Küba/Paradise

Last Saturday I went to the opening of the exposition Küba/Paradise. Kutlug Ataman is a famous contemporary artist who has made the city slum of Küba, near Istanbul, famous. In this city the social outcasts of Turkey (Leftists, Kurds, etc) came together to form a community. The artists made a video installation with 40 old fashioned televisions and chairs. On these televisions were shown 40 portraits of the people living there. It is completely impossible to watch every one of those, and that is not the intention anyway. Watch every portrait for a couple of minutes and you get the feeling that you’re really there.

Paradise is Kutlug’s new project. This project shows 24 portraits of people from Southern California, which many see as a paradisiacal place. It is set up in two concentric circles of flat screen televisions. One of the televisions is set centre stage and the portrait that is shown there changes every day. In front of each of the televisions you can find a headphone. This means that you see all the portraits at once, but you don’t know what they are talking about.

This one girl was singing and dancing, and saying how much she enjoyed everything. She wanted to overcome her fear of auditioning. And this one guy was talking about how he made money via auto fellatio, which was disgusting.  

Especially since this was the opening a lot of people showed up. This meant that it became a sort of musical chairs to go from one to another headphone.

Of course the evening also had some speeches and free drinks and snacks. Everything was really high-brow, which made me feel right at home.

In the future I may find a job relating to art?