info
video-works &
sound-art performances
video-works
Yael Bartana
02:10
Tuning
Bartana's video and sound works address socialization and nationalization ceremonies
as well as social symbols and rituals. She deals with variables existing within the
social mold whereby the characters filmed in her works appear to be programmed
within a monotonous set of actions which empties the ceremony/ritual of its cultural
and social context. The work Tuning, features a young woman dressed in a suit
saluting while in the background, the music of a national anthem is playing. The
screened image is reflected twice and the young, saluting woman salutes to herself
as a confirmation or self-salute or she is saluting us who are taking part in the rituals
and ceremonial games.
------------------------------------------------------
Erhan Muratoglu
01:00
Rahat/Dur (Stay/Put)
Rahat/Dur (Stay/Put) aims to pull the viewer into an illusory moment, where sudden
switching to interactive computer interface interrupts the passive activity of watching
video. Two stylized human silhouettes fight with each other in kung fu, wherein a
dynamic electronic beat builds up audible flow in time. The representation of a
choreographed fight runs in accordance with the soundtrack until interference occurs:
a mouse cursor enters the scene without warning, catches the figure attacking the
other, drags and drops it to the place where it has been standing. It breaks the flow
both in video and audio, where the constructed time and relative space is distracted.
However, this is not an actual user interaction with the document, on the contrary,
it is just an illusion which is revealed immediately. Soon after audio resumes. Yet the
recurrences of the mouse will no longer affect the audial flow. While "Rahat/Dur"
(Stay/Put) re-samples the "uncontrollable" action of the push technology experienced
by the viewer, it also sparkles some awareness in the viewers' mind to consider the
reality perceived through the screen.
------------------------------------------------------
Can Turkinan and Özlem Sulak
03:00
March On
"March on" focuses on how Turkish people adapts to the conditions by changing the
format of their distress to entertainment. The work is built on binary oppositions and
similar suppressing elements in "opposing extremes". In the work, we see that the
rave culture opposes but at he same time perfectly fits to the behavioral codes of
strict military pressure. The video is accompanied by the re-mix of a Military March
together with ambient sound mixtures and modified sound effects.
------------------------------------------------------
Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir
08:57
Beyond guilt, Atonement
The film is about upsetting balances of power that exist between the photographer
and the photographed object, male and female, multiple and singular, object and
subject. Sela and Amir, as the film's directors, actively participate in the scene. They
seduce the interviewees, on the other hand they turn over their camera to them, thus
upsetting the balance of power between the photographer and the photographed.
The film uses the restrooms as a kind of claustrophobic laboratory used to achieve
confession and exposure. The resulting picture reveals the impact of the communications
media, the emergence of behavioral stereotypes in front of the camera and the craving
for exposure and publicity reminiscent of Reality TV. But more than anything else,
it reveals the effects of occupation, terror and militarism as factors delineating the
Israeli identity, even in the most private of moments. The documentation of the
restroom experiences discloses disturbing contents that reveal the blurring of borders.
Sexual and political-military identities seem to intermingle to an extent in which
distinction is no longer possible.
------------------------------------------------------
Selda Asal
05:34
Extracts from "Restore Hope"
This is a documentary of an on-going project RESTORE HOPE, observing types of
control mechanisms. It is composed of Selda Asal's work with the youth in Bakirkoy
Psychiatric Clinic; addicted children in AMATEM; and street children of Istanbul.
Initialy, the observation focuses on the consequtive control mechanisms that leads
the children to the current situation; following the curing process which is also based
on certain control mechanisms. Accordingly, she is working with mentioned groups
by conducting alternative ways which enable them to express themselves. They are
constantly being in the state of "standing-by" under control and they respond through
their drawings, ready-made materials and stereo-typical images throughout the
working process.
------------------------------------------------------
Dana Levi
03:48
Hell's Angels
After the breakout of the El Aqsa intifada, the media takes an even greater role in
the production and representation of war aesthetics defining the visual aspects of
occupier / occupied and victim / aggressor relationships. In the art context, in order
to be able to object messages, which are conveyed by media artists, should reconstruct
their own messages. Their message should look different by keeping a
distance to the general metaphorical approach of the media. Dana Levi, unlike many
other artists, never re-uses TV materials, instead she captures her own material. In
her work she imitates media's coverage of damage caused by the IDF in Jenin 2002.
She has led by kids, who are aware of the camera's presence, exposing their own
role as agents, fully aware to the media's power. Levi shoots the ruins as evidence
to past's normality, pointing out the inability of the kids to hope for a future, one-hour
drive from Tel-Aviv.
