As he himself says: "I want to show that life itself is art, that it is a kind of construction, how in front of the camera everyday constructions can be formed by everyone."
I first saw an Ataman work, Never My Soul, at the Berlin Biennale back in 2001 but it already contained many of the features of his poetic. It is the true story of a transvestite who imitates the life of the Turkish film star Türkan Soray. Never My Soul contains all the seemingly absurd and tragic (e.g. the sequence on dialysis, which the lead character has to undergo regularly) melodrama needed to turn a true story into a fiction-film narrative. That is, Ataman constructs a story by simply describing reality, which takes on the semblance of fiction thanks to the strong distorting force of reality. This is the core essence of Ataman's work, using video to describe events that belong to modern everyday life and showing us that their potential to become fiction, without the films actually turning them into that.
I want to show that life itself is art, that it is a kind of construction