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Global knowledge workers
Edited by Katerina Nicolopoulou, Mine Karatas-Ozkan and Ahu Tatli
Practising knowledge workers: an artist's perspective
Ergin Cavusoglu, artist and academic
Ergin Cavusoglu can be described as a "global knowledge worker", as an artist and academic, who explores the distinctions between work, travel, study and other migrant activities through video installations and questions the asymmetrical transitions that we undertake when moving between countries. Raised in Bulgaria as part of the Turkish minority and now based in London, he often draws on his personal experience of migration to explore how we are all implicated in wider social shifts ([1] NGCA, 2006). As noted in the situations papers[1], Ergin Cavusoglu's video installations are associated with the conventions of non-place, the migration between East and West and the details that make up specific places in space and time. The poetic and lyrical qualities of his work and his ability to transcend the documentary in favour of something less tangible and less illustrative have often been commented by reviewers. Cavusoglu's compositional approach suggests the artist is neither interested in replicating the experience of the everyday from the totalising viewpoint of above, nor from the "oblivion" of the street.
For the purpose of the present special issue on global knowledge work and workers, we focus on the Point of Departure, which is a six-screen video installation that was filmed in two airports, Stansted, UK and Trabzon, Turkey. The work explores issues of transnational migration, surveillance, mobility and translation in a broader sense, through the journeys of two characters. The piece differentiates the experience of transit and travel at portal hubs such as the two airports, which Ergin Cavusoglu refers to as "the end points of the European idea" or the contingent borders, between old and new Europe ([1] NGCA, 2006). In terms of its narrative structure, the themes that are explored in this artistic production include on the one hand, the strains between travel, work, study, family ties and other tangible migration activities, whilst on the other hand, they include the dissonant transitions that lead us beyond the return to places of origin, or the reach of ultimate destinations. Of particular interest to the artist are the ways in which we define invisible border zones within an environment,...