Art

REPOSE 2006

Repose is an aeroplane wing and nose protruding from the wall, with single seats folding out that represent the idea of disembodied flight. The idea that the passenger sits outside the vessel mocks the belief that flying is is an out of body experience.

THE ABSENCE PRESENCE 2005

This film was screened at the Venice Biennale as the main representation for the Turkish Pavilion. It looks at the paranoia around the issue of terrorism, and the suspicion of foreign people and cultures. Chalayan suggests a scenario depicting how institutions may interrogate individuals and how they can create new measures for living in Britain. The concept is a complex narrative linked with his collection Genometrics, of which the idea I cannot fully grasp without having seen the film. Although I have managed to see some stills of the film. It seems like a very interesting concept.

ANAESTHETICS 2004

This abstract creation plays like a sketchbook as a film. It has eleven chapters with each scene demonstrating how horror of violence is camouflaged in different societies by ritualizations and aesthetisation and codes of behaviour. For example, a cook prepares sashimi out of a live fish which is eaten by a woman screened by a bloody veil.

PLACE TO PASSAGE 2003

This was a film project about a journey from London to Istanbul in a vessel, the vessel fills up with water as it enters Istanbul- marking the division between Europe and Asia. Also giving it a feeling of going back into the womb. The film explores the implications of speed and technology, and displacement.

Echoform 1999

The Aeroplane Dress:

Represents what the collection is about in the form of a film. It was directed by Marcus Tomlinson who also worked with Hussein Chalayan on 'Afterword'. In the background is the sound of a muezzin (Islamic prize to prayer), symbolising the initial attack on Iraq "where the body simultaneously became a physical and a political projection of that time".