Görkem Ergun's video, "Hidden Subject", situates the female subject from the turn of the century in the realm of "memory, recollection and fear." While a lot of objects from the past remain lodged in memory, the most familiar things begin to feel estranged. As we feel the pain of the trauma of a world of madness we think about the motion of the head hidden by the hair.
We get an uncanny sensation from seeing only the head moving on a body that's as still as a statue. How can memory be preserved in this uncanny situation, caused by a chain of terrifying events?
This feeling, which many artists use while they are making art, has clearly become the object of "Hidden Subject". The effect of a hidden trauma, of a violent object blow to the body and the spirit creastes "a halo of uncanniness" around the head. What subject does the odd appearance of the head and hair swiveling from side to side conceal? To what extent can the blow received by the ego be hidden? At what point does the effect manifest itself violently?
The violence of Hidden Subject, which we can call "the expression of the traumatic crisis" effects us in a single motion. Keeping in mind Freud's 1919 text,"The Uncanny", Görkem Ergun shows us the eerie and dark side of this uncanny-seeming single motion image. He leads us to think about the causes of that motion. With the "arresting" effect of a trauma that could affect any one of us, we remain arrested by the motion of the image. The ceaseless motion imprisons itself within a genuine space. It remains tied to the physical manifestation of an impact hidden within memory.
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