The scourges of the contemporary art world are many, but arguably the largest of them has to do with the widening disconnect between the sanctity of artistic truth, on one hand, and the proliferation of truth-seekers, on the other. Cultural democratization has its champions and naysayers alike; what both sides can agree upon, however, is that art has increasingly turned to performance and embodiment — beyond the simple unity of the text — for quick, impulsive validation. Aslı (Manolya Maya), the disaffected protagonist of Melik Kuru’s debut, is a twenty-something photography student who, for a while, resists the siren song of the art market. The film camera she operates sojourns around the bustling networks of Istanbul, capturing not faces but hands. Hands, being two of Aslı’s most intimate expressions of her craft, constitute the politically charged subject of the witty and effervescent Dump of Untitled Pieces: they perform and realize the fruits of labor. But what use is labor in a field as visual and subjective as hers?
Set amid the doldrums of Turkey’s failing economy yet generalizable to a cynically anti-art state of the world, Dump of Untitled Pieces proffers a snarky if ultimately sincere critique of the profit motive and its hijacking of cultural institutions. The film’s jazzy score (by Efe Demiral) and sultry black-and-white mise-en-scène (courtesy of Barış Aygen) belie its overwhelming claustrophobia, whether in the cozy if confined apartment Aslı shares with her gamer friend, Murat (Ekremcan Arslandağ), or in the pristine and gentrified districts lined with galleries whose fortunes appear perpetually closed off to outsiders. The duo are relatively insulated from immediate destitution; Aslı’s estranged father has extended a financial olive branch on the condition that she return to law school. But a wider aimlessness persists for the childhood friends. They see no exit in their dreams, certainly no stability to lean on, and rather than sell out, the platonic housemates commit to a relationship with inner truth and beauty. For Aslı, this means reinvigorating her feisty and uncompromising approach to her creations.
Even this, she soon learns, does not prevent the art world from co-opting her pose and message into serving the very neoliberal machine she has rallied against. As Aslı ventures to pitch her portraiture, with Murat serving ad hoc as her quick-thinking manager, icy elitism proves almost too potent and pervasive a nemesis. A nasty encounter with one creepy gallery owner (Tülin Özen) finds Aslı violent and vindictive, only to give way to the humiliating terms offered by Mete (Tugrul Tulek), another gallery owner, for her work. Throughout Dump of Untitled Pieces, Kuru paints the age-old struggle between the makers of art and their patrons within the film’s specific milieu of youthful idealism. Certain flourishes, including a third-act metafictional aside, provoke not so much as they memorialize the subversive potential inherent in artistic expression. Yet the film’s title works equally to desacralize it: for every Van Gogh living in anonymity in his lifetime, there are a thousand who remain unknown for eternity. Dump of Untitled Pieces is but a wistful accompaniment to this tune.
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