SIFIR – IF I WERE HAPPY :: RIZOSFERA-NUKFM :: NUKFM020 :: 2024
The tenth album by Zafer Aracagök, philosopher, musician, art critic and visual artist, is released by Rizosfera and its sound laboratory NUKFM dedicated to sound experimentation (NUKFM020) and consists of a 2GB USB card with 6 unreleased musical tracks, a red cardboard envelope with fourteen illustrations represented on 7 postcards, two concertina booklets with lyrics and an unpublished text by Safer. Aracagök’s musical side is known as SIFIR (zero in Turkish) and encompasses a wide range of influences including noise, industrial, punk, new wave, dream pop and electronic. These influences blend to such an extent that the Turkish artist’s originality has resulted in numerous well-received albums, including his last two releases for the renowned glitch-noise label Mille Plateaux. In particular, SIFIR’s incendiary proposal traverses the audio dynamite realms of Killing Joke, My Bloody Valentine, Suicide, with an added touch of art-pop. The lyrics, featured in the inner booklet, are deeply personal, describing a strong existentialism tainted by unhappiness and diversity, using bitter sarcasm and dark humour to depict a Neanderthal-like world still steeped in violence and hatred towards minorities. The 14 images created by Zafer on the seven full-colour postcards evoke a strong sensation that immediately connects the eye to the brain, creating a mood of unease and anguish. Zafer uses a raw illustrative style with mixed media techniques, influenced by the painting styles of Francis Bacon and contemporary collage art. The artistic world presented by Zafer / SIFIR is bold and rich with literary, poetic, painterly, musical and philosophical influences, including a new unpublished philosophical text entitled “Clamour”. Zafer navigates ably between inspirations from Pavese, Pasolini, Beckett, Bacon, L.Anderson, Deleuze and Killing Joke. A must-have for the new European art scene and experimental music landscape.
When asked about his motivation in making this album, our artist answers the following way.
“When was your last moment of happiness? A useless/hopeless question. In fact, it is unhappiness which is our guide all the time. Yes, Pavese. Unhappiness and struggle. But struggle against what? Struggle against that which constantly reduces us to nothingness. In other words: 0+0=0. “But you have bored yourself to death”, they said (his friends). To what avail?, I asked – to no avail, they said. But I wrote pages and painted images and composed sounds. To what avail?, they asked. To no avail, except to make some people happy, I said. I mean, happiness in reverse. Or the square root of happiness. I bet no one has yet seen the square root of happiness. To accommodate the square root of happiness requires a deep, bottomless well, ladies and gentleman. If you can stare at someone who can write, compose pieces in that well while falling down, such a stare will endow you with an enormous, unrivalled sense of happiness. Here’s the skull, here’s the ear, here’s the heart. (BLACK HOLE» “.
BIO (ENG)
Zafer Aracagök is a philosopher and a de/composer from Istanbul who produces affective aural and visual concepts which find their point of departure in the works of Deleuze and Guattari with an interest to rethink the force of the negative in the philosophers’ work so as to fabulate new strategies in face of ontologising, affirmationist and accelerationist tendencies in contemporary philosophy and art. Concentrating on experientiality rather than experimentality, his sound works move towards a becoming-all-ears with no tympanum to welcome the coming into being of the -dividual. Aracagök taught Continental philosophy and philosophy of art at various universities in Turkey and abroad. He published many scholarly articles on the issues of image, rhtyhm, resonance and noise in continental philosophy and particularly in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari which appeared in international academic journals. Among his most recent books available in English are Atopological Trilogy: Deleuze and Guattari (2015) and Nonconceptual Negativity: Damaged Reflections on Turkey (2019) both published by Punctum Books NYC.
He started producing electronic/experiential music in 2000 under the name of SIFIR which means “zero” in Turkish. Between 2000-2005 he released three albums by Ada Music of Istanbul, the most notable of which was I am Stupid because I am Dead, I am Dead because I am Stupid (2005), commemorating Nietzsche’s philosophy and his collapse in Turin. Later on his albums, KOG (2009); I Want to be a Suicide Bomber (2011); Zazou and the Closets on House-Darkness (2013) were released by White Music Label, UK. His music also appeared in Sub Rosa’s Anthology of Turkish Experimental Music 1961-2014 in Belgium in 2016. His recent de/compositional pieces were released by Mille Plateaux/Force Inc. in Ultrablack of Music compilations in DE and by Rizosfera as Chaos Variation VII (with Obsolete Capitalism) in Italy and as Rough Trade Exclusive in UK in 2020. He released Shoedrift EP as a late homage to “shoegaze” of the 90s (Mille Plateaux 2021) and his last piece, Not Enough Negativity (with references to the great philosopher Mark Fisher’s thought) has been released again with Mille Plateaux in September 2022. His latest work is scheduled for release by Rizosfera-NUKFM in March 2024 under the title “If I Were Happy,” presented in an exquisite package including a USB card and a set of seven double-sided postcards featuring 14 stunning images of paintings created by Zafer Aracagök himself, along with an unpublished text by the Turkish philosopher titled “Clamour“.
