OBSERVATIONS: BRITISHNESS PLAYS IT FOR REEL
By Arifa Akbar

Independent.co.uk
Friday, 20 March 2009

Kutlug Ataman is Turkey’s foremost contemporary artist, but for his
latest exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery in London, he’s turned his
eye on the subject of Britishness.

The Turner Prize-nominated artist is showing a new work, fff, which
consists of 10 video installations based on genuine cine-reel footage
of two English families from the 1950s and 1960s, accompanied by a
score composed by Michael Nyman. All the film reels with individual
scores are played simultaneously in the same space to create an
operatic cacophony of sounds and sights. Four of the films will be
shown on Channel 4 from Monday to Thursday next week in its 3 Minute
Wonder slot.

An abbreviation for "found family footage", fff consists of images
borrowed by Ataman from the archives of two British families, the
Fryers and the Howards, whose fathers were both pioneering researchers
into the effects of G-forces on pilots. The viewer sees clips of
family life – someone brushing her hair, a child kicking a football,
another licking an ice-cream cone.

The work plays with ideas of English nostalgia from the perspective
of an immigrant. Ataman’s preoccupation with Englishness may have
stemmed partly from his British partner, Martin Fryer, whose family
became part of the artwork. The Istanbul-born artist gained British
citizenship in=2 0 2002 and now lives in east London.

"It was sheer chance that I watched the family footage that Martin
brought home," he says. "It sparked the idea in my mind and I started
developing a narrative around people coming in from different cultures
and rebuilding their lives and their identities. I wanted to use
footage I had found rather than created, as it was a metaphor for
coming into a new, host culture and repositioning myself in it by
editing these images."

He has, in the past, explored his Turkish heritage through his artwork,
most dramatically in his submission to the Istanbul Biennial. That was
a film featuring his Armenian nanny, who suffered from Alzheimer’s,
so was unable to carry out her desired task of talking about her
personal history. It was, says the artist, an indirect comment on
the collective amnesia towards Armenian history in Turkish society.

For now, his Turkishness is an aspect of his identity that he has
exhausted.

"It’s not so Turkish-specific any more. I have dealt with it as much
as I can. I’m more excited to be in Britain and to be part of a more
global culture."

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