Returning & Turning

Returning and Turning  (2025) (DV, 05:38, colour, sound) in collaboration with Martin Zeilinger  (alternative format: multiple projection screening on loop)

Returning and Turning is a digital video work that explores frame, scale, and colour in digital space, using repetition and superimposition as aesthetic strategies to negate the image and allow the audiovisual experience to embody the resistance and rebellion the moving body on the screen seeks to emulate. The work is constructed from a single-take SD video of a torso turning continuously. The soundtrack mirrors the visual structure through a live-recorded improvisation that samples contemporary semah recordings, focusing on the saz, a traditional Turkish instrument.

At first glance, the piece may appear to be a formal experiment—and to an extent it is—employing layered frames, superimposition and repetition. However, the work draws inspiration from semah, an Anatolian Alevi/Bektashi ritual with which I am connected through my family heritage. Semah is characterised by collective whirling, rhythmic steps, and symbolic hand gestures performed in a circular formation by people of all genders, accompanied by the live Alevi songs/tunes on the saz.

Historically, this ritual was practiced in secrecy during the Ottoman Empire, as it was deemed heretical within Islam, and Alevi communities were systematically marginalised and oppressed. This oppression continued well into the 2000s in Turkiye, and even today semah is still regarded as heretical by some. For me, it represents a form of resistance—a cultural and spiritual practice that has survived centuries of persecution, political violence, and enforced invisibility.