1+8

SALT Galata, Level -1

1+8 is a dynamic eight-screen video installation about Turkey and her eight neighbors based on the feature film of the same name directed by Cynthia Madansky and Angelika Brudniak. Each screen features life on both sides of the border, from Armenia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, Iran, Iraq, Nakchivan to Syria.

1+8 chronicles the people and communities living on Turkey’s borders through their own stories as shot by Madansky and Brudniak during two years of field research. The installation includes a vast amount of footage not included in the film, elevating 1+8 to a polyphony of voices that are ordinarily funneled through the lens of mainstream media and often only during a crisis or a catastrophe.

The exhibition tackles complex questions with compassion and openness, offering a space for debate around compelling and critical issues with regard to daily life as experienced across divided landscapes. Contemplating the border from both sides offers a dual perspective. Each projection becomes a reflection of “the self” and a window to “the other.” The installation wraps all eight borders around the viewer revealing the relevance and complexity of Turkey’s geopolitical gestalt. It raises questions of identity, identification and nationality. The viewer’s attention is drawn to and shifted by a choreography that introduces one voice at a time while the other projections show silent images from adjacent borderlands.

“The installation invites the audience to become immersed in the contemplation of life at the eight borders of Turkey. The multi-screen projection lends itself to experience simultaneity and interconnection on a physical level. The choreography of videos on the eight screens, is created dynamically, with the help of a custom made algorithmic computer program allowing for a unique viewer experience, whereby the projections will never appear the same way twice.”
Cynthia Madansky and Angelika Brudniak

1+8 the documentary movie was made possible in part by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture (BMUKK), City of Vienna, Art Matters, Land Salzburg and New York State Council on the Arts.

The installation is supported by a grant from the U.S. Consulate General, İstanbul, Turkey.


Video post-production and color correction: Deniz Solaker
Software development: Hüseyin Kuşçu [Kakare Interactive]
Sound editing, design and mix: Cenker Kökten
Time codes for subtitling: Orton Akıncı


All of the interviews have been translated into English and Turkish.


Cynthia Madansky is an artist based in İstanbul and New York. She works in the media of film, video and drawing. Her films have been exhibited at international film festivals and art museums. She has received numerous grants and awards including from Art Matters, the New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and the Jerome Foundation.

Angelika Brudniak is an artist based in Vienna and İstanbul. Her films have been screened in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. Her work has been supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture (BMUKK), the City of Vienna and Land Salzburg.

Statement by Cynthia Madansky and Angelika Brudniak

“For the last three years we have been working on a feature art documentary titled 1+8 about Turkey and her eight neighbors/borders. The film was completed in March 2012, premiered in April 2012 at the Istanbul Film Festival and to date screened at SALT Galata, Dersim Human Rights Film Festival and at Documenta Madrid where it was awarded the Second Prize for feature long documentaries.

Producing the film 1+8 was a profound experience for us. It involved traveling for almost two years, shooting in sixteen very diverse locations in nine countries, meeting, getting to know and filming hundreds of borderlanders — people rarely seen, voices seldom heard. The film is 131 minutes long and contains only a fraction of the audio and video material we collected.

We have been excited by the idea of making an installation of 1+8 ever since we started to work on this topic because the form of multi-screen projection lends itself perfectly to comprehend simultaneity and interconnection on a physical level. 1+8 invites the audience to become immersed in the contemplation of life at the eight borders of Turkey.

The protagonists of the installation are the borderlanders — individual portraits and personal encounters — revealing what connects and separates people who live at the edge of their country, bringing up questions of identity, identification and the nation as imagined community.”

With the support of Consulate of the United States of America