Speaking Sinkhole, 2025
Merve Ünsal, Speaking Sinkhole, 2025. Poster, dimensions variable. Visual translation by Serra Şensoy.
Merve Ünsal, Speaking Sinkhole (detail), 2025. Poster, dimensions variable. Visual translation by Serra Şensoy.
Merve Ünsal, Speaking Sinkhole (detail), 2025. Poster, dimensions variable. Visual translation by Serra Şensoy.
Merve Ünsal, Speaking Sinkhole (detail), 2025. Poster, dimensions variable. Visual translation by Serra Şensoy.
(Left) Merve Ünsal, Speaking Sinkhole (audio and wall poster) and Between Breaths (photograph on the floor), 2025, 2023. Installation view from Heroism is Botulism at Ateliê397 (São Paulo, Brazil).
To listen to Speaking Sinkhole, please click here. Audio work, 11 minutes 23 seconds. 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.
The departure point for the poster design is Iconismus II by Samuel Morland, 1672, depicting the physics of the speaking trumpet. Serra Şensoy adapted this image to the speculative physics of the sinkhole as a speaking body.
