First Witness

First Witness is a temporary installation and performance piece consisting of inflated white gloves placed in a small pool of water, formed by a spring flowing on the slopes of the Taurus Mountains. The encounter of these artificial forms, evoking the human hand, with the natural water source and their coexistence over time is recorded via video.

The hands do not represent the human being itself, but rather its hand extending into nature; its intervention, and its desire to appropriate and transform. Emerging within the organic texture of nature, these human-made elements create the distinct impression of an entity that does not belong. Their separation from the surrounding texture of stone, water, and flora due to their plastic surfaces is not merely a material contrast, but a visual representation of the visibility of human intervention in nature.

At first glance, the visual encounter is pastoral and tranquil. The white hands swaying in the water almost become part of a poetic landscape. The green of the plants, the texture of the stones, the sound of flowing water, the play of light on the surface, and the presence of surrounding fauna establish an innocent and absorbing atmosphere. Initially, the sound also operates within this pastoral unity.

However, beneath this serenity, an ambiguous tension becomes increasingly evident. While the visual innocence persists, the sensation of an approaching disruption—a possibility of destruction—emerges in the background. The first witnesses to this change, preceding humans, are the other living organisms in the vicinity: ants, birds, and the life within the water. The presence of these creatures, which typically perceive ecological shifts long before humans do, introduces a silent layer of warning to the work. As the visual composition retains its poeticism, the sound design departs from the pastoral atmosphere, gradually evolving into a chaotic structure. Consequently, the cognitive distance between what is seen and what is felt widens.

Within this contrast, First Witness points to the dual nature of the human hand as both constructor and destroyer. The hand touching nature simultaneously carries the potential for care, appropriation, transformation, and devastation. The incongruous yet aesthetic presence of the white hands in the water suggests how harmless—and even appealing—human intervention may initially appear, while its consequences can devolve into an entirely different reality over time.

By examining the relationship between nature, humanity, and existence through this fragile encounter, the video art piece First Witness serves as a reminder that alterations in the ecosystem are not independent of human life. The human is not an external entity intervening in nature, but inherently a part of the system it actively alters.

And throughout this entire encounter, the water remains. The water—which flowed prior to human existence, bears the weight of the intervention, transmits it to the surrounding life, and will continue to flow thereafter.

This is precisely where First Witness derives its name: the first and true witness to this encounter is the water.

Emine Akbucak 2011-2026

1 kHz

“These three distinct notions appear as manifestations of a very particular kind of individuation produced by a time that does not beat in pulses: soundscapes, audible colors, rhythmic personalities. In my view, we can no longer think in terms of matter and form. We have already left behind the belief in a hierarchy that moves from the simple to the complex, from matter to life to spirit, across nearly every field. We have even imagined that life is only a simplification of matter; perhaps life’s rhythms do not arise from some spiritual force at all, but instead from molecular pairings. Is not this entire matter-form hierarchy — a more or less primitive matter and a more or less informed sonic form — precisely what we stop hearing, and what composers have also ceased to produce? What emerges here is a carefully shaped sonic material, no longer a primitive substance waiting to be given form. The pairing now lies between this highly worked sonic material and forms that are not sound in themselves, yet become sonic or audible through the material that renders them perceptible. Debussy’s Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea stands here as a clear example. Material exists in order to make audible a force that is not audible in itself: time, duration, even intensity. The pair matter-form gives way to the pair material-forces.”
— Gilles Deleuze, from Why We Are Not Musicians

May 2009 / Istanbul… A bridge foundation is being dug in the Golden Horn, for the metro crossing over the sea. The heavy cranes striking the seabed produce rhythmic blows that spread across the historic peninsula and Istanbul’s other ancient districts, marking and transforming the atmosphere of everyday life. On the surface, the sound pulls us into a kind of mystical musical time; at a deeper level, it suggests that what is happening is altering the city on a vast scale. So much so that this sound pushes all familiar noise to the background and reduces the whole city to the scale of a medieval blacksmith’s street. In that singular moment, the artist responds to the city’s collapse before an unfamiliar sound by pressing the shutter from a point along the shore, inviting us into a twofold journey — spiritual and political — through the fibers of a socio-biological condition in which sound briefly becomes matter.”
— Levent Duran, original text

Çocuk Var

Between 2010 and 2011, I participated as a photographic artist in Sound Shift Culture On the Edge: Istanbul Marseille, a project curated by Euphonia Radio Grenouille, Lokomotif Association, and Açık Radyo, within the scope of the European “Civil Society Dialogue” and “2010 European Capital of Culture: Istanbul” programs. In March 2011, I was invited to a month-long artistic residency at Franche de Marseille Station and La Friche Belle de Mai, where, together with Sophie Cohen and Christophe Modica, we presented Çocuk Var, a performative work reflecting on the traces of migration in Istanbul.