belit

 2019

(This text was first presented as part of the event  Archival Interventions Panel discussion, curated by Joshua Van Biema on September 12, 2019 in Whitney Humanities Center, Yale Film Society, Yale University, New Haven, NY, USA)

–

 2018

How to Resist screening program catalog, GegenKino, Leipzig,
curated by Amos Borchert, April 2018

  2017  

Brooklyn Rail
(printed and online magazine, NYC, November 2017)
Interviewed together with Sky Hopinka
by Almudena Escobar Lopez,

Metropolis M (online magazine, September 2017)
Review of I deleted your picture duo show (w/ Merve Bedir) 

Versions 3 (magazine, Austria, May 2017)
Interview together with Cana Bilir-Meier.
Magazine edited by Linda Klösel

Studio Note Publication
by Hotel Maria Kapel as part of the duo show I deleted your picture (with Merve Bedir)
Publication includes an interview by Irene de Craen, and images from the exhibition
and installation shots.

The Side Room Pamphlet #11
publication as part of Do fictive images have tangible consequences?,
a collaborative talk that took place in The Side Room, June 2017
publication & talk together with Merve Bedir, Amal Alhaag
and Maria Guggenbircher

KaosQ+  (printed and online journal)
Issue nr. 6, June 2017, Edited by Baris Kilicbay.
Contributed with an article titled
Toplumsal bedenin hayalet organlari
(Phantom limbs of the societal body)

Metropolis M (printed magazine, The Netherlands)
Contributed to the Nationalism Issue with a text titled
We do not have bad intentions

  2016

Videonun Eylemi Book, Edited by Ege Berensel,
Contributions by Maurizio Lazzarato, Angela Melitopoulos,
Hito Steyerl, Artikisler, Oktay Ince, belit sag…)
(contributed with a text titled
Does nothing happen when nothing happens?)

Metropolis M, 2016

“… Voor de realisatie van haar werk grain (2016) en gaze (bakis) (2016) deed zij bij het Institute of Social History (IISG) in Amsterdam onderzoek naar de politieke gevangenen in Turkije die in 2000 in hongerstaking gingen tegen het geïsoleerd gevangenschap. De gruwelijke beelden die zij in het archief vond bewerkte ze tot pixelachtig en onscherp materiaal. De voice-over vertelt. Het is nog altijd onduidelijk wat er precies toentertijd gebeurt is. belit sag ontrafelt de nieuwsgeschiedenissen, geeft er een persoonlijke draai aan, waardoor de berichten toegankelijker worden voor een breder publiek…”

FOL – Görüntünün Eylemi – Publication (Turkish)
Contributions by Oktay Ince, güliz saglam, Hande Sakarya,
Alper Sen, Özge Çelikaslan, belit sag.
Designed by Sarp Sozdinler

Performative Practices, blog by Claudio Zecchi
Text on my video work  Sept. – Oct. 2015, Cizre
“Which role do the images perform in the political event? How to produce and manipulate images? Is it possible to witness the hard common people’s life conditions without stress their position as victims or become rhetoric? …” 

Zaira Perina‘s essay: ‘belit sag’s ‘Ayhan and me’ or
storytelling of Artist Moving Image in Turkey’ 

Hazy Stories Duo Show Publication
With Contributions by Maria Barnas,
Angela Jerardi, Giovanni Giaretta, belit sag.
Design by Muge Yilmaz.

2015

RijksakademieOPEN Catalogue, 2015
Text by Vincent van Veelsen
“…News coverage from conflict areas generally consists of sensational material. The footage reflects only selected ‘moments of reality’. While local daily life
continues as usual, it’s mainly overshadowed by footage
that either glorifies or sensationalizes violence or its consequences. “Which images are worth showing?”
and “How to produce images?” become central issues in the works of belit sag. Her videos focus mainly on the rhetoric, presentation and manipulation of images of
conflict, with a particular investigation into the role
of the image maker in the politics of representation.
sag’s work discusses the imaginable and unimaginable,
the audible and muted, ethics and aesthetics, distance and involvement; it is an exercise in curiosity,
going after what is visible and audible in the frame,
and what is, simultaneously, escaping it. …”

 2014

RijksakademieOPEN Catalogue, 2014
Text by Vincent van Veelsen
https://www.rijksakademie.nl/NL/alumni-profile/belit-sag
” belit’s works ‘read’ newspapers, films, and media images, on a visual basis, commenting on the meaning of specific poses, compositions, codes and gestures, in order to subsequently decode, locate, reveal and create entirely new, or hidden, narratives. Quite often, the images turn out to have political connotations, rendering them carriers of additional meanings – which are remotely related, or entirely unrelated, to the original way they were narrated.In the video piece and the image gazes back the artist questions the role of images in current and historical events, engaging an underlining emphasis on visibility and representation. Even as these events, and their representations, resonate in our own memories from media, the artist is navigating the blurred lines between fiction and reality, the visible and the unseen, audible and mute, imaginable and unimaginable.The video piece lost, uses loosely filmed images to tell a story based on pictures from daily newspapers. The images, originally functioning as illustrations supportive to text, are promoted to the status of main subject. The artist questions them, searching for hidden and underlying stories, ideas and motivations. In this quest, she addresses and reveals both the social and the political significance of these media images, while speculating about their unconscious or subliminal messages.”

On earlier collaborative video-activism works and karahaber collective:

Ilkin Mehrabova’s Master Thesis on karahaber, 2010.
‘Video Activism in Turkey, Empowerment of Oppressed or Another kind of Surveillance, the case of Karahaber’*

Ezgi Saritas’s Master Thesis, 2006-2007
The thesis includes karahaber as a case in one of the chapters:
‘Video in the City, Possibilities for Transformation in the Urban Space’