object*oriented*magic
Founded by Merve Tuna and Ayşenaz Toker in 2020, object*oriented*magic creates new superstitions as an antidote to our relationship with the material world, framed by a rationalist approach to apprehending reality. Drawing from vernacular folk beliefs, psychomagic, witchcraft, alchemy, and astrological methods, o*o*m creates ritualistic assemblages with everyday objects, recharging them with magic, mystery, and myth and revealing their inherent vibrancy.
3 Spells by object*oriented*magic
Year: 2020
Medium: HD Film
Duration: 11’ 51’
Director: Merve Tuna & Ayşenaz Toker
Original Music: Avi Medina
Editor: Bahar Paşa
Director of Photography: Yavuz Gözeller
Production Design: Billur Turan
Three recipes from the manual are selected for the Critical Cooking Show / the 5th Istanbul Design Biennial: Empathy Revisited. *Divided They Fall* transposes a folk spell into the work environment, using office objects along with cats and dogs to disperse colleagues who are against you. A spell to increase the chance of mating, *Winds of Change & Weeds of Sex* directs the energy of sexual residues to the spell-maker with the help of everyday objects. *Delivering the Proof in the Policy of Truth* uses kitchen tools to expose hypocrites; peeling their masks off and feeding the skins back to them. By introducing a layer of irrationality, o*o*m suggests alternative narratives that go beyond the normative human-object relations, reframing the meanings assigned to the things that occupy our environment.
Screenings:
Arquiteturas Film Festival, Porto / 2022
Critical Cooking Show, curated by Mariana Pestana and Billie Muraben, 5th Istanbul Design Biennial / 2020
Mystical Advert by object*oriented*magic
For the online closing programme “Not Quite a Finissage”; o*o*m has created a “Mystical Advert”, an invitation to engage with rituals from object*oriented*magic.
Midwinter Ritual by object*oriented*magic
Like they do in agricultural societies, many Anatolian folk beliefs and rituals aim to synchronize with nature and its change over time. Therefore they are also linked to nonhuman elements (rocks, winds, or mysterious *Cemre*s, as well as objects like cleavers and sieves)
When we look at the personal through the lens of o*o*m during the pandemic lockdown, we see an opportunity to synchronize with nature. We adapted the vernacular folk rituals of Midwinter celebrations and preparations for New Year, to the contemporary practice of self-care and personal change.
*Midwinter Ritual* is a framework and a series of rituals that takes place between midwinter January 31st and the New Year March 21st, in a flexible structure so that it can fit many types of wishes and resolutions, employing the power objects to initiate, accelerate and reinforce personal change.
rituals
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