Single-channel video installation, color, sound
9 min


Ali Kazma's ongoing video series "Obstructions" offers viewers a glimpse behind closed doors, to the unseen factories and ateliers that churn out the objects and items that surround us. He shows us how the world around us is constructed and in doing so reveals the human urge to "relate, give form, change and create". There are currently eleven films in the "Obstructions" series, which began in 2005 with the film "Today", a visual diary of people at work in the Beyoğlu neighborhood of Istanbul. The settings are diverse "a steel factory, a slaughterhouse, and a jeans-factory, which show industrial work processes, whereas other films present a Clockmaster showing the precise and delicate repairing of a watch, and a Brain Surgeon who operates on an Alzheimer patient" but the rhythms and textures of human industry that they reveal are remarkably similar. Kazma exhibits the films in various combinations that expose visual or thematic connections between them. The combinations create an inner logic revealing the deep connections that exist between the various modes of production. The workplace is a symbolic location, where many aspects of the human condition are revealed through the activities we witness. – Suzanne Egeran


*1971 in Istanbul, Turkey | Living and working in Istanbul, Turkey