CANKUŞ (2021-2023)

Animation series - 4 episodes

Cankuş is a 4-episode experimental animation series and a hybrid work that merges video art with cinematic language. Its episodes have been screened internationally at film and video art festivals, including ECRÃ in MAM Rio (Rio de Janeiro, BR). The project also extends into an immersive installation format. Two distinct versions of the installation have been presented at OVNi Festival (Nice, FR) and CURRENTS Festival (Santa Fe, USA), where I recreate the series' distinctive interiors and textures in physical space. Cankuş is a walk through a psycho-political space in post-covid Turkey affected by inflation, authoritarianism and unequal urbanization. It describes the anxiety and the alienation caused by this context, while searching for humor and poetry in the act of surviving.

Cankuş addresses Turkey's authoritarian reality where the ruling power seeks to infiltrate and dominate every sphere, from the streets to the home. The government that completely dominates the public sphere, both through its shaping of the city (unplanned, unequal, and profit-driven urbanization) and through the constant omnipresence of propaganda, extends its influence into the personal and intimate sphere via the media.

Cankuş, the main character, watches the gradual shrinking of the democratic space in the Turkish parliament (Ep.1) or the government’s propaganda spots (Ep.4) on TV when they’re home. When they step outside, they wander as if in a dream through the city that’s been completely transformed over the past 20 years by the same government’s aggressive construction policies. They repeatedly encounter propaganda visuals about those very policies, and the same politicians' faces, again and again, on billboards in the streets and on screens in public transport.

In Cankuş, reality is depicted with little alteration. For Ülo Pikkov, adopting this approach in animation means entering the genre of “anti-animation” and portraying a dystopian world. Drawing on Soviet animations, also produced in authoritarian contexts, Pikkov states: "Compared to live-action narrative cinema, which creates dystopias mainly by means of staged fantasies, animated film works exactly the other way around: dystopia is typically based on realism. An animated film that breaks with its essential paradigm of fantasy and strives to represent reality or depict a documentary plot produces a dystopian view of the world." In this sense, Cankuş is an example of anti-animation, using actual sound recordings and footage from Istanbul and Turkish TV to incorporate Turkey’s contemporary reality.

In the series, government propaganda is reproduced with little change, pushed into absurdity to achieve its satire. For exemple, a frequent trope in Turkey today, the “we built the biggest…” advert, appears as “we built the biggest zeppelin landing area”. In another instance, the audio from the propagandistic TOGG launch ceremony remains almost unchanged while the visual track is completely subverted. (Ep.4)

Created over 2 years of research, Cankuş is where I forged a personal audiovisual style defined by a DIY, mixed-media aesthetic. I developed an authorial approach to combining and editing heterogeneous materials, bringing together hand drawings, photography, live footage, animation, graphic elements, found online images, creative coding and video synthesis.

The near-real yet digitally altered textures and settings mirror the character’s
entanglement with the media and the digital world. Spaces transformed from real photographs, such as Cankuş’s bathroom, or the overlayering of realistic images onto pixelated and distorted textures, evoke a sense of alienation, and a form of “digital psychedelia” where different realms blend into each other. We cannot clearly distinguish when Cankuş is under the influence of media and the ruling authority, when they are day-dreaming, or when they are in objective reality.

THE EPISODES

English subtitles are available via the CC button

EP. 1: The state must be ruled by backflips! (2021)
1:40 minutes
https://youtu.be/YGOyX8eQq4U

EP. 2: There’s a blank in my memory (2021)
2:59 minutes
https://youtu.be/h6OFNHNnqI8

EP. 3: Birdie’s Dream (2022)
3:00 minutes
https://youtu.be/GT_HoBvxmGg

EP. 4: Walking Around My Head (2023)
09:47 minutes
https://youtu.be/v4C2543OfZs

INSTALLATIONS

The installations developed around Cankuş parallel the series’ merging of realities. Through uncanny-textured digital prints placed on walls, floors, and windows, as well as objects from the series—such as Cankuş’s T-shirt and the clock from their living room—the animated universe is re-created within the exhibition space. The episodes are shown on screens embedded in this environment. In this setting, the boundaries between the animated world and the physical space blur and screens operate as spatial thresholds, extending the logic of the Cankuş universe into the viewer’s embodied experience.

Currents New Media & Technology Festival (2025)

Installation video :
https://youtube.com/shorts/CdDfKpe-xGM?si=mmao5J4Jw3pA7z2Y

OVNi Video Art Festival (2023)
Sud Emergence Awards

For OVNi where each video artist transforms a hotel room in Nice, I transformed the view from the room’s windows into a distorted city. The installation received the Sud Emergence Award.

Installation video :
https://youtube.com/shorts/RYyMMHh88lE?si=o7FyaFHVmkwZ1359

Pixel x Pixel, The University of Texas at Dallas – October 2025 – Dallas, USA
CURRENTS Festival, Museo Cultural de Santa Fe –June 2025 – Santa Fe, USA
Short Cuts Berlin, Madame Claude – April 2025 – Berlin, Germany
Rawy Films Pop-up Cinema, Z-inema – April 2025 – Berlin, Germany
Olhares do Mediterrâneo, Cinema São Jorge – November 2024 – Lisbon, Portugal
3x3 Short Film Program, Beyoğlu Sineması – October 2024 – Istanbul, Turkey
Festival ECRÃ̃, MAM Rio – June–July 2024 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Refest, Culturehub – June 2024 – Online
Cadence Video Poetry Festival, Northwest Film Forum – April 2024 – Seattle, USA
Si cinéma – Art School Films Festival – March 2024 – Hérouville Saint-Clair, France
Festival OVNI, West End Hotel – Nov.–Dec. 2023 – Nice, France