Scenes from the Show is from a show about three women who have been hurt, reacted and consequently suffered. Their efforts were not in vain but not all were able to survive the ordeal. I should, with the blockchain as my witness, thank my daughter for being a part of this show and facilitating my presence as a photographer on site.

The photographs have been taken during the rehearsals in 2019. I had the opportunity to take a wide variety of shots out of which I have handpicked a few for Scenes from the Show. The photographs were edited multiple times during the period leading up to this artwork.

The show is about their courage. It is about their will not to be broken under adverse conditions of parents, lovers and all forms of authority that prevent them to be with no hesitation to resort to use of brute force. All these women have broken the boundary and turned the tables on the assaulters of various kinds. The effort was extraordinary yet human. The cost.. The cost was momentous however way you look at it.

Technically, I wished to push the bar higher with Scenes from the Show and introduced 9 layers (+1 static layer) with 16 states in each of them. I've done the whole work twice over as I tested a 16 x 16 alternative that I gave up due to screen being divided more than how I envisaged. Purely mathematically speaking the current probability outcome of different images is (9 layers with 16 states) 9 to the power of 16. The math comes out as 1,853,020,188,851,841 that is 1.8 quadrillion combinations. A 70 year life with no sleep and 1 click at every second yields 2,207,520,000 images for the life time. That is it would take 800,000 lifetimes to go through all the combinations. All the more reason to get couple of layers and decide at-will to manage the odds.

"Through dirt and over street. The dancer falls Then rises like an oriole over walls." -from Dancer: Four Poems by Paul Engle (4-2). Like this one each layer is referred by a small selection from a poem by Paul Engle. Incredibly lovely words, I am in admiration of this gentle petite work speaking soft meaning a lot. Each of the 16 states are named after female dancers that have made a mark in history. With them I took the liberty to select and the naming convention was quite random as I used first names, stage names and surnames with different dancers depending on how it sounded and looked. Last under the naming convention are the layer names which are my titles for the photographs I built this work upon.

There are at least 9 beautiful images in this vast set. I have clicked through and have come across a lot of inspiring visuals. However more than that, this work is a study in chance. The collector(s) holding this artwork will only see a fraction of possible outcomes. It sort of reminds me of the stories from The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges. The same page or the same story will not be found again. Something similar will come up perhaps. Each story will take a lifetime. The book will merge with life.

I wished this work to be outrageous. Visually artistic but numerically absurd. It gives two options to the Collector and/or the Viewer. One is to accept life aka the image as it is. Let the randomness speak and take it. The other is to make a choice, to change the odds by the force of will - wherever and to whatever it may lead. The second is done by the choices on the collection of layers and about which states will prevail at the time.

This creation will live on the blockchain. I hope many years from now on, it will still cause some interest and a lonely only girl or boy would click a few buttons with the mind, look at it and smile at the futility of life and the incessant desire to shape it by some of us.

June - August 2021 Hulki Okan Tabak