As Days Started Walking

Description: Hande Sever’s video work Günler Yürüdüğünde (As Days Started Walking) critically examines the dehumanization of political dissidents. The piece traces the origins of this systematic oppression to the introduction of the Hollerith tabulator—a punchcard-based proto-computer used to sort populations. By juxtaposing found footage from Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) with her mother’s letters recounting the aftermath of the 1980 Turkish coup d’état, Sever weaves together personal testimony and historical narrative. Through this lens, the work exposes the insidious tactics employed by the military to target dissidents, revealing how practices of indexing and categorization functioned as instruments of exclusion, repression and death under military rule.

Materials: Letters written by the artist’s mother in 1983, video footage from the Turkish Radio and Television Broadcast (TRT) Archives: student protest at Istanbul University, 1979; student protest at Taksim Square, 1979; military search, 1980; military operation at Ankara University, 1980; military check points, 1980; military operation to student house, 1981; mass trials, 1982.

Image Description: Video installation view, ‘Hande Sever: As Days Started Walking’, Czong Institute for Contemporary Art, 2020.