I RESTED MY FEET ON THE DESK and started my day with a film notorious for its sheer unwatchability: Empire. As usual, and as any student of philosophy without a proper job would do, I preferred to theorize it a little, just to see if it falls into the trap of rationalization, like other films of this nature. “He tries to carve the time lived with this goddamn building, you know, it’s Husserlian,” I reassured myself, then tried to hold onto the time-monument I built for my own contemplative amusement. As suspected, I got bored with it after some time and then came up with corny reasons for my boredom, like “It’s planned, it’s a design, it’s only normal I feel bored,” or (this one is criminally poetic) “Boredom is the ghost flying over all things quotidian.” Then the time passed—or rather the film swallowed the time itself—and I stood up to get something to drink without pausing the film because there was, in the end, nothing to miss. I came back after a minute or so and looked at the screen again; this time, I did not bother to watch it. And prima volta, it felt like a piece of furniture, not a film, a prototype for “Fireplace 10 hours full HD.” This was the moment I realized the only proper way of watching it was not to watch it. It had the looks and was made for looking. So, I looked at it a bit more, then shut it down for good. Just as planned by the man behind it: Warhol. •




Hasan Cem Çal is an Istanbul-based writer predominantly working in essay form. His work has been published in Manifold, K24, Kompleks, and Piksel.Bülten, among other journals. Some of his essays have appeared in catalogs of art institutions from Turkey, including Arter and İKSV. He is an editor at Manifold, an online journal on art, technology, design, and daily life.

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