My Life in Curves Recently by Sevinç Çalhanoğlu

Hand-drawn graphs by Sevinç Çalhanoğlu

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In My Life in Curves Recently, poet-artist Sevinç Çalhanoğlu plots her daily rhythms and habits during coronavirus lockdown, in the spring of 2020, when she was largely confined to her apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Guided by a ruler and drawing with black marker, she charts her day-to-day existence along diaristic axes, from runic spikes of Mood and Productivity to soaring Time Spent in Kitchen and steadily increasing Awareness.

The majority of the zine’s graphs focus on the period from late March to late May, when New Yorkers were under stay-at-home orders with the city’s boroughs in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The final graphs transition to two overlapping phases in late May to early June: On a personal level, Sevinç leaving her apartment with greater frequency, generating kinetic volition via bicycle. And then joining New York’s mass street protests in response to the May 25 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. After months of enclosed distress, a communal, open-air outpouring of grief and fury, with righteous chants quietening only for candlelight vigils.

The graphs are: Paranoia, Social Media, Reading the News, Anxiety, Mood, Restlessness, Time Spent in Kitchen, Productivity, Awareness, Meticulousness, Walking, Silence, Cycling, Solidarity, Vigils

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2020
Edition of 300
16 pages, paperback, 12×14 cm, b&w offset, Singer-sewn binding
Printed on Arctic Munken Print Cream 115 and Pure Rough 300
Designed by Stefan Lorenzutti & Damian Nowak
ISBN 978-83-954871-2-5

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Sevinç Çalhanoğlu is a poet, artist, and researcher whose work examines the imprint of memory on space, and the intersection of both with literature. In addition to poems and essays, she creates interdisciplinary literary works incorporating sound and photography. Her extended poetic work A Promenade at Home was published by Bored Wolves in 2022. She is based in Brooklyn.