November's

Vahap Avşar

2011-08-20T08:40:00.000+03:00

Vahap Avşar's isn't the classic story of an artist travelling abroad to study or to spend time on a residency program only then deciding to plant roots and stay away. Nor is his relocation simply the result of a foreign love affair; a desperate need to escape and be somewhere else; or a specific desire to experience a major art scene to find that this new context is more supportive for artistic development. Of course, at some point, all these stories played a role in Avşar's decision to leave Turkey and to move to the U.S. in 1995, where until the last few years he lived continuously except for one single return to Istanbul in 1997 to participate in the 5th International Istanbul Biennial. After this trip the Turkish government suspended Avşar's passport and added his name to the list of those being chased for avoiding compulsory military service, meaning that it was impossible for him to return again without confronting this legal requirement. Yet, despite even this last very specific constraint on his personal trajectory the more concrete reason for his long years abroad and seeming abandonment of his home country and also of art is that Avşar found another niche for himself: in 1997 along with Lexy Funk (who he later married) he began to design apparel and they together launched the extremely successful American clothing store Brooklyn Industries. This dynamic shift from a burgeoning art career to the creation and ownership of a company that opened stores in the US, Japan, and Europe, is one that makes his recent reborn love-affair and return to Turkey, and to art, all the more prominent and intriguing.

Aside from a scattering of exhibitions during the ten years he lived in New York Avşar mainly focused on the growth of his company Brooklyn Industries. But in 2007 the fact that he could not return to Turkey for a presentation of his video “Growing Watermelons in Gordion” at Karşı Sanat Galerisi in Istanbul irked him and he arranged to undertake a month's military service in January 2010. On completion, this would not only allow him to freely return to Turkey but it would once again give him the opportunity to consume firsthand the inspiration of a country that his art had always fed on. If we jump to the present, having now completed his military service, we find Avşar dividing his time between Turkey and the U.S. In 2010 his return to art and his relationship with Istanbul's art scene blossomed. He completed a residency at Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, had work included in exhibitions at Depo and Arter, and began working with the commercial gallery Rampa who hosted his first one-person exhibition the same year. His sudden return to his home country and to art after so many years cheered former friends and colleagues and he was warmly welcomed back into an art scene that was experiencing a rapidly growing list of exhibition spaces, artists and collectors. Avşar's timing was pertinent, almost calculated, but most off all inspiring in its exposition of how with drive and ideas it is possible to return to a former discipline and talent so auspiciously.

If we look back to 1992 Avşar's departure from Turkey does indeed begin with a residency:

Vahap Avşar: … the break/fissure in 1992 was the international studio program Ateliers Arnhem. There I had the opportunity to meet many international artists and talk to them about my work. Following an exhibition invite from W139’s director Dominique Pelletier during one of the studio visits, my exhibitions at artists’ initiatives in the Netherlands were instigated....this period was an adventure in personal exploration for me. Come Whoever You Are responds both to Europe’s expectations from a Turkish artist and conveys the irony of the artist’s loneliness, how he rotates around himself. The subject of the artist is at the core of the story, and as in ancient metaphors, is desperate and whirls around himself with his own combustive energy.

“Come Whoever You Are” (1993) consisted of five life-size hollow plastic figures modelled with the head profile of Avşar and the clothing and poise of a swirling Dervish. Each one was placed on a turntable that gently rotated as their torsos glowed red from a light placed within. Avşar's first work in a foreign context did not shy away from obvious clichés, and yet why should it; he had been using other locally famous motifs in Turkey since 1985, such as the repeated portrait of Atatürk in works including the paintings “Atatürk / Alphabet” (1991) and “My Weak Body Will One Day Become Earth” (1995 – 2010). While the portrait in “Come Whoever You Are” was his own, the repetition here is akin to that lavished on Atatürk and hence promoted in stark contradiction with the ideal of the Dervish as a symbol of humility and modesty. These iconic references were for Avşar more fundamental than clichés or fetishised images, they were all models of the power of cultural reproduction. In particular, the symbolism of the Atatürk portrait, bust or figure cannot be devoid of its political, state and mythological implications, and so Avşar's early allusions to this key figure and the dance of the Dervish were the beginnings of an obsession with logos, brands, labelling and the media's embrace of popular imagery and repetition - methods that converge in the act of product design.

