In May 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, Altyazı Fasikül: Free Cinema commissioned a video series entitled ‘Looking Outside’. The considerable interest that this series received from viewers inspired a second series with a new perspective and theme: ‘From Below’.
With this new series our aim is to collectively contemplate on the visibility/invisibility of what we call a ‘recording’ and explore the effects of the politics of the image on social life.
Aylin Kuryel met Migros warehouse workers in 2021 to look at some photos of resistance. In these photos, one can also see the footsteps of the recent victories Migros workers gained.
Alper Şen reminds us of the human consciousness behind the “unmanned” war camera images with a story he wrote and narrated.
In Nothing Outside the Frame Oktay İnce delivers his notes and thoughts on the ethics of street recording.
In Deniz Buga’s video, photographs and found audio meets personal archive and politics on a coast where mucilage hasn’t taken over yet.
Using images from archival materials and fictional films Fatma Çelik tells the story of Özgür Gündem, a newspaper published by oppositional Kurds in Turkey.
In his video trilogy, Halil Yetiş focuses on the uncanny resemblance between hunting techniques and surveillance technologies.
Zeyno Pekünlü and Tatlıhan Tuncel confront the giant companies that create consumer profiles from our personal data and cover our online walls up with advertisements; an imaginary algorithm vs algorithm, follow for follow.
The subject of a photograph is considered to be passive. Aylin Kızıl’s Looking Back At Me is an intervention to this assumption. From a photographer’s perspective.
Two videos with an “inside” perspective towards the ongoing Boğaziçi Resistance, which ignited in the early days of 2021, following the various university bodies’ refusal of university rector’s undemocratic promotion.
There have always been counter-cameras to challenge the language of power. Nagehan Uskan discusses the videos in our From Below series as followers of this tradition.
In today’s digital culture, we encounter video as the general format of moving audiovisual images. Taking a holistic look at the From Below series, Sidar Bayram discusses the different video works against the backdrop of the shifting roles video has played as a form of expression since the 1980s.
“The camera does not lie.” But what about those who control the camera? Video-activist and documentary maker Oktay İnce tried to answer this and other questions in his articles series on Law and the Image, which he wrote in 2013.
We are watched by cameras installed from above. But how about surveillance from below? From Below series will stream a new video around such questions every Thursday.
While we were creating From Below, these questions were on our minds, which we also shared with the directors selected for this series.
