Infamous Library
Video, Text, Installation, 2006-ongoing
„Infamous Library“ (video, 2006) narrates the story of 12 people who were kidnapped in September 1980 by an unidentified organization and held captive in a library for two years. In this video-interview, March, one of the 12 kidnapped people, answers questions directed at him from behind the camera.
For the 11th Istanbul Biennial (2009) I turned Infamous Library into a news article and had it published in two national newspapers, Radikal and Hürriyet Daily News. The text was in the form of a news story told by one of the abductees, and while the newspapers could be bought at news stands, they were also disseminated at the biennial venue.
Infamous Library was also exhibited at Istanbul Rampa Gallery in 2014 as an installation. I then created a library of banned books, comprising an installation of 400 banned books in Turkey’s infamous history of censorship.