Mustafa Hulusi's Extinction is a three-way split screen piece featuring the endemic tulip flower Tulipa Cypria, found in remote and unpopulated areas of Cyprus. Three wilting flowers - one per screen section of the digital tryptic - wither and fade in a meadow, shaken by a light breeze in a hot, silent surrounding. The local vernacular name for Tulipa Cypria is the Cyprus Black Tulip; the reason being that shortly before the flower perishes, its petals turn a dark, enigmatic, almost black color. This morbid yet mesmerizing metamorphosis is a fascinating spectacle and has arrested the gaze of many viewers of the flower. Today, due to intensified agricultural development, urbanization, and climate change, Tulipa Cypria is on the verge of extinction and has been declared an endangered species.
Accordingly, halfway through the film, the tulips are replaced - are extinct - by a glittering light source reflected on disturbed waters. Hulusi: This sequence offers a paradoxical glimpse of a bliss-like abyss symbolizing finitude; the flower offering a symbol of the earthly mortal and the figurative. These are the two modes upon which we interpret perception."
Hulusi's video collage is accompanied by music specifically composed and performed by the Peruvian composer Gonzalo Garrido-Lecca. The composer received nine words from Hulusi, on which he was to base his composition: Sharp, Clean, Mechanical, Spacial, Temporal, Infinity, Modern, Bliss, and The End. The existential nature of Extinction seems summarised by the instructions Garrido-Lecca received.