VA: My first days in New York were interesting and what you [Vasif Kortun] mentioned about my work led to not a “decline” but a shift. [Yet] after I realized that the art world is the same everywhere, I began to lose interest in art and take up the manifestations of pop culture in design and commerce. I was more impressed by the power advertising and New York life, or let’s put it this way, for me the motorbike couriers were more impressive than the art I saw at galleries in SOHO. Especially after meeting with a few galleries, I decided to stop following the art trail. Lexy and I decided to start a production company to both continue producing videos and to explore new fields.

Brooklyn Industries was essentially born from one idea that saw Avşar appropriate Marlboro billboard advertising campaigns on to bags. What he had been imagined as an urban art project, which would litter the New York cityscape with a repeated appropriation aback messenger bikers, spawned to become a production line. While the art world is incredibly referential, the design world is so on an expanded scale, and likewise, at the moment Avşar's personal statement was out-done by the scale of consumer demand for its replication, for him the role of the idea changed.

VA: The difference between art and design is the notion that art is what the artist makes for himself and design is made for a customer, and this is roughly accurate. In addition the most significant difference for me is that art has the luxury of being merely an idea.

The other factor that repositioned Avşar's role was that he could not imagine how his art practice that was so heavily influenced by a culture and political context completely at odds with that of New York could find its place.

VA: For example it is quite difficult to see the work I made in the 1990s in the context of Western art, if you were to make blindfolded gourmets taste it, it wouldn’t rank top. Maybe this is why I did not (for the most part) make or show art during the time I lived in New York. I didn’t feel up to imitating Western art and acting like an American artist to compete with them, and at the same time I couldn’t bring myself to tell my story because it was so long and foreign. Perhaps that’s why I decided to make design rather than art and try out my ideas, inventions in that sphere, because it contained no social or cultural reference and wasn’t concerned with issues like the local and global.

It was likely that Avşar's loneliness in New York, his lack of a community that could comprehend his references and their deeper meanings, but also his severed relationship with Turkey (the division between his old home and life and that of his new one had become so defined by the distinction between art and design), deeply influenced the next ten years.

It was not until 2008 that Avşar produced “Supreme” (2008) a work he describes as a serious endeavour to return to a focused artistic practice.

VA: I had postponed my return to art almost until I felt I needed it like oxygen. When I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, I started making art again in 2007 and in the beginning of 2008 I made Supreme/ALLAH as my first serious work. Yes, even though it wasn’t an oath, I stopped designing in the beginning of that year and devoted myself again entirely to making art.

We become ever more dependent on televised expressions of conflict, and while local historical and cultural references are lost on the majority, their appropriations by the media to create easy to read gestures and signals take on re-localised meanings that are the makings of paranoia, control, producing cycles of misunderstanding. Particular words, signs and imagery haunt us, for example the word Allah is marketed as a brand of fear in the U.S. as much as it is one of supremacy in the Islamic world. Several contemporary artists have explored the 99 names of Allah in their works, for example Kutluğ Ataman’s multi-channel video work “99 Names” (2002) in which the repeated image of a praying man increases in velocity and determination; or Shezad Dawood's series of neons (2007) that spell out the names attributed to Allah in Arabic, each one entangled in a symbol of the American frontier, tumbleweed. Yet, Avşar's work is simplicity itself – only the word Allah is presented, two simple sounds or syllables that hold some symmetry share a pure white neon in a basic capitalised font. By using Latin script he rids the word of its decorative appeal to the western eye but makes its reading unavoidable – a combination that is at once rudimentary and contradictory. The word is rendered in such a pure and banal form that it is almost impossible to respond to and ultimately this is its aim.

