The Pier is the first work of Demirel’s post-apocalyptic utopia series.
Demirel observes abandoned architectural structures to fantasize about a post-apocalyptic future with no human survivor. How do structures live without humans they’re designed for and by? The work is an artistic take on the beauty of an objectively dystopian scenario.

Soundtrack by Biosphere

Commissioned by TodaysArt 2015

 

 

 

FUTURE IMPERFECT
Dr. Elif Kendir B.

“...the site is eternal.” Stewart Brand

In one of the very few books that deal with the life of buildings after their realization, Brand defines the site as one of the “shearing layers of change” along with structure, skin, services, space plan and furnishings (or “stuff” as he calls it )– all of which have different life cycles. Forces of nature, property lines, and topography are more or less constants in an everchanging multilayered physical setting.

In The Pier, Ali M. Demirel’s treatment of the site breaks up with this tradition of shortsightedness. Himself trained as an architect, Demirel’s engagement with the site is decidedly poetic with an awareness of different cycles of time where constructed landscape unfolds in unforeseen ways in dialogue with nature. His slow, emphatetic gaze at a deserted former pleasure pier invites the viewer to contemplate on different lifespans, where an insect’s frantic existence of a couple of weeks is juxtaposed against centuries of unchanging waves.

This visually and acoustically framed experience of the Scheveningen Pier by Demirel is almost like a study in visual conjugation patterns. Like tenses in a language, Demirel’s work references time by a multitude of effects it has on its surroundings. The Pier simultaneously alludes to the present, the past and the future and all the stages in between.