Hareketli görüntüler, zaman ve teknik

This study aims to analyze the relation between moving images and the technique used to represent the time through these images. In our case, the video as medium represents moving images. With a more detailed perspective, this research will focus on contemporary video practices since 2000 in Turkey. The relation between videographic images and its construction technique conducts us to the notion of time just because the technique to produce these images forms temporalities, durations, rhythms in and through images. This temporal correlation opens itself to two complementary ideas: The first is the construction of a synthetic temporality through specific technical parameters coming from aesthetic forms specific to video. By this question, we sought to see what kind of aesthetic gestures the video artists have used/implemented to create at the spectator an experience of temporality through images. The second question is shaped around a critical inquisition of memory. According to the definition given by Aby Warburg (see L'Atlas mnémosyne), collective memory is a collection of excitements formed in the mental archives following the laws made up from a new way of understanding images, by their juxtaposition. In the case of videographic images, one way to create a juxtaposition is to create temporalities that connect images. Therefore, these time related qualities are evaluated to decipher some possible traces that video images leave in the collective memory. When these two complementary ideas based on the time related correlation are followed, our research is faced with two complementary questions: one is to see how the specific technical parameters of video art construct synthetic temporalities. This question leads to another one: In which ways this construction contributes to a questioning about memory and history? The hypothesis of this research is that the videographic image, as a technical and conceptual form, has its own time-building model that also participates in new revisions of memory and collective history. In this study, moving images refer to videographic images produced by Turkish video artists. It is only in the late 1900s in Turkey that artists began using video to produce art. Yet from the year 2000 that the video art finds the possibility to spread, which is due to the improvement of the means of production and exhibition. Hence, the research field includes videos that are produced after 2000. Ten video artists are chosen to offer a general idea of the artistic scene in Turkey. They are: Kutluğ Ataman, Ali Kazma, Halil Altındere, Erkan Özgen, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Seza Paker, Emre Hüner, Didem Pekün, Zeyno Pekünlü and Yasemin Özcan. One video work from each artist is chosen to be analyzed in the last chapter. Since our research problem concerns representation of time, the chosen videos are either about the artist's own memories, like his childhood, an important/interesting moment in his life or about a transmission of tradition, a reference to the collective memory through history or a socio-political problem including themes such as public spaces. First of all, both the content and structure of the videos are described. Then, forms of representation of time are defined: time as duration, as eternal present and as speed which are respectively deriving from aesthetic gestures of dilatation/contraction of durations, repetition and mixage. Finally, the question of memory is assessed through the motifs of incarnation and confrontation against memento mori, together with clarifications on how each work of art contributes to the construction of a collective memory. Following these steps, it is shown that the gesture/aesthetic technique of repetition refers to a representation of time as an eternal present while the technique of dilation/contraction of duration to a representation of time as speed, and the technique of mixage represents time as duration. When the ten video art works presented in the third chapter are analyzed, it is observed that the technique of repetition is the most used one. It is interesting to see that the repeated images in these videos are often images of gestures belonging to human bodies such as hands repairing a clock (Ali Kazma), feet playing with a ball (Erkan Özgen), hands throwing dices (Didem Pekün) or hands styling hair (Zeyno Pekünlü). In addition to that, it is explained that images related to memento mori are generally refer to the mortality of human body which gives rise to the feelings of incapacity or helplessness in the face of time. Therefore, representing time via the technique of repetition in Turkish video art often leads us to the images of human body within the concept of memento mori. This first aesthetic gesture is followed by the use of mixage. In the three video art works we analyzed, which are the works of Kutluğ Ataman, Halil Altındere and Seza Paker, the mixage is the technique chosen to combine heterogeneous images. Putting various images together connects separate stories within the same time period. The third and the last technique, namely the dilation/contraction of durations is what we find in the video art works of Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Didem Pekün and Yasemin Özcan. It is argued that this technique represents time as speed. Hence, the video artist is in control of the passage of time, s/he can slow it down to the point of freezing the image or accelerate it so that a duration of thirty minutes is spent in three seconds. Thus, this control over time also ensures a control over death. It is also interesting to see that it is again the image of human body that is dealt with. With these significant elements of analysis, it is argued that video art has its own time construction model where video artists of Turkey often makes use of the techniques of mixage, repetition and contraction/dilation of durations. This model also participates in the new revisions of the collective memory by forming an alternative archive to the dominant political and social discourses. Hence, this is the answer to the general question of our research. It should be noted here here that our research confirmed and completed the main position of Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler; two main thinkers we relied on to construct our argument about time and memory. It is possible to retain a fairly representative sample of representation of time, technique and memory while following the theoretical perspectives of these thinkers. It is argued that Deleuze's image-time concept is the key to video art images. All the aesthetic gestures/techniques that are presented (repetition, mixage, dilation/contraction of durations) refer to the concept of image-time. These gestures emphasize the image-time aspect of video images in the following sense: both the movement and its content lose their importance. The perception of spectator related directly to the thought instead of focusing on the action itself. On the other hand, the narration is set aside and the time is exposed as it is. Thus, the image is always in a state of becoming in time. The time is presented/communicated in a more mental way where becoming is made more explicit. Following these arguments, it is now possible to claim the the video art images is essentially constructed as a temporal medium. It reflects the secondary retention qualities as strong as the cinema does (Stiegler offers cinema as the strongest example to his argument). Secondary retention is defined as an intrinsic quality of temporal objects whose function is to record our memories. It is explained that for Stiegler, all man made / constructed objects are the surfaces for tertiary retentions. Hence, it follows that video art, as a tertiary retention as powerful as cinema (or perhaps more powerful) is the perfect medium for merging images belonging to different individual memories and for bringing different temporalities together in order to communicate a new perspective to form the collective memory. In fact, this is what is explained/shown with the contribution of mixage to the collective memory.