Catalogue > At random

“Yildiz Movie Theater” was opened in the beginning of the 1950’s. The location and the environment of the cinema have changed because of the fact that urban renewal within years. Video work approaches this transformation from social and architectural perspective. “Basmane” is that the region of the movie theater was the city center of Izmir. However, in the beginning of the 2000’s, many immigrants came to Izmir and “Basmane” has started to become male-dominated area. Then, “Basmane” has become a marginalized region. The cinema “Yildiz” had affected by that change and the place has been changed as enclosed soccer field and billiards saloon. It is easy to notice the traces of these constrained and rushed changes in the place. The goalpost in front of the silver screen clarifies the morphological contrast and social history of the cinema. This work addresses an issue with architecture as a witness of the social memory, the process of transformation of soccer field from a cinema and the social impacts of cinema and football.

Ozgur Demirci was born in Konya in 1982. After graduating from the Department of Interdisciplinary Art in the Faculty of Art and Design at Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul in 2008, he completed his Master’s degree in C:Art:Media at Valand School of Fine Arts in Gothenburg in 2010. He is currently a PhD candidate at Dokuz Eylül University Art and Design department. Demirci has held many solo exhibitions and participated in various group exhibitions and public projects in Turkey, Sweden, Japan, Italy, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Albania and USA.