Rhodesia

#18
Mustafa Kemal Yurttaş
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The project consists of images and texts taken from "gay dating" websites and applications. It focuses on queer versatility and identity politics and examines how this notion of versatility can be destroyed by showing all the differences in a homogenous manner.

Yurttaş tells in his project text: "This series are part of the installation called Rhodesia. The installation consists of a 90 seconds video loop of images and texts drawn from 'gay dating' websites and applications, and a 20-pages book made from tracing paper with A5 dimension and 20 "video-still" images and texts taken from the video.

For a similar view on the subject, one can refer to Tuna Erdem's essay in "Cinsellik Muamması" (1):

"… Identity politics...advocates similarities and even uniformities in people in every platform, rather than differences between them. Identity politics for homosexuals on the one hand, highlights the uniformities rather than differences between them, and on the other hand, they demand their rights by emphasizing that there is no difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals...

… Is it possible to talk about a queer existence in Turkey? ... to give a reliable answer to that question, one should scrutinize the homosexual practices in Turkey...to examine online sexual partner websites...these are the first things that come to mind.

Even going through these areas will help us to gather clues about an extensive and diverse sexual culture incomparable to the straight sexual culture of the dominant hetero-normative order."

On deviation, going astray and being marginal:

Not identity, but sexuality! Not homogenous sexuality, but sexual diversity!"

 

(1) Enigma of Sexuality,   Ed.: Cüneyt Çakırlar and Serkan Delice