Electro Punk Biotopes

Bünyamin Bozkuş constructs a techno-biotope using obsolete, discarded, dysfunctional electronic circuit components, mechanical parts, and various found objects. Or rather, Bünyamin does not entirely construct it himself; the transistors, capacitors, resistors, LEDs, motors, gears, cables, pipes, and all the idle and abandoned objects in his studio compel him to build an unpredictable, organic form of life that generates its own rules. They coexist within an inverted order of creation. Like biological organisms taking root in a secluded corner, the waste materials hidden away in the studio form their own habitat.

Drawing nourishment from punk’s do-it-yourself ethos and the raw aesthetics of cybernetics, these biotopes function as zones of silent resistance. On the one hand, they resist the notion of “technology” that must constantly be new, constantly in a state of becoming. If it does not guarantee a better life, why do we need the new at all? Do we desire a technosphere composed of flawless machines that increasingly take control of us and act on our behalf? Or do we seek a life lived alongside a technology with which we can empathize—one that is compatible with life itself, as suggested by electronic components reborn in the forms of mosquitoes, bees, birds, insects, grasses, branches, and flowers?

Bozkuş’s machines/robots—ranging from plants and insects to hybrid creatures and urban metaphors—blend the conceptual domains and aesthetics of steampunk and cyberpunk to construct an original world extending toward posthumanism.

An article by E. Ertan published on artUnlimited