Routledge
This book examines the historical and contemporary tensions around mobility and identity in Europe in relation to experimental moving image practices in contemporary art and cinema. Drawing on theories of migrant and diasporic cinema, projected image art, and mobility studies, Bayraktar provides historically situated close-readings of films, videos, and cinematic installations that concern diverse mobilities across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The geopolitical focus of the book, Europe, is at the same time understood as a site of contention: the works analyzed challenge territorially bounded conceptions of identity and culture; they establish a non-Western counter-geography of Europe, which has produced multiple "others" in its constant efforts to recompose its identity and borders. This interdisciplinary study underscores the ways European ideals of mobility and fluidity are deeply enmeshed with immobility, forced migration, illegalization, inequality, racism, and xenophobia. Ultimately, Bayraktar asserts that recent transformations in the cinematic form parallel Europe’s concurrent geopolitical transformations: As European borders have multiplied and become highly flexible, expanding to non-European territories and manifesting themselves in European metropolitan centers, airports, ports, and detention centers, the aesthetic borders between cinema and art have also become blurred, producing a new form of moving image art that defies easy categorization. This shift is contextualized in relation to the broader 'cinematic turn' in contemporary art seen in the growing prominence of screen-based works and cinematic installations in galleries, international art exhibitions, and biennials worldwide.
