Yakup Girpan
Trace(s) - Film - 2009
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 11
Film
In the waters of Lake van in eastern turkey there swims and fishes a white animal with odd-colored eyes. the legend surrounding it has even reached istanbul... it is said that it is an angel and protects one from the evil eye. From West to East, the frontiers between reality and myth are drawn in the quest for this animal. "In the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, Noah's Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat"(Genesis). Each animal species is present; the elect felines are both van Cats. the waters subside; the cat leaps out of the Ark and climbs down the mountainside to settle on the banks of the Lake. Children sing and dance.. A shepherd is looking for a treasure on his mountain.. "What counts in a path is always the middle, not the beginning nor the end. One is always halfway along a path." (G. Deleuze) Trace(s) is a poetical odyssey through turkey. Trace(s) switches between fable and reality. the journey is the occasion for some intriguing encounters in the land of Anatolia. the way to Mount Ararat becomes a journey of initiation. Reality becomes mentally peripheral. the flow of time is an invitation to obliterate the self before scenery whose relief verges on the immaterial. the quest explores pathways in an imaginary geography that transforms reality into a reverie, like in a dream.
