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Solitary Acts #6

Nazli Dinçel

2015 00:10:50 United StatesEnglishColorStereo4:316mm film

Description

Wittnerchrome, Exacto Knife, 1.5mm Letter Punches, Hammer, Leather Puncher

This is a feminist critique of the Oedipal complex. The filmmaker recounts an abortion she had in 2009. The aborted child survives and becomes her lover. Her subject is filmed in a private act, complicating what could be an act of the solitary.

There are three endings to the film. First is a recount of the child's earliest sexual memory, similar to the filmmaker's. The text is hammered on the film with letter punches. Second is a letter written to the filmmaker from her subject, is read by the filmmaker, the image is punched out with a leather puncher and carefully replaced into blackness not to lose motion. A pop song from 2009 is used, the one the filmmaker heard while driving in the taxi from her abortion. The film concludes by a letter written to the subject by the filmmaker. In this third part the audio is broken apart and the letter is reversed, mimicking the reverse masturbation (the image).

About Nazli Dinçel

Nazlı Dinçel’s hand-made work reflects on experiences of disruption. Dinçel records the body in context with arousal, immigration, dislocation and desire with the film object: its texture, color and the tractable emulsion of the 16mm material. Their use of text as image, language and sound imitates the failure of memory and their own displacement within a western society.

Born in Ankara, Turkey, Dinçel immigrated to the United Sates at age 17. Dinçel resides in Milwaukee, WI where they are currently building an artist run film laboratory. They obtained an MFA in filmmaking from UW-Milwaukee. Their works have been exhibited globally including the Museum of Modern art in New York, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Vienna Modern art Museum, Buenos Aires International Film Festival, Walker Art Center and Hong Kong International Film Festival.

They were recently a 2019/2020 Radcliffe Institute fellow for advanced study at Harvard University, and a 2019 Emerging Artist recipient of the Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship.

In addition to exhibiting with institutions, Dinçel avidly self-distributes and tours with their work in micro-cinemas, artist run laboratories and alternative screening spaces in order to support and circulate handmade filmmaking to communities outside of institutions.

See also: Nazli Dinçel: An Interview