------------------------------------------------------
Doron Solomons
17:09
Father
The work "Father" focuses on the existential which fears Israeli and Palestinian
parents share regarding the physical and psychological danger their children are
exposed to. In fact, the "Father" is both Palestinian and Israeli as the voiceover is
simultaneously in Arabic and Hebrew. "Reality" is portrayed here only through
televised images from news archives. The car security advertisement echoes the
protective urge of the father. In a futile attempt to save his own daughter from becoming
a victim or a victimizer, the artist-father unfolds as a magician. He tries to enact a
series of pedagogical-magical tricks which are useless, and the father/magician turns
into a pathetic trick-maker.
The repetitive tragic and surreal image of the man being dragged by a robot becomes
the symbol of the whole region. Doron Solomons is actually a news editor for the
Israeli Television, well versed in the "magical tricks" that turn raw filmic footage into
the sophisticated propaganda. Thereby, his questionings on protecting and/or
victimizing should apply to the media and the public in general.
------------------------------------------------------
Hatice Güleryüz
06:00
Round up the usual suspects
Guleryuz's films orbit around the mental states of the suppressing social situations.
She associates and reflects on these mental states with hard-hitting physical conditions. " Round up the Usual Suspects", is filming a Turkish police parade. As one of the
ultimate forces in the society, Turkish Police has a very tough and dominating image.
The police can even be considered as one of the suppressing powers in the society
who constantly controls and suspects. Yet, with this film this image crashes with the
unusual carnivaleque scenes. The athletic exercises on motorcycle, the show, the
close-ups, and the aesthetically driven semi-parody through re-framing of the police.
The whole sequence is shown in slow motion accompanied by two music pieces, the
first being a typical military bras band and the other one is a sentimental Turkish song
that has been recorded with a lot of technical disturbances.
------------------------------------------------------
Nira Pereg
05:09
G-Spotting,
In "G-Spotting", Pereg is searching for the pleasure zone of the eyes' gaze. The
camera is ordered around, navigating horizontally and vertically on an architectural
landscape, and instructed to stop at what seems to be a nicer spot. Despite the visual
nature of the search, the image remains virtually arbitrary, carefully following the
audio, complying with its every demand and need. By using an urban landscape as
a mapping of female anatomy, this work references technique of surveillance, modern
weapons as well as pornography.
------------------------------------------------------
Serap Dogan
03:14
Abstraction
The work pushes the viewer into an unstable state of questioning. It is the visual and
sonic dublication of the urbanic pressure. The familiar landscapes of the city are
transformed in-motion into organic mirrored images that pulse in the gap between
a superfluous aesthetic and an industrial nightmare.
------------------------------------------------------
Effie and Amir
3:22
Check It
Effie and Amir's work raises questions regarding the role of the artist in the society.
In this work they challenge one of the most common phenomenon of recent Israeli
reality, bag checks at the entrance to public and private entertainment areas.
------------------------------------------------------
loosing.ctrl - Istanbul phase -documentary clip
10:27
A documentary NOMAD clip of the project's Istanbul phase, projecting a summary
of two nightlong activities (performances, screenings, DJs) in Babylon together with
a talk and screenings in Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center along with the
side-activities in The Apartment Project and NOMAD Station 02.
------------------------------------------------------
sound-art performances
Anabala (Istanbul) is multidisciplinary project concentrating on Istanbul's sounds
and cult. The project consist of two artists: Murat Ertel, mostly a musician and Ceren
Oykut, mostly a painter transfer their artistic concentration onto each others. They
create multi-disciplinary pieces by taking the aspects of humour, parody and surprise
as the basic elements of their performances. Anabala took its name from a passage
at central Istanbul. In 2002, throughout a month they recorded and made sounds all
day at a shop in this passage and mixed them by night. At the end all those mixes
formed the first album. One song out of it made it to the sound art compilation album
called "ctrl-alt-del" (Istanbul -Maastricht, 2003). Anabala performed for the exhibition
"Walking Istanbul, Notes from the Quarantine" in The Digital Lab, Holon, Tel-Aviv.
(2003-2004) and for "Trans_European Picnic: The Art and Media of Accession" hosted
by V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media and kuda.org in Novi Sad through NOMAD.
Anabala has also stared to collaborate with musicians, sound-artists and visual artists
from Cologne, Germany and formed another group called K34 - Cologne -Istanbul
Cultural Exchange Project.
------------------------------------------------------
Ori Drummer is an interdisciplinary artist, a curator, sound artist, writer, director, the
leader of the DURALX SEDLX experiment band. With his music, he tries to touch
primal feelings and to find new ways of expression through noise and music. His
theatre play "My Skin", dealing with both personal and collective memory has won
the Israel Alternative Theatre 1st prize for 2002. His resent art works, made of old
Jewish and German books and photographs are about memory and the feeling of
loss. For Istanbul performance he played with Daniel Kastenbaum and Mickey Katan.
