A ceremony for a public statue, 2013
computer animation, 00’08” (loop)
computer animation, 00’08” (loop)
The digital animation "A ceremony for a public statue" (2013) by Kerem Ozan Bayraktar presents a high-angle, static aerial view of a traffic roundabout. At the center of the roundabout, situated on a raised concrete plinth, is a sculpture of a cement mixer truck, rendered in a muted, monochrome gray. This central sculpture remains stationary throughout the looped video.
Orbiting the central plinth is a procession of smaller, brightly colored cement mixer trucks. These vehicles, functioning like typical traffic, continuously circle the roundabout. Their colors are varied, with distinct barrels in hues of red, blue, and green, contrasting with the gray tones of the central sculpture and the asphalt.
The animation's seamless loop creates a continuous, repetitive motion. By placing a common industrial object on a plinth, the work interrogates the criteria for public monuments and what a society chooses to memorialize. The "ceremony" is presented not as a singular event with human participants, but as a depopulated, mechanical, and unending process. This reframes the functional machinery of urban development as an object of aesthetic contemplation and suggests a self-referential system in which the tools of construction perform a perpetual ritual around a static icon of their own form.
A ceremony for a public statue, 2013. exhibition view, Circus, 2013, PGArt, İstanbul
A ceremony for a public statue, 2013,