How many unwritten histories are there?
In that singular air imposed on us by the concept of history, are the clouds, the rain, or the rainbow always the same? Perhaps the only way to free ourselves from history is not the collapse or the end of history itself, but rather passing through the multiplicity of histories. Through the plurality of history—through the shores and harbors where History can open itself to personal histories—History becomes what it will be, possibly settling or resting there.

As My First Century, we promise the shores and harbors of oral histories—the places where history-to-come will unfold. We want to travel to every city we can reach in the world and gather their histories. The histories—the personal histories—of the poets, artists, writers, political scientists, sociologists… the thinkers collectively called “intellectuals,” who are perhaps the ones most abandoned in this century.

My First Century intends to begin its journey in Mardin, during the Mardin Biennial, and to write the histories of cities that are not considered the center of the world yet could be centers depending on one’s point of view—cities whose histories are hidden in their own edges. The history of their arts… their Art History. By bringing together the intellectuals of each city, we ask them: in the history of the century they have awakened into—the 20th century—who are the ones present for them? Who belongs to their century? Which images and voices? Who has been excluded from the so-called “Art History”? Who remains unwritten, unspoken, untold, unaddressed—silently ignored or perhaps ignored without silence? Who has never been brought into words at all?

In these sessions, which will take place orally as a participatory performance with a group of intellectuals from each city, every participant defines their own century. In this long journey—one we wish to fit into a single century, even though it overflows that century and quietly spills out from within us—we hope to be together, accompanied by the unheard voices and unseen images of their centuries.

On behalf of My First Century,
Ayşegül Sönmez, Zeynep Okyay