AYHAN AND ME

Explicitly discussing its own production and censorship, Ayhan and me is an incisive video essay examining the power of images, roles and responsibilities of representation and sanctioned history-making and the charged relationship between art and state control.

The piece centers around the figure of Ayhan Çarkın, an ex-police officer who was active for ten years during the 1990s in Kurdish geography within Turkey. He later publicly confessed to being a member of a underground paramilitary within the police force and having lead armed operations murdering over thousand political Kurdish figures over the course of those ten years. Ayhan and me looks at and finds parallels between the political situation in the 1990s and the time it was made, bringing the victim and perpetrator created by the same system with a thirty year difference.

belit sağ (she/they) studied mathematics in Ankara and audiovisual arts in Amsterdam. Her moving image practice is rooted in video-activist groups she co-founded in Turkey. They were an artist in residence at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (2014-2015, Amsterdam) and International Studio and Curatorial Program (2016+2019, NYC). Her research-based artistic practice focuses on archival visual representations of political violence. They have presented works at documenta, MOCA Taipei, Eye Filmmuseum, and Flaherty NYC among others. LIMA distributes her moving image works. Besides Netherlands Film Academy, they tutor at the Critical Studies Departments at Sandberg Institute.

Ayhan and me (2016), Digital Video, 15 mins. Courtesy of the artist. 

Part of a film program featuring films about crime, genocide and accountability.

Next film: Corporate Accountability (2020), Jonathan Perel

KIRIK’s 2022 programs are supported by SAHA as part of the Sustainability Fund 2021-2022.