Deniz Buga
07 Sep - 05 Oct 2013
DENIZ BUGA
Sites of Disorder
7 September - 5 October 2013
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 Deniz Buga, Duran 03, 2012, 80x60 cm, C-print 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. 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.
Sites of Disorder
7 September - 5 October 2013
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 Deniz Buga, Duran 03, 2012, 80x60 cm, C-print 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. 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.