AKINCI. Deniz Buga. Sites of disorder

Transcription

1 Deniz Buga Sites of disorder 2013

2 AKINCI is proud to announce the first gallery exhibition of Deniz Buga, titled Sites of Disorder. Sites of Disorder attributes the three primary colours in image-construction to the three military interventions in the recent history of Turkey; 'Blue' for the 1960 Military Coup D état, 'Green' for 1971 Military Memorandum, and 'Red' for 1980 Coup D état. The work suggests that each catastrophic intervention hijacks one colour, and gradually appropriates the spectrum of public imagination. This installation is based on an archive of 7000 slides which was handed over to Deniz Buga by Lutfiye Duran ( ) in Lutfiye Duran was an Istanbul based traveller and an amateur photographer who documented her immediate surroundings and travels in Turkey and around the world. Overlapping with the twenty year period of the Coups in Turkey, this archive bears family snapshots, city imagery and collected pre-made images from museums and various airline companies. Through this loose repertoire of images, Buga approaches image-construction as a (psycho-)somatic matter that marks the process of modernization and state formation in Turkey as a process of loss and pain. Deniz Buga studied between 2006 and 2010 at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts and received 2009 NYU Fellowship of Excellency in Film making. Between 2011 and 2012 Buga was a Resident at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam. He has shown his films in numerous international festivals and institutions as Oberhausen Short Film Festival (Germany), San Sebastian Film Festival (Spain), NewFest (New York), Pocket Films Screenings/Centre Pompidou (France), Curatorial Program Show, De Appel, (NL), C/O Berlin (Germany), Museum of Modern Art in Oxford (UK). Film maker and photographer Deniz Buga (born 1982 in Istanbul) often uses archival material and footage for his work. The approach to his work is marked by the question: How would you survive in a social space if you are already rejecting the very basic foundations it is relying on? He offers two options: resignation or rebellion. Deniz Buga, Duran 01, 2012, 80x60 cm, C-print

3 Deniz Buga, Duran 01, 2012, 80x60 cm, C-print

4 Deniz Buga, Duran 03, 2012, 80x60 cm, C-print

5 Installation view at The Rijksacademie 2012

6 In a period where a generation in Turkey tries to format its relationship with its recent history of conflict and polarization marked by three military coup d'états in 1960, 1971, and 1980 respectively, the filmmaker and photographer Deniz Buga proposes a new viewing of traveller Lutfiye Duran's personal archive corresponding to this period. In two selected sets of slide projections from the archive we come across shots taken by Duran during her travels in Turkey and around the world, and the readymade slides prepared by Nordisk Tonefilm for Scandinavian Airlines to market Sweden in 1970s. These slide projections are accompanied by a film shot by Buga to conceptually introduce the economy of colours he uses to form his narrative of two democracies' comparative viewing in post-1945; in Turkish recent history 'blue' stands for the 1960 military coup, 'green' for 1971 military memorandum, and 'red' for 1980 coup. Sweden was one of the countries that remained neutral in terms of war and postwar pacts with Olof Palme s assassination in 1986 remaining a dark point in their history. These images coming from a very particular time when travelling, not only in Turkey but also around the world, were costly and not as frequent as it is now. Thus every travel and leisure activity during that period marked being from a particular class which could afford to travel. Additionally, it was a particular period of a freer social imagination with many people coming from different walks of life helping each other. Yet the answer received especially in Turkey was a mini civil war, increased control, conflict, and losses; a traumatization of appearing in public spaces. In two sets framing similar times, a blurry surface is on the one hand and a polished surface on another. What do these surfaces evoke? What do they imply? From a macro angle, what we encounter in the setting imagined and designed by the artist are the regimes of individualities shaped by discourses and demands of modernity happening in two different contexts close in time. A post-fordist world where middle class bodies recover from the traumas of war through organizing themselves with the times they divide between for work, travel, leisure, and consumption. As frequently highlighted, while bodies perform the spaces, the spaces shape and condition bodily presence. Through a careful selection, the image construction Buga takes as the central part of his narrative is this mutual relationship between bodily presence and the spatial. Here it is impossible not to recognize a stark contrast, a duality concerning the outlines of bodies, how they are framed in Duran's archive between the images she shot herself and the readymade images prepared by Nordisk Film. Duran's images are almost conditioned; in her photos bodies either do not appear or appear hesitantly, in tension, almost phantomly. The framing landscape is vast, sometimes these frames are humanless, therefore triggering imagination how bodily might take place there at that moment. This hesitant feeling even takes over the nostalgic supposed to be seduced in us by looking at these images. While the marketing images from Sweden outlining the happy, free, working, consuming body so sharply ideologizing a specific body regime finding its roots in eugenics.

