Ships move, ghostlike, between two shores. Some of these ships carry oil. Some carry containers full of the things we consume. The two shores are often cast as the shores of Europe and Asia. They are the shores of the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul. It is nighttime. We can see lights across the waterway. Some of the shots are from one shore and some from the other. The ships move both ways-right to left and left to right. There dark hulls and superstructures move across the lights of the other continent, momentarily blacking them out. All of this is happening on four large screens that the viewer is invited to walk between. The viewer is mobile like the ships, looking right and left as he negotiates his own passage. He hears sound too: radio transmissions regulating the maritime traffic. Ships are the vehicles that make the world work. They seem unremarkable: invisible even. Ships are old, almost as old as humanity. They move across the earth's surface relatively slowly. They do not attract the attention of the theorists. [...]

Tim Cresswell


Catalogue excerpt
fast forward 2. The Power of Motion
Media Art Sammlung Goetz
Editors: Ingvild Goetz and Stephan Urbaschek
Ostfildern, Hatje Cantz, 2010

Ergin Cavusoglu, Downward Straits, 2004
4-channel video installation, color, sound
Edition 1/3
3' Loop