Associação Cultural Videobrasil

14th Videobrasil_ Questions Ethem Özgüven: Statement When I read all the questions proposed by the organizers it occurred to me that I would have to write a full article about my art and my views. In general I think as an artist I am not the one to discuss the content and intentions of my work. This should be the task (if necessary) of theoreticians and art critics. However, as the organizers wanted to have a statement of all the participants therefore I asked the group I work with whether one of them would write some kind of position statement. Over the years there were many different artists and intellectuals involved in my work. Here I want to mention some of them: Jakub Michalski (visual design), Dylan Punk (sound design), Alper Maral (composer, musician), Replikas (composition, music), Bülent Özcan (sound engineer), Petra Holzer (director, theoretician) Positions on the margins Petra Holzer Our work has two main features or main media: documentary and experimental video. Both are related to each other not only in a political sense but in a contextual one. Ethem Özgüven's first documentary about a nature protection project in Turkey brought him face to face with the neocolonial discourse NGOs and multinational companies maintained in local topics. The power struggles and strategies in this discourse patterns became a main concern in his/our documentaries whatever topic we chose. There was no escape for us. Therefore we started to look into the history of documentary. The prototype for documentary per se "Nanook of the North" and its creator Robert Flaherty was one of our main interests. How was this master piece of colonial gaze and the prototypical image of the "primitive" other contrasting the "modern man" to be the origin of documentary? Documentary disguised as the quest for discovering realties within the framework of modernist search for truth but than serving only the establishment of the colonial discourse within a new genre? Flaherty did not invent a new kind of discourse he just adjusted it to the - at the time - new medium film. In fact he followed the tracks already set by the "Royal National Geographic Society" and artists (writers and painters) of the 19th century portraying the world beyond the borders of the so-called "civilized" world. This film which set the genre of documentary film was the basis for visually documenting history not only from ancient times but till the present. This text will not elaborate the history-writing exercised by hegemonic institutions of different societies but point out the importance of history writing and the discourse applied within this process. Film as a newly invented medium without yet an industry was a chance to invent new forms of discourses in different geographies. Film was practiced in so many different ways. However, the films that made it to the official history of film are limited to the geography of the center powers. Film at that point was not a medium for the rich but the experimenting margins. Only when it became organized in the industrial complexes of Hollywood and comparing spaces it underwent ideological changes. The power of images and the creation of them changed from the hands of individuals to companies and their successful distribution networks established with the aim to earn big money. The representation of the "civilized" European culture had to find a counterpart which was to be the opposite of all the good European characteristics. Flaherty extended this image creation in a new genre called documentary. In our documentary practice we tried to overcome the obstacles of the set discourses. As a group from a periphery country we had two choices: one was to join the mainstream discourse and to agree with the set images of the "we" and the "other" as well as their determined relationships or to choose a course of finding different forms and ways and of expressing voices from the margins without falling into the traps of the deeply engraved narratives of the center. The first choice is the one that would be expected from artist of a periphery country - to accept the preset discourse patterns and to participate in the hegemonic history writing of the center as a "native expert." To refuse this position questioning the discourse patterns and partners is an affront against the center and the "Western" civilization. This way is hard and full of barriers. As documentary can be depicted as a political medium to distract from local points of views and realities seen with other angles it also draws new pictures of whole landscapes. Discovery and National Geographic as well as BBC documentaries have the power to turn whole continents into big safari zoos where the local population might be only decorative supplements if even that. Whole countries are known world wide only by the beauty of their animals and their landscapes. Sometimes we get to know some of the more authentic native "tribes." But there is very little known about the people and their lives seen from their perspectives. What is it they would like to tell about themselves or others? In the cases of Latin America, Africa and Asia this question is not even considered. Considering capitalism's ideological damages done to documentary and the reshaping of history by transnational companies there is a general need for new forms of expression to oppose the official history writing and propose platforms for marginal voices to appear. Together with some friends we try to develope a model for voices to be developed. We believe that we are at certain margins but at the margins of a cultural elite. Therefore we discussed with people even more at the margins than us - people that have no chance to reach the sources and resources as we do. To share our knowledge and skills we make workshops with groups - mainly women - from local spaces (villages, small towns from areas that have lived traumas or are especially disadvantaged). We are not really concerned about authenticity but about breaking the circles of representation. Another way Ethem chose, was to work with experimental video or video art. From the beginning he used technology as advanced as possible. He also worked always with artists who were highly creative and able to use new technologies. His intention was to express his stories and concerns in a way that would be accepted as an aesthetic language that could be decoded in international arenas of art. Once again he met with the same discourse patterns as in the documentary field. A native/ a person from a periphery country is not expected to master technology and to decode the technological image code. Such persons are to use a simplistic way to express themselves as well as their stories should be concerned about folklorist topics and bound to their own "retarded" culture. Welcomed are topics about human right violations, abuse of women and children as well as civil war topics… The art discourses from periphery countries are not to be on the international (Western) standards but to be somewhat more native - naïve. In both of the videos represented in the program you can see that he chose to break out of the image of the "appropriate" other (here the term is used in the sense of Trinh T. Minh-Ha). Especially the video "Little Lake" has a story where global mass tourism is criticized on different levels: there is "Richard - the barbarian" a marginal figure from the "West" traveling with his back-bag through the world discovering the most beautiful spots. During his travels he spreads the word about his discoveries to the local elite and back home. Within this process the transnational companies follow the traces of Richard and build holiday villages for the mass tourists with the help of the local authorities and population. In the end the "little lake" is a heap of concrete and just another object in the vast complex of the culture industry. So, who is to blame? Who wants to recognize his/her own part within this process? Where is the romantic part in the story usually left to the native who is to naïve to take initiative to change faith? Where are the good people from the "Western" civilization who cry out on behalf of the locals? And we need the bad guys, some companies and some corrupt state officials, who are to be blamed for the whole mess. As some final remarks we would like to address the issue of new forms that could be bring solutions to insert marginal messages in the big apparatus which forms the communal memory. Communal memory is formed through certain features which messages need to contain in order to be stored. Messages need to be short and easy to remember. They need to contain simple images and visual symbols. The messages need also to be accompanied by rhythms and music easy to remember. Last of all - and not the least important - they need to be repeated over and over again. In our contemporary world we have these messages over and over again already imprinted in the brains of toddlers exposed to them. Those messages are distributed by television mainly during prime time in very short instances as advertising. Advertising forms the global memory and reshapes with its images history and even current processes. The main messages are the main characteristic of the global neoliberal transnational economy: consumption, desire for luxury, selfishness, freedom in a plain sense accompanied with individualism, greed, and the myth of the re-interpreted Social Darwinism. With marginal films at the margins of society - panels, festivals and gallery events (as important as they are) - the messages stay within marginal communities. In this sense we, as a group, try to take place within this apparatus, using their refined techniques, forming a new language and to give new messages. At this point we have made already short films/clips/spots to several topics as violence against women, anti war movement, schizophrenia, street children … The problem to resolve is to gain a frequency in the main programs to be absorbed and stored in the communal memory. Maybe this is a topic we would like to discuss in this community at this festival where so many different artists, theoreticians and intellectuals come together and try to discuss the importance of images, technology and the context of political and cultural impact of artistic work. Hopefully this platform will open up a new space for interaction and communication among the people at the periphery and marginal voices in this more and more globally connected world which alas is moving towards a big uni-culture dominated by the globalization discourse set by the neocolonial powers.

Associação Cultural Videobrasil