------------------------------------------------------
Ishai Adar and Ohad Fishof met at The Jerusalem School for the Arts in the mid
Eighties. In 1986 they formed "The Top Hat Carriers". After one year of gigs, the
name THC became synonymous with a new approach of performing live music. In
1992 Adar and Fishof created the opening performance for the exhibition "Antipathos"
in The Israel Museum in Jerusalem. In 1996 Adar produced the music for the first
performance collaboration between Fishof and artist Uri Katzenstein, "The Frogman's
Report", which was premiered at the Phenomena International Festival for Performance
Art in Jerusalem. Adar wrote music for Fishof's sound installation "The Farm Tapes",
exhibited at the Company-arts Festival in Switzerland in 2000. In 2001 they were
both invited to take part in "Home", Uri Katzenstein ambitious project for the Israeli
Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 2003 they created the site specific sound piece
"Reasons", an ambient installation for 16 speakers, which was one of the highlights
of "Omanut Haaretz", a showcase exhibition for Israeli art, at Tel-Aviv's old power
station.
------------------------------------------------------
Krechtz (Ilan Green and Gil Wasserman) sound usually grows from building or
programming curious instruments, playing around with them, and composing a piece
from the results. The instruments range from home-made stuff to advanced control
instruments, acoustic and electronic, low to high tech. Its not about melodies or
harmonies, it's about playing the instruments in both senses of the word.
------------------------------------------------------
Cem Omeroglu was one of the members of Nekropsi (one of the important alternative
music group of 90's). Curently, he studies sound technology, electroacoustic and
computer music at Istanbul technical University, MIAM
(Advanced Reseach Department for Music).
------------------------------------------------------
Erdem Helvacioglu received two consecutive "3rd prize" in the 2002 and
2003 Luigi Russolo Electroacoustic Competition with his pieces "Blank mirror" and
"Below the cold ocean". His latest album "A walk through the bazaar" was released
by Locustmusic, USA in June 2003. He contributed to the soundart compilation cd
"ctrl-alt-del" with his piece "Personal Crisis", together with other composers such as
Scanner, Kim Cascone and Merzbow. His compositions have been performed in
various countries such as Canada, France, Italy, USA, Austria, Singapore and Turkey
and at electronic music festivals and exhibitions such as the 1st Istanbul International
Electronic Music Festival, CEAIT 2003, Pulsefield International Soundart Exhibition
2003, San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2004, Sonorities Festival of Contemporary
Music 2004 and the 10th International Electroacoustic Music Festival "Primavera en
La Habana". Currently, he is continuing PhD in electroacoustic composition at MIAM,
Istanbul and working on his processed guitar recordings which will be released by
Locustmusic.
------------------------------------------------------
Since 1986, Serhat Köksal aka 2/5 BZ has been performing with tapes, samplers,
saz, darbouka, electronics, drums, vocals and spoken word. The style varies between
traditional music via experimental electronic sounds to improvisation with elements
that stem from Turkish cinema. He also makes audiotapes, photocopy fanzines,
stickers, CDR, flyers, posters, and video cut-up works as collages of 70s and 80s
Turkish melodrama and action films, political propaganda and media imageries of
social phenomena.
------------------------------------------------------
Zafer Aracagök aka SIFIR performed Anti-Hamlet as a performance piece at
AKM/Istanbul in 1995, under the German/Turkish joint programme XamplE II. Influenced
to a great extent by contemporary French theory, he produced other performances.
Primal Scene (Ankara 1997) was his first personal exhibition where he worked towards
the deconstruction of the image/speech hierarchy. In 2001, he released an electronic
music CD (NEREDEORADABURADA) by ADA Records of Istanbul, followed by a
second one (Insan Ritm Makina) in 2003. He perforemd in various national and
internatonal festivals and projects.
------------------------------------------------------
Fairuz Derin Bulut founded in Istanbul, 1996. In the beginning, they were mixing
rock, oriental, funk, arabesque music, then later the band started to compose all the
sounds they recorded on the streets and in their studio. In 2001, they released "Haleti
ruhiye i Kundante",then in 2003 they released their well-known album "Kundante".
They also participated in Croatian "Bombardranje Newyorka" album.
demir kerem atay: guitar, electro saz, vocal
taha riza özmen: bass guitar
okan yilmaz: organ, synthesizer, vocal
ömür güray gürman: darbuka, dijembe, vocal
alican tezer: drum machine