(2025) Sound design & composition
Dilek Winchester’s 410 Letters: On Reading and Writing (Albanian) (2025) departs from an earlier work titled Abondoned Letters (2024) based on the ‘Istanbul alphabet’. The Istanbul alphabet was an experimental writing system devised in 1879 by Şemsettin Sami, who was a lexicographer, novelist, translator and prominent figure in both Turkish language reform and Albanian nationalism, at a time when Albanians in the Ottoman Empire lacked a unified writing system. In the video, viewers are taken through a visual landscape of Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Elbasan, Todhri, Vellara, Vezo, Berat and Latin-based scripts, including the Istanbul, Agimi and Bashkimi alphabets, as well as the current version of the Albanian alphabet. These are adapted and invented letterforms that have either been forgotten or have never been used prominently in writing Albanian. In the work, isolated letterforms appear not as code but as sculptural forms, accompanied by a sound composition created in collaboration with artist Ahmetcan Gökçeer.
text taken from IKSV Biennial website