Can a Machine Dream of Its Ancestors?
Can a machine dream of its ancestors? Would it dream of hands? Of craft?
My work often starts with fragments: family photographs, objects and uncertain recollections. In my ongoing project Morphing Fossil, I explore how family memory, migration and industrial history intersect. I am interested in what archives preserve, what remains uncertain, and how these gaps might take material form without being resolved.
My grandparents migrated from Turkey to Switzerland as guest workers and lived in wooden barracks on the grounds of the Bally shoe factory in Schönenwerd. Research into my family history led me to Bally’s industrial heritage and, unexpectedly, to Jacquard weaving. In Moratorium, I present woven bands connected to Bally’s production history inside a transparent Plexiglas reconstruction of a travelling salesman’s cabinet. The work asks how objects carry traces of labour, circulation and histories that extend beyond their original use.
Moratorium, 2026
Acrylic glass case, modified karate belts, woven bands from Bally
60 x 90 x 15 cm
Moratorium, 2026 (detail: white belt)
Karate belt, Bally ribbons
Two independent works explore how bodies and images are represented and reproduced. The German word Schlägerei means a fight or brawl. Kleine Schlägerei (small brawl) translates a rendered hand into connected elements, forming a suspended, fragmented structure between image, body and object:
(kleine) Schlägerei, 2026
laser engraved wood, textile cord
50 x 24 cm
(keine) Schlägerei draws on photographs taken in my father’s dojo. They show athletes reenacting a scene depicted in a mural painted by an artist on the dojo wall. Resembling a tapestry, the mural itself depicts athletes. Bodies reproduce an image that already represents bodies, creating a loop between representation and physical performance.
(keine) Schlägerei, 2026
digital collage from archival photos
These works have led me to think about Jacquard punch cards. Their perforations translate information into instructions, but their physical form also carries visual and metaphorical meaning. They connect image, body and machine.
During the residency, I want to explore these connections through the TC2 computer-controlled Jacquard loom. As an experimentalist, I enjoy learning to navigate computing from both the software and hardware sides. I want to understand the system by working with it, exploring its procedures and possibilities rather than only researching the political and social contexts surrounding the technology. Learning to weave myself would be an important step in my practice.
Building on Morphing Fossil, I want to move forward without simply repeating its methods. Through open-ended experiments with images, weave structures and the machine itself, I hope to develop a speculative narrative around the TC2 and its technological ancestry. Perhaps the machine’s ancestors are not only other machines, but also the hands, skills and forms of labour that made its existence possible.
What happens when fragments of family memory encounter the histories embedded in a machine? Rather than reconstructing a complete past, I want to work with what can only be sensed, inferred or imagined. Could weaving give these uncertainties a form without resolving them?
Kalybrasyon / Çalışıorum, 2026
Laser-engraved wood
90 x 60 cm
I see this as an archaeology of the digital: not simply recovering traces, but transforming them through the act of making. I hope to develop new work in which the machine and the material can shape images somewhere between historical evidence and imagined pasts.
untitled, 2026
laser engraved acrylic glass, led, wooden case
50 x 30 cm
fictional family emblem, 2026
3d printed Ornament, Ribbon, swiss army knife, pendant
15 x 24 cm
Bally Grotte, 2026
laser engraved wood, LED
90 x 60 cm