Screening: This Ain't California

Salt Ulus

June 11, 2016 16.30 – 18.05

Thisaintcalifornia 2012 <i>This Ain’t California</i> [Burası Kaliforniya Değil] (2012) filminden bir kare
Goethe-Institut izniyle
Still from This Ain’t California (2012), with the permission of Goethe-Institut
This Ain’t California (2012)
Director: Marten Persiel
96 minutes
German; Turkish subtitles

Artist Sinan Logie’s engagement with the urban make-up of Ankara was developed through the act of skateboarding. His artistic and architectural practice, including the paintings in the exhibition Outside the sentence there was a city, have been inspired by this culturally unusual experience. To further elaborate on how one can relate to a city, and at the same time be freed of its social constraints and structures, through an act such as skateboarding, he proposed a screening of This Ain’t California.

The film follows a group of young people in East Germany who discover skateboarding in the 1980s. With their homemade boards they practice their art with excitement and passion on the crumbling concrete streets of the German Democratic Republic. Feeling unaccepted by the country and dismissive of the regime, their borrowed American subculture leaves the group somewhat alienated. While they are politically impartial, they fight with painted dreams of immortality to hold on to their skateboards and the pleasure of riding the city. This shares a story of the subversive power of fun in a part of Germany which had lost touch with its citizens.

Organized in parallel to Outside the sentence there was a city at SALT Ulus, this screening is realized in collaboration with Goethe-Institut.
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