Watch Digital Dancers Electrify the Streets of Istanbul

Are you open to the idea of oth­er­world­ly beings mov­ing amongst us, benign but unseen?

Direc­tor Gökalp Gönen seems to be in the above video for jazz inno­va­tor Ilhan Ersahin’s “Hur­ri-Mitan­ni” (Good News).

Things kick off in a decid­ed­ly low key manner—a young woman sets off for a night­time stroll through the streets of Istan­bul, her face delib­er­ate­ly obscured by a snug­ly tied black and white cloth.

Turn­ing a cor­ner, she pass­es an anony­mous fig­ure, wrapped head to toe in sim­i­lar stripes.

Does this unex­pect­ed sight elic­it any dis­cernible reac­tion?

Our guess is no, but we can’t say for sure, as the cam­era los­es inter­est in the young woman, opt­ing to linger with the svelte and exu­ber­ant mum­my, who’s danc­ing like no one is watch­ing.

Else­where, oth­er increas­ing­ly col­or­ful beings per­form vari­a­tions on the mum­my’s box step, alone or in groups.

As their out­fits become more fan­ci­ful, Gönen employs CGI and 3D ani­ma­tion to unhitch them from the laws of physics and famil­iar bound­aries of human anato­my.

They pixel­late, sprout extra legs, project rays rem­i­nis­cent of string art, appear more veg­etable than ani­mal.…

Some grow to Godzil­la-like pro­por­tions, shed­ding lit­tle humanoid forms and bound­ing across the Bosporus.

A small spiky ver­sion ignores the paws of a curi­ous kit­ten.

These fan­tas­ti­cal, face­less beings are invis­i­ble to passer­by. Only one, per­form­ing on an out­door stage, seems eager for inter­ac­tion. None of them seen to mean any harm.

They just wan­na boo­gie…

…or do they?

The director’s state­ment is not eas­i­ly parsed in trans­la­tion:

A group of anony­mous wan­der­ing the streets. Every­where is very crowd­ed but iden­ti­ties are very few. Try­ing to be some­one is as dif­fi­cult as writ­ing your name on the waves left by this fast-mov­ing giant ship. Every­one is every­one and every­one is nobody any­more. This silence could only exist through glow­ing screens, even if it found itself nooks. On those loud screens, they remind­ed who actu­al­ly had the pow­er by enter­ing the places that were said to be inac­ces­si­ble. But they did­n’t even care about this pow­er. The areas where we had pas­sion­ate con­ver­sa­tions about it for days were a “now like this” place for us, but they looked like this to say “no, it was actu­al­ly like that” but they did not speak much. They had the charm of a cat. When they said, “Look, it was like this,” they became part of every­thing that made it “like this” and became unno­tice­able like paving stones. They just want­ed to have a lit­tle fun, to be able to live a few years with­out wor­ry. In five min­utes, fif­teen sec­onds at most, they exist­ed and left.

A few crea­tures who got left on the cut­ting room floor can be seen danc­ing on Gönen’s Insta­gram pro­file.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Rare Grooves on Vinyl from Around the World: Hear Curat­ed Playlists of Ara­bic, Brazil­ian, Bol­ly­wood, Sovi­et & Turk­ish Music

The Dance The­atre of Harlem Dances Through the Streets of NYC: A Sight to Behold

Istan­bul Cap­tured in Beau­ti­ful Col­or Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Top­ka­ki Palace’s Impe­r­i­al Gate & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.


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