With the Wind is a radio transmission. Installed on SAHA Studio’s balcony and constructed from locally-derived materials, the repurposed wind-catcher is from where the transmission is made. The transmission has two channels: the first channel is the sound of the air passing through the wind-catcher and the second is the sound recordings collected from various media channels including TV and radio from Turkey in which sets of words are collated about Taksim and its surroundings. The sound recordings are realigned constantly. The wind is utilized as an element that carries, narrates, and collects; With the Wind is added onto the already-existing infrastructure of the air vents in the studio space, with which I search for the possibility of radio transmissions to be embedded in a place. Using the method of montage to expand language, I attempt to oblige the already-existing transmissions to be reconstructed.

With the Wind (excerpt), 2021

Into the Wind is a layered audio recording composed of field recordings from a device held between two bodies, found radio/television narratives of resistance movements, notes from a digital theremin tracing drone footage of situations when the wrong person was killed, a whispered response in the form of a fairy tale composed by the artist, and wind recordings from multiple locations. The work, installed on a fig tree located in the courtyard of a ceramics studio, actively imagines a kinship through listening/eavesdropping—a way of being together, remembering together, feeling together that is unavailable to other formats.

Into the wind

The space between my two ears is both what goes through my head (is it possible to sound out the inner voice? could I tap into the inner voice as a text to be appropriated?) and everything outside of my head—as that is also the reverse of what is between my two ears. How do I tune into texts? Could I tune into the space between words in texts? How does the texture/textuality of words/language translate in sound? This work stemmed from a desire to have a dialogue with the weather man.

Between My Two Ears (excerpt), 2023

Turning AVTO into a transmission area, Intimations Radio emits radio waves, broadcasting once a day. A text addressed to the second-person singular and contact-mic recordings of various material and immaterial entities, leak outside through the local transmission.

Intimations Radio transmission (excerpt), 2023

Direct Sound, Reverse Image converges the image of the street, captured through a mechanism akin to a camera obscura, into sound. Electronic voice phenomena, which are considered to make audible ghosts through words and brief sentences heard in sound recordings are converged with field recordings from the Kazancı Yokuşu to draw on and to recall memories of this particular place. Marking the transition from image to sound as a milestone in Merve’s practice, this work is an homage to Cengiz Çekil’s 1980 work Reverse Image.

Direct Sound, Reverse Image (excerpt), 2023

Intimations is a sculptural instrument installed in the airshaft of the building adjacent to the exhibition space at AVTO. The radio drama hosts six characters, each articulating a monologue. Every character is linked to the physical materiality of plastic; the characters include a toy panda and backgammon dice. The monologues are composed by field recordings of these materials and are not verbal. 

Through the vibrations of plastic materials, this faulty instrument located in the airshaft, a porous and binding space at the core of the building, conveys the radio drama that mixes and mashes the speculative histories of Kazancı Yokuşu Street and its environs. The instrument apparatus is also used as a collecting, and broadcasting device. The temporary assembly of discarded and second-hand objects embodying the work aims to explore cognitive and sensory possibilities opened up by such infrastructures and situations in a rough yet direct manner, in accord with the nature of objects.

Intimations radio drama (excerpt), 2023

Derived from the artist’s encounter with a sinkhole in, Obruk Plateau, Konya, Between Breaths serves as a record of a happening. Reflecting on the decline in underground water levels due to uncontrolled groundwater consumption, Merve interprets the ensuing sinkholes as manifestations of delusion, inward collapse, and surface withdrawal. Events commonly categorized as “disasters,” such as drought and thirst, contribute to the formation of these karstic landforms, resembling the collapse of ceilings within cavities formed over time by soluble rocks underground. Merve’s text, scribed through channeling and listening to the earth, intertwines personal, social, temporal, and historical collapses and disasters. Deliberately edited to not have any punctuation and capitalization, the text attempts to evoke moments when language comes to fail and intersects with the spatial collapses designed by the artist on paper through its situation within the layout. The sound recording documenting moments spoken during the happening melds the collapse of the earth and the inability to trace individual agencies.

Between Breaths (excerpt), 2023.

Breathing as Howling (excerpt), 2024.

Sonic translation by Elif Gülin Soğuksu. 

Central to my idea for the verbal score, which Elif translated, is that the sinkhole embodies an entangled temporality: once the sinkhole appears, it feels like it has always been there. The sinkhole is always in progress, always about to appear, imminent and urgent. The collapse is not momentary nor spontaneous. It is always a process. The composition converges the before and after of the sinkhole. 


Speaking Sinkhole, 2025.

merve ünsal is a visual artist who lives and works in Istanbul. She researches the boundaries of photography and text in her works and traces the moments and situations when the unspoken is transformed into the unspeakable. Her works are always image-driven and she thinks through the media of photography, video, sound, as well as site-specific installations. She has shown her work in a variety of contexts across the world, most often through artist-driven initiatives in Cairo, Beirut, New Delhi, Toronto; she has been supported by the Delfine Foundation (London), Praksis (Oslo), Fogo Island Arts, Art Metropole (Toronto), University of Delaware (Lewes) to participate in artist residencies. She participated in the learning program at Ashkal Alwan (Beirut), Homework Space in the academic year, 2014-2015. She is also one of the editors at m-est.org, a publication dedicated to think about artist-centered publishing.

contact her at merve.unsal [at] gmail.com.

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