Ali M. Demirel

selected works

$100 // video / 2003

music video for the Captain Comatose single "$100"

screened at :
Melek Yuzlu Yabancilar, curator: Levent Çalıkoğlu, Aksanat, Istanbul, Turkey, 2006
Strangers with Angelic Faces, curator: Levent Çalıkoğlu, [space], London, UK, 2006

"Ali M. Demirel is famous for the psychedelic extremes he directed for Richie Hawtin/Plastikman. For Khan and Snax of Captain Comatose he devotes himself with subversive abandon to the concept of dollar bills and takes this to a provocative extreme. A bank note is magnified to a layer deep below its watermark, its graphic elements dissected to the point where the American Eagle ends up flittering away chirping and the busts do a comical hop-around dance. „100$“ splices a tender homo-erotic crazy love to, of all things, hard currency with lyrics like:“If you want to be, wanna be my lover, you got to pay pay pay a hundred dollars a day.“ This cajolery, this wooing is performed in an extremely charming way by the cavorting busts of American presidents. Even presidents are for sale, for a date, but who wants to be bewitched by just a hundred dollar bill? There’s Franklin, so striking with his narrow face and goatee; there’s Hamilton, so soft and youthful-looking..A capitalist love affair with an uncertain outcome, carried out on a light green background contraposed with nothing but pinkish lips, as garish as if Andy Warhol himself had printed them."
extra DVD

"Demirel'in trajik bir aşk hikayesine sahne olan videosu, yeryüzünde varlığı artık küresel bir vakaya dönüşen para birimi. Büyük metropollerin anıtsal temsil sembolleri vardır. İstanbul'u 100 dolardan daha iyi temsil edecek başka kaç imge önerilebilir?"
Levent Calikoglu