Kutlug Ataman’s “Küba” installation at Hangar Bicocca, Milan

After traveling through the UK, Austria, Belgium, Australia, Germany and USA, the installation Küba, by famous Turkish film-maker Kutlug Ataman is now staged in the exhibition “Not Afraid of the Dark”, at Hangar Bicocca in Milan. A spatial representation of a neighborhood in Istanbul, populated by fundamentalists, outsiders, Kurds and Turkish people with particular life stories. 40 old TV sets of all shapes and all sizes, playing at moderate volume, placed on TV tables, all different, and a chair in front of each. Taken by surprise, especially for someone that does not know the story of the installation, a visitor might be attracted by a face or by the comfort of a particular chair. I had the curiosity to watch two interviews without knowing what the story around them was. I got immediately struck by the violence that sprouted through the person’s story, but also by a feeling of alienation, common to the handful of interviews I watched. A young man speaks about friendship and how friends have particular ways of manifesting themselves in Küba: one day someone might be invited to drink a tea, eat something at a friend’s house, he is well-treated, particular attention is dedicated to his having a good time, then out of a sudden he is taken off the chair and beaten savagely. Next day, they are friends again. Friends in Küba, confesses the young man, understand that friendship is also about beating, but because of this, it is not less of a friendship. A woman in her fifties recalls the good times, when Küba was free and you could beat policemen on the street and bear no consequences. A middle-aged woman narrates her life story from the beginning, with coming to leave in Küba, getting married, being unhappy all along but moving on and refusing divorce for the sake and pride of her family. She would have liked to study, but she could never afford it. Now she is cleaning houses and does her best to convince her husband to go the right way, take a job, take care of his family. She has just born a son and hopes he will change her husband to the better.
You can move around the TV sets and select a story to watch, driven by a face, a phrase or the comfort of a chair (indeed, attention has been paid to this not neglectable detail). Each visitor leaves with his own impression of the neighborhood, the people, life of an outsider community. He operates his own selection. The path in this installation takes the form of a curve from the collective to the individual, from the generalized loudness of all the stories heard at once, to concentration on one particular story. Even when listening to an interview, you catch glimpses of other stories, you may leave one unfinished and head towards another one.
It took Kutlug Ataman three years to gather all the interviews. The inhabitants are men, women of all ages, children, most of them have a secure tone of voice and a single-pointedness in dealing with hard issues, even for the very young ones. It takes an attentive eye to find, between all these hard stories, a sensitive perspective on daily life moments.
Erol: “Birds give my eyes pleasure. Their beauty, their colours, their gentleness… there’s a yellow bird. A very pleasant yellow. It seems to be laughing with its mate.”