Slippage by Selcan Peksan & Maja Daneková

Poems by Selcan Peksan, drawings by Maja Daneková

One day we longed for the sun.

Sixty minutes into planetary lockdown, as gas clouds flare diabolically across the horizon, a burst pipe floods Selcan Peksan’s Istanbul apartment. Encircled by notebooks and companioned by her beloved German shepherd, the poet seeks to transcend claustrophobia and eco-anxiety by envisioning a future unpeopled planet supporting novel mutations of non-human life.

Come Lockdown Year Five, the subterranean rumbles of resurgent nature coalesce into a riotous carpet of overgrowth subsuming “virtually all signs of human civilization.” But as trees begin to uprise, gyrate, and parade, the poet, having outlined a deposition of the worst trespasses of industrialized society, feels comfortable at last:

This is my garden; this is my playground.

Pacing Slippage’s relentless plunge through ensuing eons, artist Maja Daneková generates atmospheres backdropping Peksan’s lyric excursion beyond the Anthropocene to the dawn of a neo-primeval.