The clean statement “Supreme” and its numerous connotations, especially those expressed by the relationship of the U.S. with Islam, seems to have instigated a period of momentum for Avşar, in which once incompatible references were now imbued with international consternation. At the same time his return to Turkey allowed Avşar to once again form connections with his personal heritage within his artistic practice and to understand how these references were now relevant beyond their origins.

VA: I don’t know exactly what has changed now and why my desire to return to Istanbul and to make art emerged concurrently, but of course they are related. If we are to accept that the art I make is inherently connected to Turkey, it is evident that the former cannot exist without the latter. Just as it is difficult to interpret my works without knowing Turkish history, moral codes, work ethic, military, the infinite trinkets of Tahtakale and the high tech cheap sign maker of Galata. It gets harder for me to make such works the further I go away from Istanbul.

Acknowledging some of the earlier motifs explored in his works of the 90s Avşar began again to play with repetition, text and symbolic 'brand-like' references. “Wings of Terror” (2010), a series of strung up emergency siren lights that alternate red and white, could seem to be drawn from Avşar's time in New York or Istanbul. He was hounded in Turkey to complete his military service, but if you are not familiar with this story you would first conjure the ultimate Hollywood police squad the NYPD (a citation bolstered by the content of an earlier work “NONEISAFE” (2008) in which an NYPD car, one of the ultimate brands of macho invincibility, is the target of an explosion and sits blackened amid its own debris). Yet the title references the idea of a state of emergency far more than the installation, which on second observation is a rather attractive lighting display - one that could easily be found in the back streets of Istanbul's Galata district that Avşar sources as a place of production. Again the simplicity of the physical work allows multiple readings and the terror that Avşar refers to is determined by how quickly a string of bulbs can be associated with distress and concern. Another work, “Eye of the Beholder” (2010), sums up these acts of assumption within its title, and the work again plays with repetition, this time of bright green plastic fuel cans stripped of their labelling. Stacked and strung together twenty-one cans long, ten across and at the highest point six high, their form resembles a jeep but also a row of war bunkers. Either way there is no escaping the militarian and powerful air that this installation exudes. The green stain of the plastic is pungent and bright, the rhythmic pattern made by the cans likens its surface to camouflage and the red caps appear as hints of blood. The international craving for fuel is the composing element of this work – wars over oil, overriding systems of control, the structure that links the oil trade and international pipe lines together – a world order composed as geometric progression.

Avşar's references to power, military and State control continue to employ his preference for forms of branding – oil cans, emergency lights; text as logo – NYPD, ALLAH; and clear associations to consumerism – the quest for oil, his nods to Hollywood. The compositions also allude to design aesthetics and yet have no intrinsic use value. If such works form one leg of Avşar's return to an artistic practice, there is another direction that complements these statement pieces by means of a more personal voice that carries emotional resonance. Before completing his military service Avşar made the painting “Marines resting in grand mosque of Falluja” (2009). Falluja, a town in Iraq that experienced one of the highest civilian death tolls during the Gulf War in 1991, later encountered major military interventions during 2003 and 2004. Many American soldiers were killed in service at the time, while the U.S.'s use of white phosphorus left the people of Falluja battling ongoing birth defects and high cancer rates. Avşar's painting presents a peaceful scene of American soldiers in full military gear camouflaged with the mosque carpets they lie sleeping upon. While other works of Avşar hint at the overall 'packaging' of war and military symbolism, as well as its media branding, this painting is the first to unravel a picture of the individuals the system involves.

