Annika Eriksson. I Am the Dog That Was Always Here (Loop). Video loop, 7’, 2013
The video work I Am the Dog That Was Always Here (Loop), set on the outskirts of Istanbul, focuses on moments of transition and marginalised experiences of time as seen through the lens of a street dog. Having been moved by the authorities to peripheral pockets and no man’s lands outside the expanding city, the dogs are continuously moving along lines of gentrification and corporate city making. Through looping and repetition, Eriksson relates this process to an experience of time: exploring the present as a complex gap between past and future, one in which an increasing process of erasure, spurred on by a shrinking public realm, also removes other registers of being and seeing. The work was originally commissioned for the 13th Istanbul Biennial in 2013.