<h3 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">ID</h3>Your nickname: MattapoisettI have visited “this” exhibition in Istanbul recently: Into the Unknown: Moving Images from the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw&nbsp;at Salt.I have explored “this” artist in Istanbul recently: Deniz GülI live in: ModaI feel like I am from: Brooklyn<h3 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">SHOOT THE BREEZE</h3>In your Argonotlar writing, your hometown in United States comes up as a place where “there was one only shop in it”. I know that your first city experience was Cairo, but I still wonder how you adapted to the transition from a town in United States to Istanbul “the metropolis”. Can you please talk a little bit about that process?I spent the first twenty years of my life in small-town United States. Reading, literature, was always my way of traveling when I could do nothing to leave the flat, plain, whitewashed existential nausea of my hyper-local upbringing. But most importantly, I had a beloved grandfather who was born in New York City, and he relished me with tales. His first memory went back to 1919. He would spin yarns, half-factual I assumed, about Manhattan in the 1920s, and Brooklyn in the 1930s, I was fascinated. But in my adolescent room, sleeping beside my well-lined bookcase, I was something of an Orientalist, perhaps, stricken with glee over the idea of far-flung territories, exotic people and the experiences I might be able to have in other lands and communities. I wanted go, deeply. &nbsp;I did ask my university’s foreign exchange office if I could go to Mongolia. But without a word of Russian or Chinese, they offered alternatives like Japan, India or Egypt. I chose the latter. &nbsp;From there, I moved to Cairo, and since then I have lived in cities.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1660917364912.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.67" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">Matt gazing at the clear blue sky of ModaPhoto: Deniz Sabuncu<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">You have been working as a freelance journalist &amp; writer who defies the formality and standardization of contemporary art writing. This is manifested in your written pieces you have published, the thematic scope of your writings, and your recent collaborative literature initiatives, Fictive Magazine and Fictive Press.Drawing on the quote from Susan Sontag you included in your Argonatlar&nbsp;<a fr-original-style="" href="https://argonotlar.com/reflections-of-a-foreign-art-writer-in-turkey/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent; outline: none; cursor: pointer; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; touch-action: manipulation; user-select: auto; box-sizing: border-box;" target="_blank">piece</a>, I’d like to ask whether your “informal” and “unstandardized” art-writing practice is to be against interpretation and, if so, does Istanbul play any part in this endeavor?Sontag’s famous essay ended with her calling for the art lover to liberate themselves with the force of an erotic compulsion toward works of creativity. In my work I have tried to transcend interpretation in the interest of expressing myself. As a writer, I always attempt to personalize my logocentric craft beyond the formalities or standardizations of institutional protocol. I think that is a raison d’être of being a writer. A writer is a radical form of self-representation. It is individualism with a cause.In art writing I have attempted to parallel the tone and verve of an artwork in writing. Whereas many art writers ground the work in academic or worldly terms, I send it flying into the nebulous realms of my noetic fantasies. In that sense, I am working in the vein of ekphrastic prose, using words like a spelunker exploring my psychological experience of the work, bringing the reader into my emotional and intellectual journey in confrontation with that precious dimension of sheer, human novelty that can only be found in art.

Aposto Istanbul

Meet Matt Hanson, the art-writer who bends the words for ultimate self-expression through art.

Matt Hanson

<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/6/1661005894661.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.67" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">A piece of Istanbul with a seaside breezePhoto: Deniz Sabuncu<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">

<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1660320255316.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.67" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">"This city is a beautiful riddle"Photo:&nbsp;Deniz Sabuncu&nbsp;<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">

Jennifer finds the escape she needs from the city in the walks and runs she takes. This is not just a leisure activity, it is a necessity. This is her cultivated culture of walking and running in Istanbul, our charming craze of a home.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/5/1660328505601.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.67" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">Jennifer and a specimen of the far east in IstanbulPhoto: Deniz Sabuncu&nbsp;<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;"><ul fr-original-style="padding-inline-start: 20px;" style="padding-inline-start: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; list-style-position: inside; box-sizing: border-box;"><li fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Early-morning runs:&nbsp;My favorite early-morning running route in the city is over the Galata Bridge, through Gülhane Park and Sultanahmet, up to the Süleymaniye Camii with its amazing view, and back down over the Haliç metro bridge and along the nice new(-ish) Karaköy waterfront park.&nbsp;</li><li fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Long runs: It’s hard to beat the Kadıköy shoreline out to Bostancı – unlike along the Bosphorus, the waterfront path mostly goes through parks, not right alongside the road. Maçka Park and Yıldız Park are hilly but beautiful, as are the trails in the Atatürk City Forest and Belgrad Forest.&nbsp;</li><li fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Free runs:&nbsp;I love coming up with small running adventures in the city: a run across all of Istanbul’s historic seven hills, around the whole perimeter of the old land and sea walls, or all around the Haliç.</li><li fr-original-style="" style="box-sizing: border-box;">Community runs: Running is still a bit of a niche activity in Istanbul, but the number of running groups and races has grown so much in the past decade or so. In addition to my own wonderful running group, Istanbul Expat Runners, I’ve got to give a shout out to Adım Adım, which has done so much to encourage a culture of both fitness and charitable fundraising in Turkey, and to&nbsp;No Reason Co., who have been very welcoming to me and my fellow yabancılar&nbsp;at their Istanbul training sessions.</li></ul>

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