Good People of vitruta: Merve Akar Akgün

Merve, welcome. We always start with the same question, so let’s not break the routine: How would you introduce yourself to someone who doesn’t know you? Who is Merve? How did it all begin, what have you done, and how does it continue today?

I would describe myself as someone who is constantly trying to understand and interpret life and people. I grew up between the chaos of Istanbul and the intellectual discipline of Paris, someone who perceives the world through the acts of reading and writing.

While studying Sociology in Paris, I completed my first internship at a French fashion magazine called Crash. My internship turned into a job offer, and I worked there for about three years. After that, I never strayed from the path of publishing.

I have been fascinated by magazines since childhood. When I picked one up, the worlds promised by the pages I was about to turn through would take my breath away. For me, editing and publishing stand somewhere beyond simply being a profession. In France, I learned the craft in the kitchens of established publications such as L’Interview, L’Officiel, Jalouse, and the peak of my passion for cinema, Cahiers du Cinéma. During the same period, I also began writing as the European correspondent for Art Unlimited. Since returning to Turkey, I have been working wholeheartedly as the Editor-in-Chief of Art Unlimited, building a living and evolving cultural and artistic archive from digital to print. Over the past eleven years, I have had the excitement of transforming the magazine from being solely a print medium into a trusted platform that is digital, expanding, and closely following the pulse of contemporary art.

Do you remember the first impulse that brought you to where you are today?
What was the turning point that transformed your relationship with writing into a profession?

The way magazines seal time has always fascinated me. As Cemil Meriç once said: “A book is too serious, a newspaper too irresponsible; a magazine is the fortress of free thought.” Absolutely.

During my years in France, magazines were what most nourished my hunger to understand both myself and the world. From fashion to cinema, from gastronomy to art, I shaped my own vision among those pages. My professional turning point was definitely my years in France. However, the moment when writing, which had been a means for me to explore the world, turned into a professional reflex may actually go much further back, perhaps to my childhood. In primary school, my neighborhood friends and I would produce handmade fanzines and sell them to people passing by on the street. I suppose the publishing virus entered my bloodstream back then, along with the smell of paper and the desire to tell something.

Being the Editor-in-Chief of Unlimited Publications often represents a great deal of invisible labor. In your opinion, what is the most difficult part of producing an independent cultural and arts publication in Turkey? How have these challenges shaped your editorial reflexes?

From the outside, publishing might appear to be just the finished product, a glossy cover. In reality, it is the art of managing a massive iceberg whose ninety-nine percent remains unseen. From the idea stage to printing, there is a process, a digital operation that must be rebuilt every morning, crisis management, and an intense network of human relations.

In Turkey, the most difficult but also the most beautiful part of remaining independent is that there is no comfort zone to lean on. This keeps you constantly alert and dynamic. Independence is a freedom that comes with a cost, and the difficulty lies precisely in the struggle for sustainability. Yet this challenge is also what sharpens my editorial reflexes. Since we are not tied to any capital group or agenda, our only authority is our reader and our conscience. For that reason, my reflexes are built entirely on transparency and fair publishing. I would say these challenges have made me a more responsible and open editor toward artists and production.

You were also an instructor at the Stories of the Earth camp within the Arkhe Project. I think that is an important detail. Do you believe that place transforms writing? How does producing in contact with nature affect the voice of a text?

I absolutely believe that place transforms writing. The sentences you construct at a desk can lose their authority the moment your feet touch the ground. Nature has a power that can impose its own rhythm on a text. Stories of the Earth, which I joined through Mina Gürsel’s invitation, was exactly such an experience for me.

There, we muted the voice of the dominant narrator and focused on listening to the land and local communities. Our aim was to hold the memory of the land by writing stories. We pursued stories that were fleeting and immediate, yet deeply rooted. Contact with nature also breaks the writer’s arrogance. It forces you to become a transmitter. Stories of the Earth is an ongoing project, and eventually its outcomes will turn into an anthology. In fact, it continues to flow these days as a series on unlimitedrag.com.

Although you have a strong relationship with digital media, printed magazines clearly hold a special place for you. In your working process, do you move forward with a more analog spirit?

I have a hybrid working method. I love the speed and accessibility of digital, but I also need the calm nature of paper. While working, I try not to say a rigid “no” to anything.

Sometimes managing a text on a screen is more practical, while other times I need to pick up a pen and think on paper. For me, the real question is which tool best serves the reasoning process in my mind.

