HD video
Turkish and English, engl. subtitles
37:30 mins
2013

In his most recent video „Street Cat Deluxe“, which was created during an extended stay in Istanbul.
The offscreen monologues are spoken by six people from different backgrounds living in Istanbul. Anton alienates the interviews by associating each with a different cat. Thus the narrativeworks formally by instructions of the artist, but in its content trough their own viewpoints and perspectives Anton shows street cats talking about problems of gentrification in the Turkish metropolis: there is something alienating about this humanization, and it also allows the work to utilize the irritation arising from unusually linked video and audio tracks.

L‘homme en révolte - this is the central theme of the young artist of Rumanian descent. And yet he is not interested in the emphatic gesture of resistance for its own sake, but in its symbolic depiction, its anchoring in continually permutating life-worlds and conditions, which charge it with energy. The work involves a dialectic tension between places and non-places, between social norms and transgressions, between damnation and salvation. Sauve qui peut (la vie)!

The film was produced just prior to the riots at Istanbuls Taksim Gezi Park, that was determined to be replaced by a shopping mall in May 2013.

Text: Thomas Miessgang





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