A Complicated Structure (A resident's notes)
Faustine Duval

At the start of the 2023 torna residency program, we began a 'diary' platform for each resident artist. They will use these pages as notebooks to scribble down thoughts, notes and plans.

10-09-2023 / Sunday

The host of the (airbnb) room I’m renting is a second-hand bookseller. The book journey never stops.

09-09-2023 / Saturday

I found some more images in an antique store around Fener. I feel like I’m appropriating the life of others.

08-09-2023 / Friday

Merve feels sad about the city changing. I’m thinking about solastalgia, what to think before a city that is changing its balance?

07-09-2023 / Thursday

I spent the day browsing Torna’s books, took some notes, had some ideas. I’d love to write to people involved in making of the books, and ask about their processes.

06-09-2023 / Wednesday

'Places' is a word with such a broad meaning. When I told my father I wanted to write about places, he did not understand what I meant. He says I need a context. Aren’t places the contexts themselves?

05-09-2023 / Tuesday

Imagine a truck filled with books, distributing them around. Or the side of a scooter filled with zines.

04-09-2023 / Monday

I read Rancière’s Le maître ignorant. The idea of learning because of learning’s powerful attraction is sticking by me. I wonder if you can learn something else than your mother tongue the same way as your mother tongue, with the same urgency.

03-09-2023 / Sunday

Every morning Dave wakes up and works outside. It feels good when projects make you wake up.

02-09-2023 / Saturday

I just started watching Route One/USA, by Robert Kramer. Like a funambule, Doc reads Walt Withman. The America he reads compensate the one he sees.

01-09-2023 / Friday

An image is like a decor in which everyone sets up camp with their own baggage.

31-08-2023 / Thursday

It’s been two nights that I struggle to find sleep, the excitement of the music archive is keeping me awake.

30-08-2023 / Wednesday

Dave is helping me code the music archive I have been working on with Morgane for more than a year. He is the extra push we needed to reactivate the project.

29-08-2023 / Tuesday

Bought some çivit powder to paint the walls of my future workshop-library in çivit blue.

28-08-2023 / Monday

Helped Merve and Dave to work on the walls of the teahouse. I’m trying to learn. I realize I want to do tangible things with my hands.

27-08-2023 / Sunday

Discussed with Merve and Dave my dream of having a printing workshop / book-shop / library / studio / publishing house / music venue. They made me realize it’s not that impossible.

26-08-2023 / Saturday

The paradox of wanting to be surrounded by documents but never feeling like documenting.

25-08-2023 / Friday

Iznik is a museum. Merve is a museum of archeology.

24-08-2023 / Thursday

I want to write about the thing being made. The process. One more common point with Merve.

23-08-2023 / Wednesday

We listened to a cassette on the car. Music feels different when not omnipresent.

22-08-2023 / Tuesday

Reading Artists as Iconographers, by Aurélien Mole and Garance Chabert. Wonderful book, I underlined most of it. How do images interact when shown together? It could be one of Torna’s books.

21-08-2023 / Monday

In the car from Ömerli to Iznik, we discussed possible PhD and thesis subjects for Merve and me. It would be fun to use the same starting point, and write at the same time without knowing where the other one is going.

20-08-2023 / Sunday

I’m trying to watch a movie every night. I’m fighting against my melatonin, it wins.

19-08-2023 / Saturday

Thinking of writing my notes on a giant flat book, like them :

18-08-2023 / Friday

We went downtown, Merve and Dave explained to me how Sile’s fabric is made. Now the fabric is in the sea, and the sea in the fabric. People wash it in the sea before using it. Like Zoénine who erased parts of her drawings with water.

17-08-2023 / Thursday

I showed Merve some images found in a second-hand bookshop in Moda.

17-08-2023 / Thursday