İlker Ortaç / Work
Kalabalık: short story
Kalabalık is part of İlker Ortaç’s online short-story archive. The short excerpt below is in the original Turkish; the full text opens on the story page.
A short excerpt in Turkish
(ı) farz bitmiş, sünneti eda ederken, sakallarım tüylerine karışmış, en az dudakları kadar güzel kutusuyla dilimi yutmuş ardından, secdeye varmıştı ki, ‘olum çok seviyorum lan seni, ağ- zını yüzünü dağıtacak kadar’ dedi, selam verip doğruldu sonra. işte bu neydi biliyor musun, son kez inandığım an. bir daha da kutsalım olmadı benim, ne yerde, ne gökte. yok ama sikerim ben bu hayatı. yok hatta sikti hayatımı… sonra…From life to creative practice
İlker Ortaç entered public service in 1995 and spent years writing code. After fifteen years, he retired and chose novels, stories and screenplays. This transition locates the writing in his biography without treating fictional narrators’ experiences as events in the author’s life.
From making to presentation
- Source work: this record retains its own title and available publication information.
- Portfolio context: biography and the work’s form are read together without confusing fiction with biography.
- Access: the relevant link opens the reading, viewing or publication record for this work.
From the studio: a creative reconstruction
A first-person creative reconstruction drawing on the biography and artworks.
I imagine that coding asks me to locate an error, while writing sometimes asks me to stay inside it a little longer. I hear the sentence in my own voice first. Where it reads too comfortably, I stop and try unsettling that confidence in the words.
Working around Kalabalık: short story, my attention returns to this detail: Kalabalık is part of İlker Ortaç’s online short-story archive. The short excerpt below is in the original Turkish; the full text opens on the story page. In the next passage, I imagine pulling back anything that weakens that encounter and leaving the areas holding its tension open for longer.
In the final passage, I imagine returning the work to its own context. I leave room for reading a page, looking at a frame or watching the film beyond the narrative assembled here.