Köken Ergun and Fetra Danu

China, Beijing, I Love You!, 2024

 

Köken Ergun with Fetra Danu

China, Beijing, I Love You!, 2024

Single-channel video, 34:55

Supported by SAHA

 

The result of a three-year research project, China, Beijing, I Love You! is a collaboration between Köken Ergun and Indonesian animation artist Fetra Danu. “Invest in Indonesia / Make sure that you don’t miss it!” goes the refrain of a song featured in China, Beijing, I Love You! The film is an animation that charts with documentary rigor the Maritime Silk Road, China’s strategic initiative to increase investment and trade that passes through the Malacca Strait and traverses the Indian Ocean with ports in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Kenya, before reaching Europe through the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, Nickel and Cobalt are the film’s protagonists, who face extraction and exile through international networks of profit and consumption for the production of EV batteries, mobile phones, and missile technology. While a group of businessmen touts investment as the way forward to national prosperity, the grievances of Nickel are echoed by the political unrest of workers in processing plants, who protest for better working conditions, environmental protection, and health safeguards. Along with the pleas of Nickel and Cobalt to be returned to the ground where they belong, ecological depletion and health hazards are reminders that different forms of planetary cohesion are needed in the world. 

 

The films and installations of Köken Ergun (b. 1976, Istanbul) often deal with communities that are not known to a greater public and the importance of ritual in such groups. Ergun also collaborates with ethnographers, historians, and sociologists for publications and lecture series as extensions to his artistic practice. He has exhibited internationally at institutions including  Protocinema, New York (2013), Jakarta Biennale (2015, 2021), Para-Site Hong Kong (2016), and Documenta 14 (2017).