35th Istanbul Film Festival, 2016

April 20, 2016 – 6:09 pm

After a preamble on freedom, this is an account of nine movies in three parts.

This part:

  • Thirst

  • Rain the Color of Blue With a Little Red in It

  • Fire at Sea

Part 2:

  • The Demons

  • The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble

  • Florida

Part 3:

  • Interruption

  • Under the Sun

  • News from Planet Mars

Photo of books referred to in this article

In the summer of 1994, I was a graduate student at the University of Maryland, and I had lived in the state since 1989. My roommate in a suburban apartment complex was finishing her own degree and moving away. I decided to move across the border into the city of Washington, where I had already become involved in some bicycle activism. I found a congenial vegetarian group house. I would bicycle the nine miles to the College Park campus. But moving to the city raised a moral question: should I really give up my political right to a meaningful vote?

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Collingwood, Film, Homer, Istanbul, overlap of classes, Philosophy, Principles of Art | Tagged | Comments (3)

Free Sevan Nişanyan

April 8, 2016 – 6:02 pm

Note added July 17, 2018: Sevan Nişanyan is now free, in the sense of having escaped from prison—an open prison—and from Turkey. The story is told well in an article by Lauren Frayer on NPR, September 28, 2017. Alev Scott visited Sevan on the Greek island of Samos and wrote about it in the Times Literary Supplement, July 4, 2018; the article is behind a paywall, but there’s a free version. The friends and colleagues mentioned at the beginning of my own essay are not currently under detention, though trials of them and others continue. My essay remains as an expression of the value of freedom of speech.

We want freedom for our friends and colleagues who are being held in pre-trial detention for their supposed support of terrorism through advocating peace.

İlyastepe, Şirince, May 2013

İlyastepe, Şirince, May 2013

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Freedom, Nesin Mathematics Village, Turkey | Tagged , | Comments (3)

On trial for pacifism

March 30, 2016 – 2:44 pm

This is about the 1918 trial of American radical political cartoonist Art Young and others for conspiracy and interfering with enlistment. Most of the article is a quotation of Young’s own words. The words provide some perspective on today’s struggle for freedom of speech.

Capitalism, Art Young, private collection (reproduced in Harper's, Jan 2016, p. 64)

Capitalism, Art Young, private collection (reproduced in Harper’s, Jan 2016, p. 64)

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Freedom, Harper’s, History, Pacifism, Turkey, West Virginia | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Academic Freedom

March 25, 2016 – 7:18 am

(See also other articles in the Freedom category.)

Yesterday (March 24, 2016) was the first day of the sixth Models and Groups Istanbul meeting. There were participants from the Middle East, Europe, and America. Kıvanç Ersoy was to speak about his own mathematics. He could not speak, because he was in prison. He, Esra Mungan, and Muzaffer Kaya were in prison, because the three of them had publicly insisted that the government of Turkey make peace in the southeast of the country. Absurd, but true. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Education, Freedom, History, Mathematics, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Mathematics | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (7)

Kıvanç fêted in absentia

March 22, 2016 – 6:18 pm

The birthday of one of our departmental colleagues was celebrated today, March 22, 2016. We were a day late, and the principal was away. His parents were present, but he himself had been imprisoned without bail since March 14.

MSGSÜ garden, 2016.03.22

The charge against Kıvanç and two others is spreading terrorist propaganda, as reported by Academic Freedom Monitor, Human Rights Watch and Nature. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Freedom, Istanbul, Philosophy, Turkey | Tagged | Comments (3)

Early Tulips

March 14, 2016 – 5:49 pm

Emirgan Korusu, 2016.03.12

Ayşe was still in Ankara, but I had seen rumors on Twitter that tulips were already blooming in Emirgan Korusu. The bulbs were being dowsed with ice water, lest the flowers be overblown for the Tulip Festival in April. Anyway, I wanted to get away from the crowds of Şişli and Beyoğlu. The morning was mostly sunny. Thus on Saturday, March 12, 2016, I headed out to Emirgan, repeating the trip that we had made the previous April.

Emirgan Korusu, 2016.03.12

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Bosphorus, History, Istanbul, Nature, Science, Tourism, Turkey, Visual Art | Tagged , , , , | Comments (8)

Art on Büyükada

March 5, 2016 – 11:08 am

This is about a weekend in the islands, and contemporary art.

The Fourteenth Istanbul Biennial (September 5 to November 1, 2015) had exhibits or installations all over Istanbul, and several of these were on Büyükada, the Big Island, which is Πρίγκηπος in Greek. The Big Island is the last of the four islands visited by the ferry from the mainland. For easier access, Ayşe and I stayed on the second island, Burgazada, the night of Friday, October 23, 2015. We caught the ferry from there to Büyükada on Saturday morning. We visited all of the venues of the Biennial on the island. Illustrating this article are photographs from some of these venues.

I supply some information about the artworks from the Biennal guidebook (which can be downloaded as a pdf file). This was the information that we had at the time of visiting. It turns out that there is more information on the web, sometimes a lot more. Some of the works, at least, do not stand very well on their own. One needs to be told what one is looking at. Without this, one may still look and figure that what one is seeing is meaningful to the artist; but that may be all. In this, the works in the Biennial differ from the photographs and paintings of Emine Ceylan (born 1955), which last month (February, 2016) were on display at my university’s Tophane-i Amire Culture and Art Center. I give one example, from an album of my photos from the exhibit:

Emine Ceylan (title and date unknown to me)
Emine Ceylan (title and date unknown to me)

This seems not to be the kind of thing that the big names in art today are interested in doing.

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in History, Istanbul, The Islands, Tourism, Visual Art | Tagged | Comments (0)

What I loath about Facebook

February 16, 2016 – 1:54 pm

I wrote the polemic below as a comment on Facebook, in both senses. I was responding to a Johnnie friend’s comment, “David Pierce loathes fb as a forum for real discussion.” “Johnnies” are alumnae and alumni of St John’s College, the one with campuses in Annapolis and Santa Fe. My own view of our College is expressed in an article called simply St John’s College published in the De Morgan Journal in 2012. Since then, I have written about the College in the present blog, Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Education, Facebook, Pirsig | Tagged | Comments (1)

Nesin Matematik Köyü, Ocak (January) 2016

January 26, 2016 – 6:33 pm

DSC05976

My first visit to the Nesin Mathematics Village was in the summer of 2007. My first course there was in the summer of 2008. I have been back every summer since, sometimes more than once. Now I have visited for the first time in winter. I am in awe. The photographs here are supposed to give you an idea why. Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in Mathematics, Nature, Nesin Mathematics Village, Turkey | Tagged , , , | Comments (6)

Turks of 1071 and Today

December 1, 2015 – 1:59 pm

Skip to Michael Attaleiates on Alparslan after the Battle of Manzikert

Published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire tells the story of a thousand years and more, from before the founding of Constantinople in 330 till after its loss in 1453. Gibbon can be ridiculed for his title: a millenium is a long time to be in decline. The three thick volumes of the Penguin edition took me a long time to read, if not quite as long as Gibbon took to write. I was living in Ankara at the time, but I enjoyed being able to read Gibbon’s work also while visiting the three old imperial capitals: Istanbul, Rome, and Milan.

Gibbon’s Decline and Fall on my shelves (which are arranged according to date of birth of author)
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall on my shelves
(which are arranged according to date of birth of author)

Continue reading →

By David Pierce | Posted in History, Homer, Tourism, Turkey | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (9)