Nothing

Kutluğ Ataman’s Nothing is a single-channel video work in which white calligraphic text set against a black background rotates around an axis. At certain points in the cycle of the animation the words briefly coalesce into recognisable images before revolving back into text. Nothing is part of a 2003 series of six video works titled Animated words in which Ataman ‘addresses the separate semiotic premises of word and image, which he shows merging, separating, and merging again. An image pregnant with meaning hides words; words become moving images, as if aspiring to visual status.’ (Daftari, Fereshteh, Islamic or not, from ‘Without boundary: Seventeen ways of looking’, exhibition catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2006. p.12).