Basics

 

 

I would like to transfer some of my note to this firs post from our first meeting.

Liminal

Fragile

Contrast

Dust - Mud - Sand - Storm - Water - Wind - Salt

 . Oasis is very sharp and sudden. It doesn't prepare you before you see it or you cannot prepare yourself before seeing it. İt is just standing there with its all absurdity and illogical existence. There is no transition lines in Oasis there no blur or gradients borders. It stands there with its all concrete look and strictly defined borders.

. Somehow it is very similar how an oasis and Shali acts and reacts. Oasis is someting very unreal and absurd even alien to its content. Normally it shouldn't be there, it shouldn't be that green, there should be not any water source. But still it is there with all its shocking and sharp look. And it is also very fragile with small intervention. If the water floods more then it will be mix with the salt and kill the vegetation. Ancient city of Shali shares the same absurdity and weight. It is made of mud but in a perfect man-made forms. These mud shouldn't be standing in vertical surfaces. These muds should be on the floor but instead of stepping them we are walking among or between them. Massive (bıulding) form of the mud is super unnatural but yet it is there with its all massive existence.

. Shali is also made of very simple atomic unit : dust (soil-sand) And one recipe is enough to make the whole dwelling or the city. And this atomic unit is always in cycle without changing its chemistry. And whole city looks like one solid piece instead of a gathering from small pieces.  Once all these terrains were the bottom line of the sea. We can observe this cycle in different scales. Either we go back 1 million years ago or we observe the last 10 years.

. What is creating Shali (dust,soil,sand,salt and water mixture) is also what is destroying it. (It dissolves because of the sand strikes that carried by the wind or  melts water because of the rain) 

. Invisible traces ("Evaporation from the great salt basins leaves on it precious expanses of salt crystal")

"They appear almost melted and deformed under their own weight"

"Shali is the result of continuous and uninterrupted reconstruction and structural changes"