Leaking time I – II & Bonds
Video & Blood on elastic bandage
04’18’’ – 13’43’’ & 260x10cm
2021
“Time has been scaled according to the human-being’s reproductivity. Human-being is being perceived as adult when they reach to reproduction ability even nowadays where we are not presuming sexual activities only as reproductive activity and embracing [still mostly heterosexual] desire. There is no space for Queerness in this time-scale.” Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu
In Leaking time I – II and Bonds, Leman Sevda Darıcıoğlu approaches on the effect of hegemonic time notion on the Queer body. Starting by questioning if there is such a thing as Queer time in current temporality we live in, Darıcıoğlu arrives to impossibility of thinking Queerness in the dominant time perception as life is scaled according to reproductivity in which Queer life doesn’t exist by its nature.
In Leaking time videos, Darıcıoğlu cuts her*self before the video shooting starts but doesn’t show cutting moment to the audience with the intention of not including an image could be possibly seen as a self-harm. Leaking time I starts with a vertical image of white painted arm in front of a white wall which is almost blending at some points and we watch a line of a blood shedding down, it draws the contour of the arm and drops for few times. Leaking time II starts with a horizontal image of a white painted hand with a tiny cut next to the thumb in front of a white wall, blood sheds, slowly fills the plug gap, sheds down and slowly congeals on the finger tip; we watch the cruor dropping for several times, each time after a certain while. While Leaking time I creates a beautiful image of a sculptural arm image with blood shed, in Leaking time II blood builds almost a disgusting feeling by congelation. Through these two beautiful and disgusting images of the blood and the images of white painted body parts in front of a white wall, two images of the blood, one beautiful and one disgusting and the images of white painted body parts in front of a white wall, Leaking time I – II addresses to the notions of Queer visibility/invisibility and the disgust towards Queerness and aestheticizated recognization.
Bonds, made by the artist by imprinting her* own blood into elastic bandage line, reminds us the impacts of Queer rejection in the current time regime. The blood imprinted bandage line generates a bridge between healing and suicide as piecing together a bandage, an accessory used to heal the wounded body part in general and used by Queer community as a tool to transform the body while breast-bounding and blood lines reminding suicidal cuts.