After his month-long military service Avşar continued with the series of paintings “Swearing Ceremony” (2010) and the video “Tekmil” (2010). The first depicts rows of temporary soldiers being sworn in during their first weeks of service. The vanishing point is located at the centre of each painting and suggests the infinite repetition of these events, it shows an endless conveyer belt of men available to take up these positions and how disposable their individuality becomes in this context. The question of individuality is brought into play again in the video work “Tekmil” which was made as a response piece after Avşar was picked out of the parade due to his incompetence at completing the Tekmil (a standard solute that identifies you to any army superior). Avşar invited his then superior to Istanbul and in a play reversal the artist videos his army drill sergeant being commanded to recite the soldier's salute, G3 weapon specifications and more personal responses to every question thrown at him.

When Avşar arrived in New York the city inundated him with new ideas and inspirations and these resulted in him redefining his whole approach to creative practice by experimenting and being highly successful within the world of design. Even if it is too simple to say that New York provoked a different kind of productivity, whereas Turkey remained the source of Avşar's intuition to create art, this is how his relation to each place has panned out. Ironically his return to Turkey is also not such a classic tale and is imbued with details that crave to be explored through his art. Not only did Avşar spend time in the military, an obligation he had shied from for over ten years, but Turkey presented itself to him in a new light. The economy had become strong and proud of itself, the population had revitalised, and in Istanbul the contemporary art scene had formed a network of spaces and artists. It seems possible that Avşar could sense this energy from afar and gradually the desire in him to produce art, in relation to his home, drew him back. “Tekmil” is hence a defining work of his return – asked to state his name and family background on command was difficult for Avşar in 2009, but in 2010 it was already a source of inspiration.

Interview extracts from a conversation between Vasıf Kortun and Vahap Avşar that took place in 2010 and is printed in full in Vahap Avşar, Rampa, 2011.

We All Laughed at Christopher Columbus at SALT

2011-05-10T22:13:00.002+03:00

SALT Beyoglu

2011-04-10T09:48:00.003+03:00

April 9

2011-03-31T08:50:00.006+03:00

saltonline.org

Table Forest

2011-01-30T14:51:00.003+02:00

Pigeons are People - Can Altay

2011-01-20T22:04:00.005+02:00

Etiquette - Gülsün Karamustafa

2011-01-20T21:42:00.003+02:00

La vie est à nous

2010-12-06T23:57:00.001+02:00

The street is lit up by a warm red glow: 'La vie est à nous' reads a neon light framed by the window of Analix Forever. A positive phrase, so emotive and inspiring. A quote that seems to offer endless potential. It is all these things, especially when glanced upon hanging there alone, and for the passerby it burns on the retina and inspires the memory. Foremost a sign and title, the neon also takes on another role as it shrouds the space of Mario Rizzi's one-person exhibition at Analix Forever in colour. It is a sentence appropriated from two major sources by Rizzi to act as a canopy for a range of people's untold or more often unheard stories. While the reference to the 1936 film of the same name is not specific for Rizzi, he clearly carries a similar conscience to share with as many as possible the voices of the marginalised. Rizzi's use of the neon can also be imagined as a sequel to the vertical light installation of the same sentence and colour that opened Bertolucci's “Il Conformista” (1970) –but again this is ultimately not so important for Rizzi and hence the question introduced to the audience is whether this neon gesture, which hangs so bold and proud, can be read as a visual statement that plays with a saying for its own means.

Huddled under this malleable headline are three of Rizzi's video works and a selection of his photographs. “The Chicken Soup” (2008) and “impermanent” (2007) are substantial video pieces, to be viewed and reflected upon with dedication and compassion. Each film enters into the densely complex lives of Rizzi's chosen subjects and by way of the artist's embedded experience (Rizzi usually lives for months on location with the people he involves in his work) and precise editing, the protagonists' stories are elevated within a frame that feels very much inspired by their own personal feelings, and the spirit and nature of their situation. A cinema setting hosts “The Chicken Soup” and we are invited to enter for a while the lives of two women who were taken to Taiwan as migrant, virgin brides. While their stories are full of trauma, as they are first controlled by their broker and later their husband, mother-in-law or others, Rizzi also draws out each woman's beauty and hints at moments of hope despite their vulnerability, particularly in a scene where one woman dances for his camera. In the main space of the gallery the neon is balanced by the strong statement of ”impermanent”, a portrait of a 96 year-old man who dreams of and for Jerusalem, who talks of war and peace, responsibility and desire. Filmed in Amman, the film manages to merge one moment together with a lifetime and a whole century of shifting history and geography. As if he knows the title of the exhibition the protagonist of “impermanent” describes in his monologue that 'life is ours' to learn from, to shape and to share.

