Spectrum of Redundancy: Places in-Betweenness

Join the Department of Sociology for an insightful open seminar with Professor Ergin Cavusoglu.

Ergin Çavuşoğlu is Professor of Contemporary Art at Middlesex University. Ergin was born in Bulgaria and graduated from the National School of Fine Arts Iliya Petrov, Sofia in 1987. He received a BA from Marmara University, Istanbul, an MA from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and a Ph.D. from the University of Portsmouth. Çavuşoğlu co-represented Turkey at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. He was shortlisted for the Beck’s Futures Prize in 2004 and for Artes Mundi 4 in 2010.

Ergin will focus on the broader themes of in-betweenness, mobility and transient places. The concept of liminality is central to his art and research, which he has been exploring in a diversity of media, including narrative film, video and sound installations and sculpture. Ergin will map a journey that spans across geographies and time, whilst pushing through regime changes and negotiating cultural differences. The conceptual approach to place and non-place in his work is very much encapsulated by the notion of “conjoined practices of travel and translation" as termed by James Clifford.

The pattern of literary references in his large-scale narrative video installation works unfold a series of moral parables that have a notional relevance to contemporary art and the conditions of cultural production. The spatiality and the immersive qualities of his installations further emphasise and aid the understanding of these concepts in the ways they are experienced by the viewer.
 
He will introduce a range of projects including Desire Lines / Tarot & Chess / (2016-17), Lundy, Louis, Barge and Troy (2014), Backbench (2010), Crystal & Flame (2010), Liminal Crossing (2009), Quintet Without Borders (2007) and Point of Departure (2006) among others.

This seminar is part of an open seminar series, hosted by the Department of Sociology.