User:Demet Adiguzel/Descriptions Of Recent Works
Working on the WHAT & HOW :
Mirror Mirror On The Wall
Mirror Mirror On The Wall, is a 7-and-a-half-minute long video starting with the 30 year old female subject in front of a bathroom mirror in a blue top, doing her morning routines such as combing her middle-length hair and her bangs, doing make-up, brushing teeth. It is almost like surveillance footage, in low quality, poor lighting and unflattering angle. The footage is in the middle, not covering the whole screen, it is rather small so there is a big black frame around it.
During the video we see the subject seem modern and ordinary, looking at the mirror and getting ready while the camera shoots her in front of the mirror slightly from below. Meanwhile we hear the audio of telephone-like conversations, which may not make sense at first. It starts with a female voice telling how she saw something and what it meant to her, so the opening line is “It was a black blanket for me…” then we hear male voices trying to define something black and supposedly a dress.
The video goes on with the same shot, with different parts of three conversations in which a female voice and two male voices try to define and explain how someone seemed during a specific day. Meanwhile the footage still show the subject getting ready until she slightly leans down and reaches for something that we do not see in the frame. Afterwards we see her covering herself in a hood little by little turning into a chador.
While she concludes her morning routine with covering herself up with a cloth that hides her hair, a fourth voice asks a question “Did you ever wonder what was under(neath) the outfit?”, the three voices one by one reply “No”. We see the subject not moving after covering herself, her last action being getting in the chador, now she does not go further with getting prepeared; just looks at the mirror, then looks down.
The footage was shot by an iPhone 4 camera using natural light and was edited in a way to give a certain surveillance feel. The audio was taken from the conversations that were done with my class-mates as interviews on how they felt and found my appearance in class as a woman in a chador (as opposed to my normal self). During these conversations I asked them certain questions aiming to answer the question if they had felt anything different about me when they saw me wearing a chador, if they knew what that type of garment is used for. While editing I tried not to give away the subject of the interview till the end and tried to keep the suspense till I got in the chador in the footage.
The Absence
The Absence is a 3 minutes 34 seconds of moving images looping as two screen installation. Totally silent videos start with almost abstract images. On the left hand side the screen is white and on the right hand side is gray. Both screens move and within the same shot there appears a brunette female in her twenties looking out the window which suggests that the abstract beginning scene was snow flakes floating out the window. Meanwhile the abstract bubbles in the right scene became clearer suggesting that it is surface of water being poured into a tub. When the scene slowly moves we see a foot appearing in the right screen while the left screen starts to show the female’s hand.
While the left screen changes to black blank screen, the female appears in a close up shot sleeping in the right one. In the next shot both of the screens we see the female staring at the camera with icy blue eyes. In the left screen she appears from her chest up, we see her shoulders naked. While she stares at the camera with a blank look, we also see some writings in front of her as if they were written on a mirror which she looks through to the camera. Slowly the focus of the camera changes to the writings and the female becomes blurred. Meanwhile on the right screen she appears in front of a black wallpaper with a pattern of gray flowers on it. She does not move. Both screens turn to black blank screens at the same time.