Crystal & Flame

Inspired by Italian author Italo Calvino’s unfinished book of lectures, Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988), Ergin Çavuşoğlu weaves three seemingly unconnected but ultimately complimentary narratives into a dramatic meditation on social norms and moral codes. In one scenario, a man is seen cutting and polishing a diamond; in another, a group of actors rehearses The House with the Mezzanine, an 1896 play by Anton Chekov about a clash between peasants and city dwellers; and in a third, a group of friends discusses, over a Turkish meal, a proposed film about children forced to smuggle black-market goods across the treacherous Turkish-Syrian border. Where Calvino explores the application of ideas around polarity and regenerative force in a literary context, Çavuşoğlu makes them visual through the metaphorical opposition of images of crystal (the diamond) and flame (the restaurant’s grill).