PAINTED DEVIL

of EVEN Tirtza, KARL Brian

ISRAEL, 2004, 00:52:00

Production : EVEN Tirtza, KARL Brian
Genre : Video art, Creative documentary
Keyword : History, Identity, Relation, Society

Summary :
In the hour-long experimental video documentary. Painted Devil, we investigate the issue of women's different roles in contemporary urban Turkish society, with all the complexities, nuances, and contradictions that have developed among instances of the secular and non-secular, rural and urban, modern and traditional. We include portions of interviews with a variety of individuals from Turkey in addition to shots of ordinary, everyday scenes from urban life in Istanbul.

As in our earlier single channel video work, we intend a piece that does not attempt to represent any particular point of view. We aim to create a document incorporating resonant human signs that waver between indicating a fabricated reality and an "actual" and observable one. These include individuals carrying large loads of goods; an outdoor stockmarket in small alleyways; scenes of drinking and playing sheshbesh in teahouses.

We focus on representations through two primary sets of depicted scenes: first, a range of shots of day-to-day activities in public settings. where the overt absence of women from the images is intended to mark their exclusion from many aspects of Turkish social life. The second set of depictions consists of interviews with women of various backgrounds. their voices floating over images in which they are noticeably mute. The interviews concentrate on women's personal histories and the impact on their lives of changing gender positions and conceptions in Turkey. The recorded mesh of voices tilts back and forth between presenting any definitive possibility of linking-or deliberately marking a gap that separates-private and public domains and points of view. These two sets of scenes intersect and are made cohesive by visual motifs including repeated physical gestures (e.g., the adjustment of scarves on women's heads; washing feet in preparation for entering mosques; carrying trays and serving cups of tea) that create a texture of echoes that tie the otherwise disparate, fragmented slices of life in this broken narrative.

Digitally rendered visual effects expose and expand what the visible everyday might mask. This is accomplished, for instance, by creating continuous or repetitive behaviors in only a portion of otherwise linear actions; panning or zooming in on one element while the overall composition remains constrained to a single, steady angle-resulting in slowly sliding ground, for example, in the courtyard of a mosque or an outdoor market; multiplying the images of characters within a single shot; effecting a gradual, unmotivated disappearance (or reappearance) of figures from what might otherwise seem a mundane moment; or depicting an individual's gesture toward an empty space that represents the conspicuous absence of another. Ambient sound and conversation are also digitally manipulated to distill and heighten the ordinary, creating a space where multiple, overlapping perspectives are hinted at: those of the audience, of the filmmakers, and of the individuals in the scenes depicted.

Our intention is to undermine and break any appearance of an integrated, singular communiry and, within it, any singular image or representation of women. We believe that the complexities and contradictions of socially constructed identities for the various individuals portrayed can be exposed through these cracks.

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