Abstract
This example of “resisting Left Melancholy” is an indictment of the Turkish State in the persecution of the Kurds and the role of US arms firms in the proliferation of state violence by using a two-screen video dialogue of images and texts based on the cinematic technique of shot and counter shot. In a self-reflexive strategy, artist Hito Steyerl is a multiple agent: she is the producer of the “art work”, a filmed participant who moves between the two video channels of the installation, and a creator of dialectic engagement with the viewing subject in both the technical format and the ideological content of the art work. The latter includes issues of site (both specific locations in Berlin, Germany, and Van, Turkey), processes of militarised globalisation (the role of US arms manufacturers supplying repressive regimes), and the politics of nationhood.