The works presented on this occasion, A House of Ink and Sentimental, were both shot inside Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk’s flat, located on the banks of the Bosphorus, and reveal the author’s slow and hidden work. Kazma’s desire to manifest and explore the immateriality of books began with Recto Verso, a book project published by Céline Fribourg (Take5 Editions), for which he collaborated with Alberto Manguel, a figure who has dedicated his entire existence to writing and reading. In 2015, Ali Kazma decided to film the extraordinary library/house/studio of this writer to make a two-channel video work entitled House of Letters. It was on this occasion that he first encountered and explored the space where the intangible activity of writing and thinking takes place. He observed that one finds an artist's signature in traces that display no intention at all : the notes, underlinings and connections, the organization of his library, and the topography around an author are clues that can tell so much about what is behind a book.
When Ali Kazma visited Orhan Pamuk's residence for the first time, he knew immediately that this space, attesting to over forty years of creative activity, was full of potential for further exploration into a writer’s work. In fact, in A House of Ink, he does not just film the writer working on his desk, or what he does and how he interfaces with his assistants: in much of the footage the subjects are the manuscripts, paintings, watercolors, collected objects and everything else that gravitates around Pamuk, rather than the author himself. To somewhat reveal the evanescent activity of a writer it is necessary to rearrange the evidence he leaves behind in a universe in which he lives a life as a writer, the infinitesimal traces permit the comprehension of a deeper, otherwise inaccessible reality.