COLUMNS AND CRACKS
Single channel video, 5’13”, 2024
“Hasan Özgür Top’s Columns and Cracks speaks through the literal and figurative construction of national myth. During the general elections in May 2023’ the Turkish government decided to dock a brand new drone warship at the quay just downhill from the Haga Sophia in Istanbul. The weight of this toy elevated to mobile temple, becomes an integral part of how the fate-obsessed wounded masculinity of Arabesk music is scaled up to national mythology. As the immovability of the columns of deep histories are used as canvases for present day powers, they crack up at home. What is the fugitive route when the mythological architecture cuts through the total sum of the social in a city?”
Simiyya press release, 2024