What do you think is the most difficult balance in collective production?

In one word: communication. I say it with a smile, but my answer is very serious. Technical problems, budgets, or schedules can somehow be solved; the real issue is always people.

Collective production is a space where everyone sits at the table with their own sensitivities, egos, and expectations. Finding the right frequency, hearing what is meant, and working in harmony. The greatest effort should be spent on understanding each other correctly. Over the years I have seen that even the brightest ideas can fade away because of miscommunication. For me, maturity began at the moment I accepted that the most complex equation in life is human relationships.

You have lived both in France and in Turkey. What differences do you see in the way art is approached?

The reflexes taught by both sides are very different. For me, France represents professional discipline and institutional culture. There is a deep respect for art, a rooted seriousness, and clear boundaries. Everything has its place, time, and definition, which creates a sense of security.

Turkey, on the other hand, is a completely different energy, almost like an improvisational stage. The blurriness of boundaries here can sometimes be exhausting, but it also gives us an incredible room for maneuver and speed. A project that might take months in France can sometimes be solved here in a matter of days through practical intelligence and initiative. But what affects me most is how, in Turkey, the passion of people can fill the gaps left by the system. I have witnessed moments where communities built through genuine solidarity turned into small miracles. I love that feeling.

Unlimited publishes almost every day. It’s an incredible pace of production. At the same time, you run the entire operation of the magazine and there is also Merve at home. How does this become possible within a time plan?

Behind the pleasant flow that is visible from the outside, there is actually a constant sense of chaos and not being able to keep up. In fact, I live with a feeling of modest guilt that has settled deep within me. Because Unlimited is a structure where we carry very big ideals with a very small but devoted team.

Our first aim is to give everything, everyone, and every text the attention it deserves. Recently I have been trying to make peace with that feeling of inadequacy and focus on sustainability instead of perfection. Perhaps the one life-saving intervention that allows me to manage this chaotic pace is this: starting the day at 04.45 every morning. Those quiet hours of the day, before anyone begins to demand anything from me, are the only time when I can align my work and my mind. Then at 07.00, when my daughter wakes up, the daily rhythm begins and continues until whatever hour the evening allows.

What is currently exciting you the most? A work, a book, a place?

These days, my biggest motivation is taking Unlimited beyond our borders. I travel frequently between countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United Arab Emirates, introducing the magazine to international actors. What fascinates me most in this process is realizing, while explaining the magazine and our story to someone completely unfamiliar with it, how valuable what we have built here actually is. In that moment of narration, I see the weight and the value of what we do much more clearly. New geographies, new encounters, and the expanding network of creation renew me in a way.

A Work: Onların Yalancısıyım (2022), a two-channel video installation by Gizem Karakaş.

I saw this video again last week at the exhibition Law of Attraction, curated by Eda Berkmen and currently on view at the Erimtan Museum in Ankara. In the work, Gizem Karakaş collects intimate confessions from couples who have been together for more than ten years and reenacts them through her own body. Isn’t a relationship essentially a script that two people write together, eventually forgetting which parts are fiction and which are real? Gizem’s intervention, saying “I am their liar,” holds a very honest mirror to the roles we all play in our relationships. Entering someone else’s intimacy through their own words feels to me like a sociological excavation. The English title of the work, Hearsay, also introduces the possibility of rumor, offering a perspective on love that is distant yet compassionate.

A Book: What It Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics, Jarrett Earnest, David Zwirner Books, 2018.

I recently bought this book because I discovered that it contains in-depth conversations with critics such as Yve-Alain Bois, Darby English, Hal Foster, Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, Siri Hustvedt, Kellie Jones, Jerry Saltz, Peter Schjeldahl, Chris Kraus, Rosalind Krauss, and Lucy Lippard. Jarrett Earnest speaks with thirty different critics. This multiplicity of voices reveals that criticism does not have a single truth; like life itself, it is plural, subjective, and shaped by lived experience. What captured me most is the book’s nature as a form of oral history. It sits by my bedside as a guide that helps me understand the historical and emotional evolution of art writing and reminds me that writing is a way of thinking.

A Place: Telezzüz, Istanbul.

For me, Telezzüz is more than a restaurant. It feels like proof that we can live without harming the world or hurting another living being. Its calm atmosphere, vegan culinary experience, and the chefs pushing the boundaries of plant-based cuisine… Their holistic approach, where ethics and aesthetics are inseparable, resonates deeply with me.