Loop Lab Busan
Esther Schipper is pleased to participate in Loop Lab Busan 2025 with solo presentation by Cemile Sahin. We are presenting here video work ROAD RUNNER, which premiered at Sahin's solo exhibition at our Berlin gallery earlier this year.
ROAD RUNNER imagines a dystopian future in which killer drones have seized control and established a brutal order. It tells the story of Bêrîtan, who struggles to free her sister from digital captivity in a parallel Virtual Reality. Inspired by the ubiquity of games such as GTA (Grand Theft Auto) or Counter Strike, ROAD RUNNER is a mash-up of narrative strategies from film, TV, video games and social media platforms. It’s hybrid aesthetics draw on the quick, direct communication of TikTok videos as well as on the tough, militaristic do-or-die storytelling of gaming culture.
The film’s narrative fictionalizes a major theme in Sahin’s work: drones as concrete instruments of surveillance and military intervention. With it, she continues to explore the connection between video games, military training, authoritarian regimes, and arms trade, and takes drones as a larger symbol of the entanglement of entertainment, corporate and authoritarian powers. Thus, drones and the impact of weapons are important recurring themes explored for example in her work Gewehr im Schrank (Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden, 2023), and Drone Valley (Biennale in Lyon, 2022).
Cemile Sahin’s film ROAD RUNNER is presented in collaboration with CIRCA and funded by #CIRCAECONOMY, a circular model supporting the free public programme and the annual CIRCA PRIZE, of which Cemile Sahin was a recipient in 2023.
