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8/3/2010

Eclipsed Voices

Open Space - Zentrum fur Kunstprojekte, Wien

curated by Başak Şenova

The exhibition presents two works whose subject matters alter diverse issues of social, political, cultural, and economic aspects of our daily life. Each work, in its own way, has the restrained intention of trying to understand the local realities that surround us and shape our identity.

The definition of freedom, security, and existence multiply with shifty conditions. While hopes, passions, and dreams are all embodied in oppressed situations, the potential to explode and implode at any time was inscribed to their very existence. Such a potential acutely depicts a kind of resistance mechanism towards mental occupation. In this respect, the intensity of the pressure of mental occupation – in every possible layer: political, territorial, spatial, psychological, economical, social – complete the creation of personal narratives, remote from a dominating system.

The “off-the-record” narratives have the potential to generate voids in the vortex of registered histories. We clearly witness such narratives in different verbal and visual levels in each work. At the same time, the acts of confrontation, integration, and adaptation are possible only through these ephemeral and fragmented memories, since they indicate the construction of defense mechanisms for “occupied” lives. In any case of political and economical imposition and repression, identities have systematically been lost and fragmented. At personal levels, identities are re-constructed with fragmentation of the narrations – as memory extracts – and the disconnected temporality of multiple realities.

The works will be accompanied with thin publications, which are part of the installations. They will function as diaries of the projects. These diary books address an attempt and even a mere experiment to document a documentation process itself. Through these books, reviewing subjective details about personal narratives would eventually form another layer to re-consider "historical facts" and would simply lead us to question what it means to accept a fact as a "fact".

Erhan Muratoğlu
The work is based on a casual talk with a 94-year-old woman, who had migrated from Bulgaria to Turkey when she was young. Her personal collection of photographs implies disparate hints of her life, while she is sharing her fragmented personal memories. “Nigar” refrains from any immersive storytelling as Muratoglu perceptibly had no intention to build any intimacy with the subject. Yet, the sincere memories build fascinating links to the unofficial and untold history of the 20th century.

Sala-manca
“Elephants in the Nights of Metula” is an installation that includes video, digital slides, film, animation and two voices in Yiddish and English. The work is based on texts of the Yiddish poet Avraham Sutzkever and deals with the harsh israeli cultural control policies of the 50's towards jewish diaspora cultures, in a process of hegemonization of a new Hebrew culture.
Elephants in the Nights of Metula is a continuation of the research on the gap between the written letter (the text), its voiced expression, the body and the icon, and on visual, cultural and sound translations in the electronic realm.

Supported by:
BM:UKK
ERSTE Foundation
Stadt Wien - Kulturabteilung MA 7
Anadolu Kültür

Opening and Book presentation 9th March 2010, 7 pm

Open Space - Zentrum fur Kunstprojekte
Lassingleithnerplatz 2 Wien
Open Friday, Saturday 13.00 - 18.00
and open for the rest of the week days by appointment only.
Admission free

stampa

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