belit

  • next
  • here
  • past
  • text
  • there

*

  • For you [second person plural], 2020
  • SIFA
© 2011 - 2023
Theme by WPShower

texts/publications on my work or by me

 

 2019

             
               
Text by Pooja Sen on belit sag’s cut-out (PDF)

(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)


–

             
               

Brooklyn Rail, 5 Feb 2019
Review o
f IDFA and cut-out by Leo Goldsmith.
LINK: https://brooklynrail.org/2019/02/film/True-to-Form-International-Documentary-Festival-Amsterdam-2018
–
    
Art Monthly UK, February 2019 issue
Profile text by George Vasey
LINK 1: https://www.artmonthly.co.uk/magazine/site/issue/february-2019
LINK 2: https://georgegvasey.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/writing-belit-sag-profile-for-art-monthly/
Click on the images for the pages.
–
       

 2018

             
               

Frieze Opinion
Review by Hettie Judah, December 2018
LINK: https://frieze.com/article/turkish-video-artist-and-activist-asks-how-do-you-make-story-disappear
 –
 
Artforum Critique’s Picks
Review by Connor Moynihan, March 2018 
–
         
               


We Remember
Essay by Almudena Escobar López.
Commissioned by Squeaky Wheel, January 2017
(PDF here)
 
Excessive Ideas
Essay by Chi-hui Yang.
Commissioned by Squeaky Wheel, January 2017 
(PDF)
         
         
 

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

 
Let Me Remember
Solo Exhibition Publication
Squeaky Wheel Media Art Center, Buffalo, NY, USA.
Designed by Chris Lee, January 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

 
In Solidarity/Dayanismayla, publication, Sweden & Turkey
Contributions by Johanna Gustavsson, Felice Hapetzeder,
Fikret Atay, Pelin Basaran, Secil Yaylali
Edited by Giorgio Caione  
         
     

 

         
Biennale für Aktuelle Fotografie journal
(online journal, September 2017)  
 

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)

   

 

     
               

MUBI  (online movie platform, October 2017)
New York Film Fest. Projections Program Review
by Almudena Escobar Lopez
 

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

 

         
 
Daily Sabah
(newspaper, Turkey, November 2017)
Review of Space, Witnessing, In Solidarity exhibition
in Apartment Project Berlin, by Cihad Caner.  
 
Bianet website (online news platform, Turkey, November 2017)
Review of films from Turkey in IDFA
(International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) by Murat Türker.
LINK: https://m.bianet.org/bianet/sanat/191463-turkiye-den-amsterdam-a-belgeseller
         

  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

   
     
ArtSlant, 2014
http://www.artslant.com/ams/articles/show/41422
“… sag analyses news, media, and entertainment images creating new narratives from her findings. The video work And the image gazes back questions the role of images in current and historical events. For example Sa? ponders the similarities between one of the shots in ISIS’s execution video of James Foley and a shot in the final scene of the movie Seven, both of which feature a decapitation. She discusses the re- and pre-mediation of images—the way they appear and reappear either deliberately or accidentally. Her findings are an artistic investigation in what it means to live in a world where fiction and non-fiction influence each other in ways we can’t even imagine...”
 
We are Public Blog
, 2014
Text by Vincent van Veelsen
“… belit sag was voorheen meer een activiste die haar
video’s eerder als bijproduct zag, dan als autonome vorm
van expressie. Nu vertelt ze middels een losse manier van
filmen een verhaal waarin foto’s uit de dagelijkse media als
uitgangspunt dienen. Binnen haar films worden de originele
media-afbeeldingen niet meer slechts als illustratie materiaal
gezien, maar verheven tot hoofdonderwerp. Door ze te isoleren
van de tekst, worden de beelden door de kunstenaar bekeken
en ondervraagd, in een zoektocht naar de verborgen en
achterliggende verhalen, ideeën en beweegredenen. Tijdens
deze zoektocht gaat sag in op zowel de sociale als politieke
betekenis van autonome beelden binnen de media waarbij zij
een on(der)bewuste boodschap zichtbaar maakt door een
speculatieve benadering. Kortom: sag bladert door de media
op een visuele basis, waarbij zij in gaat op de betekenis van
specifieke houdingen, composities, codes en gebaren die
middels de afbeeldingen een geheel nieuw narratief creëren.
…”
 

 

           
     

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’