Ritual - 5-channel videoinstallation - each 25 min loop, variable dimensions - 2005

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For his video loop installation -Ritual-, Nasan Tur accompanied a devout Muslim from Berlin in his ritual washing - called abdest - over a period of several weeks. The cleaning of hands, arms, feet, face, and head serves to prepare the believer for the five daily prayers. The size of these close-up images -presented in a semi-circle of five large projections - makes them intimate and physical; but although they place the body and the purifying water in the foreground, they maintain a respectful distance to what is shown. Tur is interested in a sensual communication of the ritual act, an act with stands for all the life-long, selfimposed processes of purification, and which in Tur«s presentation reveals something of its manic and excessive character. In an endless loop without beginning or end, the emphasis in not on the narrative moment but on directly experienced emotion and a - by all means - also critical view of spirituality. -Valeria Schulte-Fischedick

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Installation view Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, Germany. 

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