video, 2016
“Ben bir yoksun un um / I’m a flour in absence” is a poem of Ece Eldek. In this video work with the same title, a worker’s hand is trying to cut the bread to transform it into flour. Worker does this in such a long period of time and in consequence he transforms into what he does, he becomes the work itself. He becomes what he has created, everything becomes integrated and other elements disappear, it becomes deprived of itself.
In this work, the idea is expressed over the flour and bread cycle. Flour becomes bread and people who work in this sector are involved in this cycle, over and over again, as they crumble, as they disintegrate and as they lose their selves, they become the flour. Within automation of the system, how fragmentation, disintegration, annihilation occurs, and how the self is lost are among the subjects criticized. This is a side effect of heavy industrialism over the people. The system fragment people into little flour pieces, shapes them as it wills and disintegrates them, reshapes them again and disintegrates again. While people are imprisoned in the cycle, stuck in the routines and the repetition, the real consciousness is lost, which means they are no longer able to question the system, their awareness is lost.