Home - Yilmaz Vurucu

Welcome to... my world... my work...

I'm a researcher, artist, filmmaker with a particular focus on cultural hegemony, ideological reproduction and resistance through community.

My research...

My work is grounded in reflection and in a conscious awareness of how knowledge, identity, and power intersect.

I examine the processes through which hegemonic systems configure subjectivity, social relations, economic structures, and collective forms of existence.

These days, my focus lies in analyzing how institutionalized power dynamics produce and reproduce the conditions that define identity, labor, and sociality within contemporary frameworks, particularly in regard to the mechanisms of techno-capitalism and the commodification of digital behavior.

This includes an investigation of how surveillance capitalism transforms human experience into extractable data, mirroring cult-like systems of control that manufacture allegiance through precarity and behavioral manipulation.

Additionally, my work explores the erosion and resilience of nomadic traditions, such as those of the Yörük communities, as they navigate the homogenizing pressures of the Capitalocene, where privatization, ecological degradation, and forced sedentarization disrupt metabolic relationships with land and communal knowledge systems.

My work...

Regarding my work with Wonderland within the context of European projects: although my background has cultivated a critical awareness of the dynamics at play within close-knit communities and their inherent power structures, my practice is rooted in active engagement.

I collaborate with communities to adapt existing systems, co-create meaningful opportunities, and reimagine frameworks for locally produced sustainable energy, gender sensitive mobility and public space planning.

In my role with Wonderland, I connect research with application. I utilize methods rooted in arts-based research to co-create films, document best case practices, facilitate workshops, Urban Living Labs, and exhibitions to document community knowledge, experiment with alternative models, and translate collective needs into actionable strategies.

The process emphasizes how creative collaboration can redefine relationships with resources, and how society and community needs to be the cornerstone of sustainable change.

Through filmmaking, co-created installations, and public interventions, I focus on the “how” of engagement: how platforms are structured to amplify voices, how knowledge is shared across contexts, and how communities can assert agency within systems that can marginalize them or turn a blind eye to their needs.

You can have a look at my work in the work portfolio segment, or check out my ORCID account for publications, papers and books created via wonderland.

My world

My journey has been one of navigating the fringes and existing in the in-betweens: between cultures, systems, and beliefs. I once thought I was alone and my experiences were uncommon. Being the “outsider” shaped a perspective rooted in skepticism of the common (and the system), alongside a commitment to struggling outsiders.

My career began in television, inspired by the rebellious visual language of the French New Wave and MTV, I moved through exploitative industries and disrupted education before rekindling my passion for filmmaking with my short film projects.

Through x-arts and Wonderland, I explored themes such as energy communities, community-driven initiatives, sustainability, artistic research methodology and co-creation.

My master’s research on ideology in cults and capitalism deepened my focus on coercion and resistance, leading me to my current PhD on techno-capitalism and how surveillance tech, together with Ideological State Apparatuses, commodify human behavior, and use extracted data as a coercive tool.

Alternatively, a search for roots and resisting modes of existence led me to the Yörük nomads of Türkiye. Their endangered way of life, marked by seasonal migrations and communal resilience, became a personal and professional calling. Today, I document their struggles and alternatives to the Capitalocene, blending filmmaking, research, and activism to challenge homogenizing systems and amplify marginalized voices.

That’s the gist, you can read more in detail in my bio.

Recent Projects

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