SENA BAŞÖZ
FRICTION:
A Series of Videos on Alienation
2006-2011
The starting point of this series of works has been the friction between the artist’s body and the immediate space she lived in during that time. Feeling a strong alienation to the constraints of the space she was working at, she started making her first videos in the office space. The works Swimming Across, Tower-Nest and Nobody is Indispensable are performative videos expressing her fish-out-of-water status in a business plaza. They challenge the construct of reality and disturb the patterns of action implied by the space. She was holding on to her animalistic side and the transformative healing power of expression.
As she went on with her artistic practice, the friction points extended to politics, history, religion, duty, gender roles, social positions in relation to space.
Nobody is Indispensable
2006
3’32” video
Tower-Nest
2007
3’37” video
The Flow
2007
1’18” video
The business plaza that the artist used to work at had security check at its entrance. The Flow documents a proposal for an alternative way of communication with the security staff. The artist casts and puts metal fish in her purse for the security staff to see. This act transgresses against the code of behavior imposed by the space and brings another territory into mind; the ocean.
Swimming Across I and II
2009
6’10 and 3’53”
2 performances for video
Wild Mammals of Turkey
2009
5’30” video
A Collaboration with Aykut Ince
Assigning human names to wild animals, Wild Mammals of Turkey attempts a political portrayal of Turkey through the nameless and borderless existence of wild creatures living in Turkey. The video questions “language” as a vessel of human mind, “naming things” as an irreversible way of splitting and disintegrating and the “stillness” required for naming.
Story of...
2010
15' three channel video installation
How do you live a life when your education is in fantasy and mythology? This work is about living in the periphery while the fantasy and the mythology are formed in an assumed center.
Chromatophore
2014 @ Alpha Nova- Kulturwerkstatt & Galerie Futura Berlin
2013 @ Frischzelle Festival Cologne
2011 @ DEPO Istanbul
30’ live audio-visual performance in collaboration with Nora Krahl
Excerpt from 2011 performance vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/55204650
Chromatophore, the collaborative live performance work with German Artist Nora Krahl explores connection and disconnection in relation to the city by creating friction between bodies of sea creatures and the streets of Istanbul.