimiko in another room. The real leather fighting ring set up in the centre of the hall was shining ablaze under the spotlights, and in the middle of the ring, the curator Halil Altındere and Agah Uğur, the owner of the collection, were both delivering a speech to the audience, enlightening them with insights as to the work’s backdrop. Obviously, such aestheticised scenes would never have occurred during the sports competitions I had previously attended. Those kinds of tournaments are usually held on the outskirts of towns; neither do they provide you with red satin robes or shiny stage clothes, nor feed you with organic chocolate. At the taekwondo tournament I had attended in the Korean province of Jeollabuk-do, I had worn my white dobok and stood in the hallway along with twenty other persons, waiting for my turn to fight. At the sanda (a sport closely similar to Thai boxing, except throwing and sweeping techniques are allowed on top of punching and kicking) match I took part in in a suburb of Paris, I had simply worn sweatpants and a T-shirt. When that match had ended, my opponent, who could not stomach his defeat, had left the ring cursing, without even shaking my hand.

From inside the ring, I looked towards the hall. The air was somewhat steamy, making my hair frizzle a bit. My novel, The Discovery of Dubious Things, had only just been published, and I couldn’t help comparing every aspect of the situation we were in with literature. If the performance had been a written work, Mimiko and I – both our bodies – would have formed its text. However, what I had in mind was not a book, but rather a manuscript, one that a monk would have filled up with scribblings, drawings, and miniature illuminations. The text was our bodies, and with our movements, we both shaped, lengthened, shortened, paused, and restarted it at will. As for the writings Mimiko read out between the rounds, outside of the main body text, and, what’s more, on the ring’s periphery, that is, on the margin, they merely served as side notes. These writings, which touched upon people marginalised by society – women fighters, sex workers, individuals fetishised under the denomination of lady boy – were themselves the performance’s marginalia, or its English counterpart: apostils. The people who formed the audience, themselves, were adding further notes to this manuscript with their whoops and hollers. After all, the entire performance was being recorded, with the help of cameras placed both on the ceiling and across various parts of the hall, by a professional team, working for a sports television channel, which would enable it to be watched over and over again, reproduced, and modified. I kept my mouth shut, merely made observations, and fulfilled my duty as part of the performance. When the match ended, I ordered a glass of champagne on the ring.


III. Post-Performance: Hygroscopicity and Vermin

“Mould, red rot, insect damage, and the corrosion sustained by metal pieces, which may be some of the most troublesome forms of deterioration threatening book collections, are all either directly or indirectly related to conditional humidity rates. Therefore, conditional humidity rates in storage areas form a critical element in keeping book collections long-lasting and intact.”

Once the frantic state that the night of the performance had put me in had receded, I started giving thought once more to this idea of the manuscript’s and the human body’s commonality.

Human beings and manuscripts are both hygroscopic. Hygroscopicity is the propensity of a substance to take hold of the moisture, or water vapour, present in its environment. Our body, most particularly our skin and respiratory tract, is able to either absorb moisture from, or expel it into the air. This ability plays an instrumental role in body temperature regulation too. Indubiously, the materials used to form manuscripts are just as hygroscopic as the body is: papyrus, vellum, and paper are all affected by moisture, the former only slightly, and both the latter heavily so. Paper and vellum both swell when the humidity rate increases and shrink when it decreases. Due to moisture, both materials are likely to crack, or ripples to form on their surfaces, and otherwise structural deteriorations to occur. As a result, the texts that they bear may sustain deformation, waning, or ink bleeding.

And then, of course, there is also the issue of vermin. A piece of paper that has absorbed moisture will be greedily devoured by insects, and its fragments, once processed through the digestive tracts of these creatures, whose appearance often arouses disgust, released into nature. The insects that plague books and manuscripts are often given funny names, such as the “silverfish”, an insatiable pest with a penchant for paper with a high starch ratio, the internationally infamous “book louse”, and surely the most interesting of all, the “deathwatch beetle”. When the adults of the latter species set out in search of a mate, they take up a position inside the wooden beams of old houses and begin emitting a sound strikingly similar to the ticking of a clock, which can be distinctly heard especially on summer nights. Given the kind of settings in which it is most likely to be heard, this sound is often associated with silent, sleepless nights. People, coming up with yet another whimsical association, fancied that sleepless nights might be caused by a watch performed over a person who had just breathed their last, and thence proceeded to give this pest its name of “deathwatch beetle”. As I sweated during the performance, I likened the bacteria that swarmed over the water and salt-rich liquid that gushed out of my body to insects launching their assaults on the nutritious material that is paper. Just as a manuscript, the human body, too, both draws humidity and runs the risk of being eaten up by these myriad creatures which moisture feeds and nurtures. Moreover, there were broader similarities between the two. Like paper and parchment, the human body shows obvious signs of ageing, displaying signs such as wrinkling, swelling, or shrinking. Both can also bear deliberate marks left by those who choose to do so. While a manuscript forms a text that the reader may interpret at will, a human body can assume novel meanings when viewed from different angles—much like Mimiko's body and mine had turned into texts during the performance.

More than two years have passed since that performance now. My body has surely sucked up enough particles, sediment, dust, soot, and industrial dregs from the atmosphere. I am currently working on my new novel, which places paper, handwriting, the act of writing itself, and the traces that form on bodies at the very centre of life. All it is needs now is a little more moisture.