filmix

The idea for the project came while discussing political landscapes within Turkey. As we were busy trying to understand the political events and instances that were evolving around us, we also started talking about global affairs. As one subject turned into another, I came to the realisation that talking about politics is like a pas-time activity. We are essentially powerless to change anything globally and it was almost like discussing the latest episode of Game of Thrones.

Funny enough, everything that happens seemed like a game too. Of course, both of us think that undervaluing political affairs into simply a conspiracist “game” is just a form of escapism, that believing nothing could change would in fact result in one’s disability of not being able to change. Yet there was a catch-22 situation with this line of thinking we thought. As we were also discussing the word “öteberi” for the project, we tried to associate these concepts together.

At the end of the day, we had decided to do the art project that we have now ended up doing.

The actual process was not entirely easy, even though the video consists of found footages. Editing together 32 different video footage, it turned out, was a huge technical strain.

When we were first planning the video, we wanted the actual chess game to last for around 5 minutes, but as we were editing, it became impossible to operate the video editing software due to the huge amount of technical strain so we had to cut the game a bit short and go for the checkmate in a faster pace. If we are to make this installation for real, we could go and try to find a more resourceful computer than what was provided by the university or our personal laptops and try to produce a longer video with that.

While working together, one another problem we have faced was the time constraints. As both of us were pre-occupied with other classes and jobs, it was hard to find an optimal time to arrange our meetings but with the minimum necessary sacrifices, we were able to sustain a comfortable time-table for this stage of our project.

Overall we are happy with what we have right now. There is a big room for improvement and we are willing to make those as long as we could find the necessary tools but concept-wise, we think the video would work seamlessly with the installation itself.

Not only that but the belief that this type of installation would be something that we would like and talk about if we had seen it in a museum independently gave us the comfort and motivation to pursue this project. It became apparent that one enjoys working on things that they would enjoy seeing.

As concluding remarks, we are happy with the project as it is right now and would be willing to make the necessary improvements on it in accordance with feedbacks, depending on the free time we would have in future.