Tahtakale (2004)

Four channel PAL video, four channel sound, 8’

“In her book Trritory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages (2006),
Saskia Sassen has pointed out that much of what we might still experience as the “local” (an office building, a house, an institution in our neighborhood or downtown) is a micro-environment with global span insofar as it is deeply inter-networked. Such a micro-environment is in many senses a localized entity, but it is also part of global digital networks, which give it immediate far-flung span. In his multi-channeled video installation Tahtakale (2004), Ergin Cavusoglu shows us that in a global world the corner of an old city market, as being a landscape of exchanges and flows, can be inflected by the global values, power systems and orders within which it is embedded. Tahtakale is a four-screen video and sound installation, focusing on scenes from the everyday urban environment of an informal, nevertheless hugely significant currency market within the edifice of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. The screens appear to be positioned arbitrarily, scattered around the room, but actually they form a very particular architectural assemblage, which is to guide the viewer through the work. Two of the screens show the daily activities of market traders, dealing with currency and gold by using their mobile phones. Whereas the third screen presents a scrolling text, which depicts the traders’ conversations randomly, the fourth screen shows the hamals (the public porter) carrying goods on their backs to the shops up into
the market, pretty much as it has been done for hundreds of years. Since the traders have developed their own sign and verbal language, their activities remain inconspicuous to the general public.” Nermin Saybasili, ‘The Local is the Global; GESTURING NO(W)HERE’ Globalisation and Contemporary Art (Blackwell Publishing, London, 2011)