Catalogue > At random

The title of the work refers to the nationalist slogan of “blood and soil”; a racist ideal of a national identity that stands in mythical relation to a settlement area. This term was later adopted by the Nazis to propagate the bogus ideal of the Aryan farmer and his divine right to Lebensraum. In this work it assumes a new meaning referring instead to the coming-of-age story of a second generation immigrant in Germany. At first the contemporarenous landscapes that accompany the narration are recognisable as such; cars passing over a bridge, two men walking a German shepherd dog. As the narrator recounts his story and the difficulties that he faced, the landscapes become increasingly empty and devoid of human traces, reminiscent of a rural, quieter Germany of past centuries. As the story builds towards a denouement, the twilight landscapes begin to exude an ominous and threatening character in tandem with the violence that is about to erupt. The footage was recorded in the area where these events took place. This region has experienced a surge in support for extreme-right political party AFD and has provided an arena for large Neo-Nazi uprisings in recent years.

Deniz Eroglu (b.1981) is a Danish/Turkish artist who is currently based in the Netherlands. He graduated from the art academy Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main in 2014. He took part in the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten residency in Amsterdam from 2016-17. He works across many media and genres - film, video, sculpture, performance and text-based works. Thematically his work centres around cultural identity, human relations, immigration, Utopias, “enlightened“ individuals, loneliness, power vs powerlessness, the individual vs the group and in recent years examinations of societal institutions.