Star Clusters, 2008

fine art print, 16 pieces, each 40×50 cm

The work consists of sixteen different star clusters that don’t belong to nature. The shape of each cluster is composed by using the insignias of military forces of different countries.

Installation view; AtelierFrankfurt
photos 1-3: Eduardo Perez

Balkon, 2008

multimedia installation
copper, brass, wood, pebble, iron 570x503x230 cm;
digital video, 15’26’’

The work brings together two speech balconies in two different countries from two different eras. A one-to-one replication of the speech balcony at the facade of the building of Faculty of Language and History of Ankara University is shown together with the video of the speech balcony in the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. While the speech balcony of the university building is located on the exterior and faces to the area where ceremonies takes place, the museums’ balcony is located in the interior and faces the big hall where opening speeches are made. Although both of the balconies have never been used except in the opening ceremonies of the buildings, the meaning they imply and the possibility of being used remain.

Installation view: Museum für Moderne Kunst-Zollamt
Images 1,23,7,8,9: Axel Schneider

Flagpole, 2007

performance-sculpture
aluminum, 110x250x400 cm;
video documentation of the performance 21’04’’

A flagpole is the carrier of the idea of belonging to a nation. Consequently, it has the meaning of staging national, international and cultural identity. The work transforms national and cultural belonging when transforming a flagpole into an abstract sculpture.

performance: in front of St. Paul’s Church, Frankfurt
installation view, Basis e.V., Frankfurt

photo 3: Cem Yücetaş

Avrupa-lı-laş-tı-r-abil-di-k-leri-m-iz-de-n-mi-sin-iz?, 2006

aluminum, white lack paint on polystyrene, scheme of adhesive letters; two pieces: Logo in the exterior space, 81×2600 cm; scheme in the interior, 190×200 cm

Avrupa-lı-laş-tı-r-abil-di-k-leri-m-iz-de-n-mi-sin-iz?
(Are you one of those who we were able to make become European)
A question of where do you stand. A game like construction. A word that does not seem meaningful at first sight. A question proposed in Turkish with its variety of historical connotations. Are you a European, did you at least become one? A question asked in Turkish to a passer-by in Frankfurt. Frankfurt: a city as hybrid and hygienic as it can be…
The language that is used in the installation, is proposing the question in its own sense. A language of possibilities to make long words as possible with annexes, suffixes and prefixes.The elementary school years where one gets to learn how to read and write. Learning to make up words with suffixes and deconstructing them into the smallest syllables. Adding as many syllables as possible to make up a meaningful complex word. The a priori input of learning a language, Learning the rituals, the acceptances, the wish-to-happens, the truths as the culture with its dynamics. Turkey, founded in the 20th century, a country with fresh breathes, with an urge to catch what is happening next. Where to go and what to follow. The Europe being the source of development: cultural and technological castle of the new, the better, and the best of all that happens.And the melancholy of the train that is missed and will never be caught. The feeling of sitting at the train station, looking after the missed, on its track… With the knowledge of not being able to catch up to modernization, which nevertheless has been declared a national need. What has become of Europe today is not what it has resembled in the 80’s or in neither the 70’s nor 60’s. Europe, the urge of having a political stance in the world, wanting to state something for the humankind, dealing with the economical constraints. Putting up standards of westernization. What is to be European today is to belong to something that avoids the other, the other in its all means. Avoidance as such, being dispersed in its every structure and statements of internationalization. The transformation of senses. Sense of belonging. Otherification. Normalisation. The result existing in its very first attitude. A question in Turkish, for a Turk to understand and carry the question. The Turks who have migrated as first or second or third generation, living and working in Germany. The cliché of being stuck with one’s own culture, the failure of integration and the success of implementation and adjustment. Are you, did you, could we make you a European, who is too arrogant to see what the other is dealing with, how the other is surviving? Europe, fortress which 1276 people have been killed on trying to get into, within a year. A castle with imaginary solid borders. Hard to get in and to get involved afterwards. Europe realizing the need to be hybrid and rejecting it in its own means. The Turks who have migrated and the Turks who never left their home country. How did the process of Europeanification succeed? Is it to leave the humanity behind for the sake of good life with functioning traffic and facilities or is it the means of accepting to be constructed as closed and narrowed as far as you could be to protect the values that have been attained as being European.. The resemblances are questioned, especially in this work by Özlem Günyol and Mustafa Kunt. Is it not sad to be European or to be turned into one without your own initiative and your own active enrolment? Fatos Ustek

Photo 1: street view; Elbestrasse, Frankfurt
photo 3: street view; The Kosova National Art Gallery, Prishtina
photos: Günyol & Kunt

photo 4: street view; Centre of Popular Arts and Traditions, Atina
photo: Locus Athens

photo 2: Helmut Claus

Zonk Zonk, 2006

video installation
DVD, 17’12;
acrylic paint on wall dimensions variable

Mustafa Kunt’s installation Zonk Zonk takes as its theme the visual classification of emotional situations, how they become tangible by means of the silhouettes on the wall and the video material. Due to the cross-fading of the two levels of presentation, it remains unclear whether the figures which appear as silhouettes on the wall are also ecstatic dancers or protesters or fighters taken from media reports. An emotionally charged devotion shown by the protagonists appears to be mutual to both representations. The shadow images resemble the dancers in their gestures, however the static and solid portrayal of the figures as shadows illustrates a certain affinity to images of protesters who express their emotional tension for different reasons to the dancers in the projection.

Felix Ruhöfer, be-cause, Exhibition Catalogue, (Frankfurt: basis e.V., 2008).

Installation view; MMK Frankfurt, photographs: Günyol & Kunt

Untitled (borders from 1804 to 2006), 2006

video installation
DVD-loop, 1’39’’

Özlem Günyol’s video consisting of continuously changing shapes and colors, shows the changing borderlines of Europe from 1804 to 2006.

Image 1, 2: installation view; Kunstverein München, photographs: Kunstverein München e.V.

Scenes, 2005

ink-jet print on vinyl 300×450 cm;
digital video 15’26’’, loop (without sound)

Kosovo’s borderlines (Kosovo-Albania, Kosovo-Serbia, Kosovo-Macedonia, Kosovo- Montenegro) are visited and photographed by the artists as landscape photographs. Each photograph includes both countries.

Street view; city center Prishtina
photos: Günyol & Kunt

Foreignness, 2005

6 postcards, 10×15 cm

In 2005, we were in Kosovo for the first time. One of the two projects we realized there was photographing Prishtina with the “tourist eye”. A selection of these photos was then used for six different postcards sold in the stores of Prishtina.

photo: Gunyol & Kunt

On the Grapevine, 2005

video installation
7 monitors, 7 DVD players, 7 headphones, 7 digital videos, looped; painted wood

“Learning a language is related not only to the understanding of a sentence structure and the meaning of the words, but also to the organization of letters. Furthermore, it is also characteristic of any language that the person calling forth the words with a certain sound and rhythm designates the usage of that language. Even a person learning a new language still approaches the foreign language with his/her own linguistic melody and rhythm and this phenomenon sometimes causes misunderstanding.”

Özlem Günyol’s video installation On the Grapevine consist of the simultaneous translation of the text upon, from Turkish to German and from German to Turkish several times by seven different translators. Each translator translates the translation of the one before him/her. In this way, the text changes by using the gaps between these two languages and the perception of the translators.

Installation view; Basis, Frankfurt
photograph: Cem Yücetaş