For this year’s edition of FLUX program, we invited Dr. Mustafa Avci (Turkey) with his special sound installation “Küğtopya,” which you can experience every Thursday from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM.
“Music is so naturally a part of us that we cannot be without it,
Boethius (6th century)
even if we so wished.”
“Everything we do is music.”
John Cage (20th century)
“Instead of the blossoms of spring, the pure white snow;
Cenap Şahabettin (19th century)
Instead of the songs of birds, the silence of hope!”
Can a utopia be so vast that it accommodates everyone within it? If we consider the inherently inclusive and boundless nature of music, perhaps the most accessible utopia is a musical utopia.
Throughout human history, countless utopias have been imagined: unknown islands, realms beyond the stars, the depths of the oceans, ancient civilizations, or digital worlds of the future. Yet, embedded in each of these utopias lies a sense of distance, an unreachable horizon. They are silhouettes of worlds we have not—and cannot—witness.
But what if we envisioned a utopia centered around music? Küğtopya seeks to explore this question, offering a space where sound, silence, and humanity converge in resonance.
Dr. Mustafa Avci completed his undergraduate studies in Economics at Boğaziçi University, followed by a master’s degree in Ethnomusicology at ITU MIAM and a PhD in Ethnomusicology at New York University’s GSAS Music Department. His academic research focuses on topics such as gender in Ottoman and Turkish society (including köçeklik), music and dance, the history of sound and noise, and the music of the Ottoman diaspora in America (1890–1970).
He has received research and merit scholarships from institutions such as the Social Science Research Council, the Society for Ethnomusicology, and New York University. As an artist, composer, and creator of theater and film music, he has contributed with installations, film scores, theater music, and contemporary art projects at events including the Istanbul Biennial, Mardin Biennial, Istanbul Film Festival, and Istanbul Theater Festival.
In 2018, his music for the film Yuva, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, earned him the “Best Original Film Score” award at the 30th Ankara International Film Festival in 2019. Avcı currently teaches in the Computational Social Sciences Master’s Program and the Sociology Department at Koç University.
“Not in his goals but in his transitions man is great.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Transition starts with an ending. This is paradoxical but true. Plus 359 Gallery’s Flux program marks the transition from one period to another, the continuous change, the movement, the flux from one state to another.
This biennial program runs in the winter season with the idea to release energy in a new direction. To give us inspiration and to show us that nothing stays the same for too long.