Turkey and neighbors featured at Salt

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The eight screen-video instalaltion at Salt Galata invites the audience to become immersed in the contemplation of life on the eight borders of Turkey.

A dynamic, eight-screen video installation reflecting life in Turkey and its neighboring countries will be featured at Salt Galata on Jan. 24. Titled “1+8,” it is based on the feature film of the same name directed by Cynthia Madansky and Angelike Brudniak and explores life on both sides of the border, from Armenia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Nakchivan to Syria.

The installation chronicles the people and communities living on Turkey’s borders through their own stories as shot by Madansky and Brudniak during two years of field research. Featuring several reels of footage not included in the film, “1+8” elevates a polyphony of voices ordinarily funneled through the lens of mainstream media and often only during a crisis or a catastrophe.

Questions on opennes and compassion

The exhibition tackles complex questions with compassion and openness, offering a space for debate around compelling and critical issues with regard to daily life as experienced across divided landscapes.

Contemplating the border from both sides offers a dual perspective. Each projection becomes a reflection of “the self” and a window to “the other.” The installation wraps all eight borders around the viewer, revealing the relevance and complexity of Turkey’s geopolitical gestalt. It raises questions of identity, identification and nationality. The viewer’s attention is drawn to and shifted by a choreography that introduces one voice at a time while the other projections show silent images from adjacent borderlands.

“The installation invites the audience to become immersed in the contemplation of life on the eight borders of Turkey. The multi-screen projection lends itself to experience simultaneity and interconnection on a physical level. The choreography of videos on the eight screens is created dynamically, with the help of a custom-made algorithmic computer program allowing for a unique viewer experience, whereby the projections will never appear the same way twice,” according to a statement by Madansky and Brudniak. The event will continue until April 7.