Panoptikon

Panoptikon

Panoptikon is a video animation built entirely from hand-drawn elements on paper, bringing together disparate imagery into an uncanny, shifting sequence. Conceived as a response to surveillance, societal risk, and capitalist extraction, the animation constructs a speculative landscape where systems of observation, control, and historical memory converge.

Organized like an animated cabinet of curiosities, the work bridges dreamworld and catastrophe, unveiling the darker side of the history of knowledge where scientific discovery intersects with violence and institutional control. Drawing structural inspiration from Ottoman miniatures and the manuscripts of the 13th-century encyclopedia Aca’ib’ül Mahlukat, the narrative weaves falname figures, anatomical studies, and weaponries alongside references to Pieter Brueghel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. Invoking Jeremy Bentham’s architectural model and Michel Foucault’s concept of panopticism, Panoptikon reframes these fragments into a study of unseen power, esoteric levels of existence, and internalized discipline. Where chronometers tick through a liquid soundtrack keeping score of time, overlapping layers of eons dismantle linear narrative.