Mecca clocktower11/22/2023 Köken Ergun (born 1976, Istanbul) is a Turkish artist working in film and installation. Their cellphone videos capture the city from the perspective of an outsider granted a momentary peek in, focusing not on the loss of local neighborhoods but on the spectacle of demolition, the crowning of new towers and the quotidian moments of the workday. The film looks at the booming development in Mecca from the point of view of the construction workers, who are largely migrant laborers from elsewhere in the Middle East as well as from South Asia. Saudi Arabian artist Ahmed Mater’s Leaves Fall in All Seasons (2013) is a compilation of mobile phone footage from foreign workers employed at the clock tower and other constructions in Mecca. The second film of the evening offers a totally different perspective. While The Mecca Clock Tower documentary focuses on the engineering and architectural efforts behind the development, fabrication and installation of the clock tower it offers a glimpse on rapid and irrecoverable change in Mecca from the perspective of the developer. There is even plans for bulldozing the site of prophet Muhammed’s birthplace to build a new presidential palace. Up to 95% of Mecca's millennium-old buildings have been destroyed only recently, to be replaced with luxury hotels, apartments and shopping malls. The building is one of many that have been built on top of historical Islamic sites in Mecca. Built by the Bin Ladin Group, this luxury complex shadows the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site, which for centuries used to be the tallest structure in the city. It sits on top of the controversial Abraj Al-Bait building, a government owned complex of seven skyscrapers built after the demolition of a 18th century Ottoman citadel. 35 times larger than Big Ben and adorned in over 98 million glass mosaic tiles with 24-carat gold leaf, the Mecca Clock tower is the world’s largest. The first is a documentary produced by the German architectural company SL Rasch on their large scale construction project in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Ergun proposes a discussion to follow the screening of these two films. The focus for the evening will be the radical changes in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. Köken Ergun’s response to choose a film “that represents our time” is two films that look on the same subject from completely different perspectives.
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