Wednesday, April 11
On humans’ relationship with nature…
Istanbul Film Festival and Arter collaborated for a program that covers the entire production process of artist Ali Mahmut Demirel, known for his experimental video works, live performances of visual design and music videos. His exhibition “The Island” will be meeting the viewers until July 15 at Arter. The films that inspired the three videos of the exhibition, namely Stalker, The Well, and The Last of England, are being screened at the Istanbul Film Festival under the section called “Architectural Utopias – Cinematic Dystopias”.
The screening of The Well took place at Pera Museum Auditorium with the participation of the artist. Ali Mahmut Demirel said: “I’m not a cinema artist. My latest video works are post-apocalyptic works that observe architectural places. There are no people in them. There’s a post-apocalyptic scenario where the human race has been completely erased from the earth. The exhibition consists of three videos. One of them is about a water cistern that I filmed in Bodrum. Apparently, when the dome collapsed, it turned into some sort of a well and was abandoned. I observed life there after people had left. And I made a video work after observing the relationship between nature and space with my camera. Then I called it The Well, as a reference to Metin Erksan’s film The Well. Besides the cinematography, there’s also a metaphorical relationship between this film and my work. In my video, I mostly focus on humanity and the relationship between human beings and nature. The film tells a story of a man and a woman. I think there’s a parallel between this relationship and the relationship between human beings and nature.” Demirel also mentioned that there will be an exhibition tour at Arter on Sunday, April 15.
Another event took place last night as part of the section “Architectural Utopias – Cinematic Dystopias” at Salon IKSV. Selected scenes from Metin Erksan’s film The Well were projected on the screen and artist Ali Mahmut Demirel with Berliner musician-DJ Carlota Marques delivered a live performance based on the scenes.
