| Sinopsis: |
Zagu is a video that consists of five parts created by short loops. it follows the route of thoughts and situations, the locus and non-locus of the journey between athens and istanbul as a deeply non-mediated event that is being object to perpetual looping. The issue of cultural identity and artistic practice is explored through the contrast of poetic and ironic notions, in interwoven parts. The city exists and exists not, the sight is blurred and the quality of image raw, not embellished with any short of montage. The eye turns from the outside vibes to the inside structures, working purely, developing monuments of memory, a tribute to haiku poetry. attendance, immigrants through the night at karakoy, a wary hotel in kypseli with a poetic name, time is expanded endlessly until it produces music and the conception of history and reality passes through a striving prayer, an exhausting and cathartic exercise that ends ironically with the heart beat of the picturesque christmas lights.
The initial material consists of 15 seconds low resolution video clips shot in different occasions in athens and istanbul during the period 2003-2004. The presented parts that loop in 5 groups are selected among a series of clips that record different phases of our journeys back and forth the two cities. the final compilation aims to concentrate the aesthetic and intellectual experience of those routes, including the main phases of preparation, traveling, observation and absorption of the transit from the intimate to the distant, given the intense common past of the two cultures as it is infiltrated through raw, non-embellished viewing and personal references.
Part I: the story begins at the interior of an apartment. emptiness and attendance of the journey. The image is still and the sound of passing vehicles from outdoors is juxtaposed to the empty chair.
Part II: the dark landscape of a far gathering of people, outdoors in a location by the bosporus seashore. Real time blurred hearing of a local music pattern. A gap in the tissue of the metropolis, real but yet unreachable. Observation and detachment mixed with memories from medieval painting side-scenes.
Part III: a strange, shabby hotel named reverie hotel in an overcrowded neighborhood in athens. No sound, slight movement of the image, similar to the blink of the eye.
Part IV: on the road, the highway to the borders, a most extravagant van escorts the feeling of awkwardness and displacement of the transit. The repeating real time playing maqam maximizes the prayer, the longing, an exhausting exercise of concentration and tuning.
Part V: mechanical diminution, the ironic silent heartbeat of christmas lights back in Athens. |
