Play it Emin. Walking along the Russian Monument at Ayastefanos
2014
The work is displayed as part of the permanent exhibition
Audiovisual Media
Video installation
Two channel HD video projection
Colour, with sound
Duration: 14’ 19’’
Donated by the artist, 2017
Inv. No. 1092/17
Eleni Kamma (1973, Athens, Greece) uses a variety of media in her artistic creation, such as drawings, texts, objects, film, and performance, in order to playfully encompass profound and complex issues of contemporary reality. In the series of works entitled Oh, for some amusement!, through the employment of the practices and methodology of theatre and cinema, as well as the use of texts, Kamma compiles narratives from countries that were once part of the Ottoman Empire. She attests to the marginalisation of oriental forms of participatory spectacles, such as the shadow-puppet theatre, which encouraged, usually in a satirical manner, the forging of intercultural ties. In their place, she now witnesses the sweeping prevalence of cinema – Turkish, Greek, and Egyptian – as a mass medium of entertainment and a mechanism for constructing national identities and transnational tensions. Kamma accomplishes the rendering visible of this historical shift within the conditions of viewing and its consequences for the public in relation to political, cultural and social issues.
The video installation Play it, Emin: Walking along the Russian Monument at Ayastefanos, which belongs to the series of works entitled Oh, for some amusement!, originates from a historical event that marked the birth of national cinematography in Turkey: the demolition of the Russian monument for the fallen (from a previous war) in Istanbul following the beginning of the war between the Ottoman and Russian Empires in 1914. Unfortunately, this first film documentation has vanished. The artist invited the puppeteer Emin Senyer to reconstruct this demolition, referring to three photographs, the diary of the lieutenant who supervised the procedure, and the relevant announcements in the era’s press as his primary sources. On the left screen, the current view of the site where the monument stood is displayed, while on the right screen, we can see Emin Senyer in action. Kamma appropriates the tools of the old art of shadow-puppet theatre, addressing critical issues of the history and culture of the wider Greek geopolitical territory in an amusing manner.
Eleni Kamma was born in 1973 in Athens. She lives and works in Brussels and Maastricht. She is an artist and researcher and holds a PhD from the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts at Leiden University. She has presented her work in solo exhibitions (selection): Casting Call, Kunsthal Gent, Ghent (2023); Casting Call: The Collector of Proverbs, The Animal, The Fool, The Selfie-Junkie, The Innocent, The Child, The Drunk, The..., West, The Hague (2021); Casting Call: So, You Think About Abstraction the Last Minutes Before You Die?, SPACE, Liege (2021); Casting Call: The Selfie-Junkie, The Fool, The Animal, The Glossary, The Angry, The Collector of Proverbs, and so on, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Brussels (2018); Oh, for some more Amusement!, Netwerk, Aalst (2015); and P Like Politics, P Like Parrots, Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki (2013).