7 Comparatively, both sets imply repressions of modernity experienced on different levels. What Deniz Buga desires is to carve out a place of imagination in materializing the experience of these moments when they were framed as photographs. May our losses subconsciously affect the way we see and frame bodies in a disappearing tone? May the stones around the ancient sites and settings in these images, for example, speak more than we know? And what does political correctness of the images we see of Sweden mean? The film and the two slide projections put us in a position to develop an affinity among each other s narratives; to relate them with the soundtrack of working projections. Yet as explained above, they respond to each other in a particular way. They form an untold history, may be one of the many potential stories that can be montaged from Lutfiye Duran's archive. They form a landscape of unease to make us reflect back on our bodily ways of being. We get to know her from a distance in a disappearance more than an appearance, which is proven by different literary and artistic figures to be more forceful as an image. Övül Ö. Durmusoglu is a curator and writer based in Berlin and Istanbul. As a Goethe Institute Fellow at Maybe Education and Public Programs for documenta(13), she organized the programs, What is Thinking? Or a Taste That Hates Itself; Readers Circle: 100 Notes 100 Thoughts; and Paper Mornings: Book Presentations at documenta(13). Durmusoglu has contributed to different catalogues, publications, and magazines such as WdW Review, Frieze d/e, Flash Art International, and ment. She has recently curated the festival, Sofia Contemporary 2013 "Near, Closer, Together: Exercises for a Common Ground" and currently working as one of the curatorial collaborators of the upcoming 13th edition of Istanbul Biennial.

8 Deniz Buga, WH II, 2012, video, 3 min loop, H264 projection

9 Deniz Buga Contact: Dapperstraat 7- III, 1093 BK, Amsterdam Degrees Received 2010 MFA in Film & TV, New York University, Tisch School of Arts, NY, USA 2006 BA in Sociology, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey BA in History, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey Minor in Film Studies, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey Residencies Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten/ Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science Fellowships/stipends 2012 Amsterdam Funds For Kunst Project Funding 2009 NYU Fellowship for Excellency in Filmmaking 2009 Golden Globes, HFPA Production Grant 2007 Turkish Education Foundation Scholarship Film Award IFSAK, National Short Film Festival Awards of Turkey, TR, Best Film Award 2004 Bil's Short Film Competition, TR, Best Film Award IFSAK, National Short Film Festival Awards of Turkey, TR, Best Film Award Marmara University Short Film Competition, TR, Best FilM Award International Pink Apple Film Festival, CH, Mentioned By Jury (Selected) Films/Videos 2012 WH II, Appropriated Imagery, DV Color, 2'30" Story of Kara, HD Color, 12'00" 2011 Sand, 16mm B&W, 6'00" Grasshoppers, HD Color, 6'00" Marna, DV Color, 6'00" 2010 Wednesdays, HD Color, 10'00" 2008 Incomplete Stories of New York, 16mm B&W- Color, 21'00" Sleep, DV B&W, 15'00" 2004 Brothers, DV B&W, 7'00" Awards 2008 San Sebastian Film Festival, ES, Jury Mention 2006 Istanbul Film Festival, TR, Nokia Short Film Award 2005 International Istanbul Independent Film Festival, TR, Best

10 List of Selected Screenings and Presentation of the Works 2012 C/O Berlin, Too Much Information Film Screenings, Germany De Appel, Three Artists Walk into A Bar, the Netherlands The Rijksakademie Open, the Netherlands Salon Amsterdam, the Netherlands Tel Aviv LGBTT Film Festival, Israel Melbourne LGBTT Film Festival, Australia 2011 Istanbul Independent Film Festival, Turkey The Rijksakademie Open, the Netherlands 2010 Istanbul Independent Film Festival, Turkey Kino Basel, Switzerland 2009 BAM Screenings, Brooklyn, USA NewFest, New York, USA Torino LGBT Film Festival, Italy Istanbul International Film Festival, Turkey Tel Aviv LGBT Film Festival, Israel 2008 San Sebastian Film Festival, Spain NewFest, New York, USA Istanbul International Film Festival, Turkey Turkish German Film Festival, Germany Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival, Turkey 2007 Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany NewFest, New York 2006 Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Germany Angers-Premiers Plans, France Oxford Modern Art Gallery, England 2005 Center de Pompidou, France International Ankara Film Festival, Turkey Istanbul Short Film Days, Turkey