İpek Hamzaoğlu is an artist, filmmaker and cultural worker. Her work revolves around the representation of collective melancholy and the potential of post-apocalyptic future narratives, community knowledge, and gossip. She co-edited “Despite Dispossession: An Activity Book” that published from K. Verlag, Berlin in 2021. She is also part of numerous queer feminist projects on archive politics, friendship, and collective knowledge production.
Portrait credit: Barbara Juch
Image 1: İpek Hamzaoğlu
Image 2: Malu Blume, Andrea Haas, İpek Hamzaoğlu, Franzis Kabisch and Juliane Saupe
Image 3: İpek Hamzaoğlu
Image 4: İpek Hamzaoğlu, Laura Nitsch, Sophie Thun
İPEK HAMZAOĞLU
TURKEY / AUSTRIA
Despina, 2021. HD video with 2 sound channels, 11 minutes.
Set between dream, reality, and future, the film is about the journey of a young girl in the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe. The use of different cameras in the film breed varying image qualities in a coded reference to the multiple temporalities that describe the work, causing the narrative to collapse. The moving images are accompanied by a glitchy, melodramatic soundscape, and distorted siren-like cries of the young girl who mourns her future. Despina is part of an artistic research project based in Sinop — the site of the historical fortress prison where dozens of thinkers, poets, and writers were imprisoned for the ‘crime of thinking.’ It is also the contested site of a nuclear power plant project.
İpek Hamzaoğlu’s practice revolves around the representation of collective melancholy and the world building potential of post-apocalyptic narratives, community knowledge, and gossip. She co-edited Despite Dispossession: An Activity Book (2021) and is a part of numerous queer feminist projects on archive politics, friendship and collectivity.