The title of this works is an abbreviation of a sentence from Oğuz Atay’s novel, Tutunamayanlar. kendinibeğenmişçesinesankibizdenöncehiçbirşeysöylenmemişçesinegillerden comes from the second half of the sentence “We are knocking on your doors with an emotion and arrogance unparalleled in world history and without fear of seeming like those who are conceited and behave as if nothing has ever been said before them.” It is transcribed phonetically in Turkish, but with letters from five alphabets: Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Arabic, which were used by the multi-lingual population of the Ottoman Empire up until the Alphabet Reform enforced the use of the Latin alphabet in 1928.
Photos: Marili Zarkou and Mustafa Hazneci