Burak Delier
Endless Ends (Edtion 1/5), digital fine art print, 60x90cm. 2012
Endless Ends (Edition 5+1), 2012
“Value” in the art market is created through artificial scarcity. Media such as photographs and videos, which per nature are not subject to any materialistic restriction, to be reproduced endlessly by myriads are restrained to 5+1, 10+1 editions by market regulations and legal impositions. This installation composed of 6 photographs can be observed at a glance as an entity according the restriction imposed by the art market. That’s the work; no other edition will be produced. Six photographs standardized by the art market rules, each of the same dimensions: 60x90cm. 5+1 Edition.
Nevertheless, these six photographs are not quite identical. It is a serial of an identical frame shot successively at very high speed. The differences can hardly be distinguished because the shooting speed is 1/320 per second. The technical serialization of industrial production falls short of catching and controlling nature; something always escapes. This fugitive gismo implies probable destruction veiled behind a horizon of uncertainty: ecological disaster as entropy.
Coupled with this primal insufficiency, Endless Ends refers to an actual and crucial controversy generated from imposed market rules. Surrounded by the ecological crisis, we perceive in strikingly that the earth has an end; we now know bitterly that the horizon image of this photograph looks endless and symbolizes the unknown, the adventure, the capitalist growth, the not-yet-productive exotic markets has an end. Nonetheless, we also know that as long as the earth and civilization exist, this photograph can be reproduced endlessly. These photographs which symbolize the endless are not possessing “endlessness” as a representation, or outlook nor as an illusion; these photographs, similar to all immaterial production possess materialistically an endless reproducibility. As Gabriel Tarde declared at the beginning of the 20th century, immaterial production is not consumed as material production. The mentality of the material production-consumption cycle is based on sacrifice, while the immaterial production-consumption is free of the destruction of what is consumed. Put simply, a book is not ending or disappear when read, but an apple ends and disappears when eaten.
However, market logic driven by speculative “value” creation is not hesitating for its own continuation to sacrifice a discovered infinity.