The photographs included in the exhibition individually embody a separate time, location and experience for Rizzi. Despite all the footage he has taken while working on videos, as well as the many photographic stills he has made or invited of others for books and research, it is extremely intriguing that each time-period in his practice is now marked by just one enduring image. There is a tenderness to this sparse, unembellished approach to imagery and it mimics the care that Rizzi takes when he works with others in his films. The fact that the photographs included in “La vie est à nous” are not shown alongside their accompanying film, video or book frees them from the danger of becoming the title image or poster pin up, and this is a concern that Rizzi challenges in a different way by means of his fabricated cinema poster for his video work “Murat and Ismail”.

“Den Dolder” (1999), a photograph taken by someone else, shows a woman lying face down in the snow. Initially taken as part of a project in which Rizzi gave throw-away cameras to the patients of a psychiatric hospital (to use, throw or sell as they chose) he was only intrigued by the images that did not include a face. A book of these photographs was produced and yet the only human, albeit without a face, was this girl freezing herself as if life had stopped and she knew nothing else than to share her despair with nature by numbing her pain with its cold. “Paris” (2002) is also faceless, but the movement of the girl's hair shows she is very much alive and could spin around to face the camera at any second. She is a friend of Rizzi's captured crossing the street, her vivacity making it into this hand-picked pile of images maybe because she acts as a counterbalance to “Den Dolder”. Rizzi again inserts a moment of hope that within the frame of the gallery traverses time and space. “Drafting Moods” (2002) is also a lucky shot, taken backstage one evening after a theatrical performance. It is the only photo taken by Rizzi during this 2002 project where he again asked others to take images on his behalf. “New Orleans” (2008) is the interior of a temporary living situation inhabited by an illegal immigrant rebuilding a home in New Orleans. “Tarantella” (2003) a couple dancing as part of a project in Berlin where Rizzi created a space on the S-Bahn route for classes in life-painting, photography and dance. Finally “PINK!” (2005) is a portrait of a transvestite taken for a publication that included documents detailing acts of discrimination, police reports and immigration issues. “PINK!” again, is the one image that endures in this series, another photograph that needs no explanation as it humbly speaks a thousand words.

Perhaps this other side of Rizzi's very precisely tuned practice began with “gling-gló memo” (2001), a film edited mainly from found footage of which some sections include the artist as a child. There is no dialogue and the editing contains repeats and turns around in and about itself as if Rizzi himself has entered a conundrum and a maze of his own past that he is trying to solve. The work closes on an image of Rizzi and two of his cousins. The women wear very similar dresses and this repetition naturally exaggerates the effects of Rizzi's labyrinthine editing. But at the same time he holds this frame, he pauses the work right here, as if the tangle has become too much and by extending this one moment in time something more, something clearer, an answer may emerge. This one image, the final still, is then lifted from its impossible condition within the film - where it exists as both past, present and memory - to join the other markers of Rizzi's practice on the walls of the gallery. Here it takes a special place as the only filmic still that is liberated from the cycle of moving-image, and again very tenderly Mario gives it the opportunity to exist outside of its journey and in this precise and only case, his own personal story.

