For reclame #10, Berkay Tuncay proposes Whoever is reading this, a title that echoes a familiar opening from the YouTube comment sections, addressing an anonymous yet singular viewer. One thousand notes have been hidden inside books at Le Flaneur. Finding an old grocery list or a love letter between the pages feels accidental and becomes a small treasure. Once a made up bookmark, now a mystery that interrupts reading and asks to be deciphered. The messages are unreadable, asemic writings that mimic meaning through their layout. Advertisements without words, poems without rhyme, lyrics without notes.
Whoever is reading this unfolds as a series of generous gestures, concealed within the logic of consumption. Invisible at first, they might only appear once a book is bought, gradually dispersing into circulation. Like any marketing campaign, its mode of distribution has been carefully chosen. Following his growing interest in printing techniques, Berkay set up a fully operational screen-printing workshop in his studio to produce these elements – paper bags, envelopes, hidden notes. Handcrafted, each gift carries the trace of his time and labour, offered to the reader-consumer, yet enters a system where authorship becomes diffuse. What is offered as a gift is also a vehicle: a means through which the work extends itself, inhabiting bodies, homes, and narratives beyond the exhibition space.
Berkay Tuncay explores the impact of the internet on the individual and society. His practice moves between digital culture, archaeology, psychology, and language, transforming circulating online material into prints, videos, publications and installations. Captions, emojis, memes, broken English and decorative glyphs become archaeological fragments from the present.
Le Flaneur is a second-hand bookstore specialising in books that “survive the test of time”: literature, humanities, and sciences, in multiple languages including English, Dutch, Turkish, German, and French. The bookstore advocates for buying local, physical, and with loyalty, grounded in the belief that every act, including the act of buying (or not buying), is political and deserves careful consideration and reflection. Many thanks to burak esen for hosting us.
reclame is a project space initiated in 2021 by artist Lisa Sudhibhasilp, physically limited to a street advertisement board. Artists and designers are invited to respond to this peculiar presentation format, its display conditions, and its audience of walking consumers. reclame engages with practices that question advertisement culture and the notion of merchandise, and collaborates with local shops that serve as temporary hosts.
