Köken Ergun

Born 1976 in Istanbul, Türkiye

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany and Istanbul, Türkiye

UNSW Galleries

HEROES, DEAD, TOURISM, 2024

multi-channel video installation, duration variable

Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney with generous assistance from Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and SAHA Association

Courtesy the artist

Each year, in a modern-day pilgrimage, thousands of Turkish, Australian, and New Zealander tourists descend upon Gallipoli (Çanakkale), the site of one of the First World War’s most significant battles, where guides tailor their tours to specific audiences. HEREOES, DEAD, TOURISM follows more than 30 tour groups as they wander through Gallipoli’s graveyards, visit its memorials, and watch re-enactments of the events of 1915–16; a kind of war-tourism. Both intimate and sceptical, the work investigates how the site is shaped in the distinct national consciousness of those who fought over it.

On the craggy peninsula where nations became violently entangled, history isn’t shared; two versions of events, two truths, perhaps two lies, were rolled out, involving soldiers from each side. Despite a devastating defeat by the Ottomans, it was at Gallipoli that the ‘Anzac Spirit’ first emerged as evidence of a unique Australian identity distinct from that of the British Empire. In modern day Türkiye, the defeat of foreign invaders – even at the price of tens of thousands of lives – led by Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk), the founder of the modern republic, constitutes one of its most powerful myths. In any case, for each side, this was a triumph, and for each it was they who were up against impossible odds.

Investigating the war-tourism industry, artist Köken Ergun seeks to unveil the disparate legacies of Gallipoli for the warring nations. In the same way that loved ones carve names into the solid rock of gravestones, forgetting that wind, weather, and time will buffet them into a blur, Ergun watches tourists reinscribe their mythologies through ritual and routine, forgetting that each war has two sides, and every battle is fought twice.

Köken Ergun is an artist from Turkey with a background in performing arts. His films often deal with communities that are not known to a greater public and the importance of ritual in such groups. Ergun usually spends extended lengths of time with his subjects before starting to shoot and engages in long research periods for his projects. He also collaborates with ethnographers, historians and sociologists as extensions to his artistic practice. Apart from his art practice, Ergun is also the co-founder of After the Archive?, an Istanbul–based initiative that questions the role and function of archives in public memory, and KIRIK, a space for people and subjects in the cracks.

Read more about the 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, by purchasing the catalogue here.