Wet Games — Exhibition view, Imalat-Hane, Istanbul, 2024
Wet Games | 2024-ongoing | Participatory objects & video-performances
Wet Games explores the shifting roles between victim and bully within public and private relationships, particularly in queer and minority communities. Drawing on his own experiences, Akkel reflects on how discriminatory power dynamics are internalised and reproduced.
The audience activates the video performances through interaction with custom-made consoles, which hint at the hidden pleasures of both victimhood and inflicting harm.
The forms of the consoles embody the tension between public exposure and private desire.
Wet Games — Console I, 2024
Wet Games / Console I — Video performance trailer, 2024
Console I allows the audience to remotely control and inflict harm. The video-performance game is activated through a joystick and a button.
Wet Games — Console III, 2024
Wet Games — Console III, 2024
Wet Games / Console III— Video performance trailer, 2024
Console III requires two audience participants to operate the video performance and to inflict harm. When both press the yellow buttons on either side, a glass plate shatters over Akkel’s naked body.
Wet Games — Console II, 2024
Wet Games / Console II — Video performance trailer, 2024
With Console II, the audience has no control over the video performance, in which Akkel compares broken glass from Console III’s performance to the camera as an act of harm. The video is shown above the audience.
Çark — View of collage placement, 2021
The ongoing collages* poetically draw on Akkel’s personal experiences, memories, and emotions, encased in A1-sized plexiglass plates.
*Below, the details of the collages are shown across three sequences: the collage on the left side of the image is presented first, the middle one second, and the right one third.
