Back to Nancy Atakan "Side Effects"
“Side Effects”
Digital Prints and
2 min 27 sec. Digital video
2005
On this globe, we are all neighbors. We share the earth. No one has more right to occupy it than anyone else. Why do these simple and true statements seem so strange? Former life styles have become invalid. Modernization has produced masses of garbage as well as unemployable humans barely surviving on the outside of the system. Globalization seems to be adding refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers to the already problematic volumes of industrial waste.
Over the last three years as I have traveled from Istanbul to the U.S. to Spain to Australia and to England, I have photographed human and material waste. In doing this I have walked miles and miles, always on the outside, always watching, always as a bystander. As an artist, I feel touched by the beauty of these “side effects”. But, at the same time, I feel anger towards an unidentifiable, untouchable power.