# contents

> Installation (2017) by Ece Eldek for the exhibition Dark Utopia: papers and out-of-reach pencils turn the space into a test site between utopia and dystopia.

- URL: https://eceeldek.com/contents/
- Published: 2020-12-27
- Updated: 2021-01-21
- Author: Ece Eldek

![Visitor in front of Contents / İçindekiler, a wall of pencils with paper strips piled on the floor](https://eceeldek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/contents_01-1.png)

installation, 2017

![Visitor in front of Contents / İçindekiler, a wall of pencils with paper strips piled on the floor](https://eceeldek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/contents_01-1-1024x683.png)

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![Paper strips hanging from rows of pencils fixed to the wall in Contents / İçindekiler](https://eceeldek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/contents_03.png)

Thinking on utopia starts with the construction of space. In the exhibition, _“Dark Utopia”_, which is searching for answers for how we dream of life to be; with the work entitled _“Contents / İçindekiler”_, while positioning the work between the tension of utopia and dystopia, Eldek makes the space itself the test space of utopia. As a result of this test, the artist displays the images of other lives (the viewers’). In _“Contents / İçindekiler”_, a space has been constructed for subjects that has perceived the thought of dark utopia, on the heaviness dark utopia bears. Papers in space and the pencils impossible to reach involve the silent witnessing of the trauma. While constructing the work, Eldek wondered curiously whether this would become an interactive work. In the last days of the exhibition, an outside intervention has taken place.

![Visitors writing on paper strips inside the installation Contents / İçindekiler](https://eceeldek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/contents_04.png)

![Installation Contents / İçindekiler: paper strips falling from a wall of pencils, Dark Utopia, 2017](https://eceeldek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/contents_05-1.png)