Horizontal Execution, 2020
Video Performance
Diren Demir
In Horizontal Execution, Diren Demir moves steadily toward a screen until the rope around their neck fixes the body in place. The moment of suspension becomes a study of how agency is narrowed by forces that appear voluntary yet operate as constraint. The work reflects on the tension between choice and fate within contemporary media ecologies: we move toward images that promise orientation, yet the same images script our gestures, expectations, and thresholds of endurance. The performance examines how bodies are disciplined by what they are compelled to watch, how spectatorship becomes a site of subtle coercion, and how consent is manufactured through repeated exposure. Demir stages this collision between self-directed movement and imposed trajectory, inviting a reading of the body as both actor and instrument in a system where autonomy is under continuous attack.
Diren Demir 