Waved

"Waved was triggered by explorations on my estrangement with the city of Rotterdam, which led me to look at Turkish Muslim people living in the Netherlands, their alienation and in-between position in this country. While I was thinking about my position among these people, I was also asking myself about my identity in exile. To what extent have I been experiencing estrangement? What is shaping my identity in the Netherlands? 

In the light of these considerations, I started researching the work of filmmakers whose style was strongly affected by their diaspora and exile experience, intentionally or not, as Hamid Naficy suggests. While doing this research, I strongly noticed that my personal feelings regarding this in-between situation was not directly related to being stuck in a specific place – the Netherlands –, but to something that I have experienced throughout my whole life. 

The Turkish state is a secular nation created under the ideology of Kemalism or Ataturkism. To create a unified nation-state, the founder of the Republic of Turkey and its successors envisioned a supra identity based on a turkishness, which would soon turn into a race-based identity and shape the new state in accordance with the superiority of it. 

This turkishness hasn’t allowed the minorities to keep and pursue their own cultures, and eventually most of them were assimilated by it. The main constituents of this identity could be basically defined as: Turkish Nationalism and a A Secular Understanding of Islam. This has brought along a society in which its members are forced to adapt to a secular citizenship. 

In the early stages of my life, my identity was shaped within this social, political and cultural climate: the identity of a secular 'Muslim Turkish citizen'. However, it also faced various influences, including that of my ethnic Hemshinli root, fundamental Islamic values and popular Western culture, which, by merging with my secular Muslim Turkish identity, have laid the foundation of who I am.
   
At first sight, Waved can be perceived as an autobiographical piece, telling my own story via displacement, memory and image. However, my work doesn't specifically address  displacement, memory or image as we literally understand them, nor does this work represent my autobiographical story. Every part of this triad is strictly related to the Other. I am dealing with displacement as an experience where one is forced to face diverse and complex influences of powers throughout life. Likewise, memory is not just a look at my past, and images do not only refer to the images I recall from my past. 

I use found footage, suggesting a collectively produced memory, rather than individual, specific and inscribed memory. Our memories are being shaped by a constant transformation of image production and consumption. We are not only looking at individual images, but also at images collectively shaped and justified, gaining meaning thereof. I call these images displaced images."

Zafer Topaloglu in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (October 2013)