Evil Eye – HASAN ÖZGÜR TOP

General information

Images of world and the inscription of war, Harun Farocki, Germany, 1989, 75’

Examines the rediscovery and analysis by two CIA employees, 33 years later, of the US Air Force aerial photographs taken over the Nazi death camps during World War II.

The fall of a hero, Hasan Özgür Top, Turkey, 2020, 15’

"Set in an interrogation room, THE FALL OF A HERO (2020) shows a suspect (played by the artist) describing to an off-camera voice the Islamic State’s recruitment materials and the way they construct a familiar postlapsarian account. A call to restore glory after a putative fall from grace is couched in the language of moral urgency: Make the caliphate great again! We learn that ISIS uses the Trajan font—popular among marketers of Hollywood films and video games like LORD OF THE RINGS and ASSASSIN’S CREED—in their propaganda materials. But the intersections with pop culture do not end here: others include homophobic homosociality; a view of history as an endless struggle against decadence; violence as apotropaic remedy; and heroic masculinity as the solution rather than toxic masculinity as the problem. (Ana Teixeira Pinto, 12th Berlin Biennale catalogue, 2022)

Presentation and colloquium by Mikel Otxoteko.

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THE EVIL EYE. THE PARALLEL HISTORY OF OPTICS AND BALLISTICS EXHIBITION IS BEING ROUNDED OUT BY A FILM SERIES COMPRISED OF THREE SCREENINGS PRESENTED BY SPECIAL GUESTS.

With their help, reflection on the parallel development of the history of optics and the history of ballistics is brought into the cinema so that we can dive deeper into the way in which this confluence has determined the nature of modern warfare and proven the value of practices that seek to produce different narratives and other kinds of images in resistance to this logic.

Artists Mikel Otxoteko and Miranda Pennell, along with architects Ibon Salaberria and Ula Iruretagoiena will present films from Harun Farocki, Hasan Özgür Top, Forensic architecture, and Miranda Pennell herself, expanding the film and reflection offered through a showing that can be visited in the exhibition hall.

February 4th - 19:00 - Cinema
Presentation: Mikel Otxoteko (ES)
Images of world and the inscription of war, Harun Farocki, Germany, 1989, 75’
The fall of a hero, Hasan Özgür Top, Turkey, 2020, 15’

March 16th - 19:00 - Cinema
Presentation: Miranda Pennell (ENG-ES)
Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed, Miranda Pennell, UK, 2010, 28’
Strange Object, Miranda Pennell, UK, 2020, 15’
Trouble (work in progress), Miranda Pennell, UK, 2023, 30’

April 13th - 19:00 - Cinema
Presentation: Ibon Salaberria and Ula Iruretagoiena (EUS)
Triple chaser, Forensic architecture, UK, 2019, 10’
Shipwreck at the Threshold of Europe, Lesvos, Aegean Sea, 28 October 2015,
Forensic architecture, UK, 2020, 23’