Shifting Ink

2010-10-27T12:42:00.003+03:00

2010-09-17T22:54:00.003+03:00


	Philadelphia Museum of Art
	Christodoulos Panayiotou, detail of "(Untitled) ACT I: The Departure," 2007.  Courtesy of the Collection of Nicos Pattichis.		Live Cinema/In the Round: Contemporary Art from the East Mediterranean September 17, 2010 – February 6, 2011 Philadelphia Museum of Art 26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Philadelphia, PA 19130 (215) 763-8100 philamuseum.org
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	SIX ARTISTS FROM THE EAST MEDITERRANEAN EXPLORE THE INTERACTION BETWEEN CINEMA AND REALITY Live Cinema/In the Round (September 17, 2010 – February 6, 2011) features the works of Ziad Antar, Inci Eviner, Hassan Khan, Gülsün Karamustafa, Maha Maamoun, and Christodoulos Panayiotou, artists from the East Mediterranean region who explore how cinema informs representations of reality through videos, installation and performance works. The title, In the Round takes its cue from theater-in-the-round, in which the audience surrounds the stage, allowing a more intimate experience for the viewer and a more realistic performance from the actors. Inspired by this theatrical technique, the works on view are not simply projected on a two-dimensional plane; they surround the audience and also migrate to other galleries within the museum. In each work, the actors (or sometimes the blatant absence of an actor) play out a specific role that invites the audience to imagine other possible narratives for the backdrops that host them. Live Cinema/In the Round is organized by Istanbul-based guest curator November Paynter. The artists participating in this exhibition live in or are from countries located in the East Mediterranean, a region denoting the countries that are geographically located to the east of the Mediterranean Sea and happen to be linked by a continuous land mass. Over the course of the last decade the contemporary art institutions and initiatives in the countries of the East Mediterranean have created more opportunities for mutual cultural exchange and dialogue. A number of artistic residencies and funds now exist that encourage artists to travel between cities such as Cairo, Istanbul, Beirut and Nicosia. The artists selected for this exhibition often present their work in this region of the world and their inclusion in this exhibition was motivated primarily by their interest in performance-based practices and in particular the cinematic references found within their work. Some of the works in the exhibition make use of found film footage or reconstruct known film scenes, whereas others create a dialogue with artefacts in the Museum's collection. Hassan Khan' s work G.R.A.H.A.M. presents a portrait as both subject and audience in a continuously-shot real-time video of an individual asked to remain completely silent even while being interrogated off-camera by the artist. Gülsün Karamustafa's Bekledigimiz Günler (The Days We Have Waited for) (2007), is the portrait of Istanbul at a specific moment in time. The work is comprised of footage taken from 1960s and 1970s newsreels that viewed now appears self-promotional and as such emphasizes the power of cinema as a social tool of communication. Building upon an earlier theme exploring the relationship between Egypt's pyramids and its cinematic traditions, Maha Maamoun's 9-minute film2026 (2010) steps into the future to consider the pyramids and their relationship to Cairo's city structure 16 years from now. (Untitled) Act I: The Departure (2007) and (Untitled) Act III: The Glorious Return(2008) by Christodoulos Panayiotou suggest scenes of introduction and finale for the exhibition. Panayiotou's backdrop works present rolled theatre backdrops with a small reference photograph of their unfurled images as they would look when hung on stage. Infiltrating the historical galleries of the museum are three video works by Inci Eviner titled New Citizen (2009). Here, traditional decorative patterns are animated by moving female protagonists and their disconnected body parts in choreographies that deconstruct the surrounding motifs. In Ziad Antar's La Souris (2009) a toy mouse is wound up by the artist and directed at a real mouse trap over and over again. The scene is a simple empty stage where the mouse is the only performer. While Hassan Khan's video G.R.A.H.A.M. acts as a steady, contemplative platform for the exhibition that harks back to the genre of portraiture, it is offset by the dense content and clear film references of Gülsün Karamustafa's and Maha Maamoun's works. Christodoulos Panayiotou's backdrops appear to open and close a conversation between all the works in the exhibition while reminding the viewer of the defining role of the actor or narrator in a film, or the lack thereof. Inci Eviner's videos seem to have escaped the borders of the official video gallery to virally spread throughout the Museum, while finally, Ziad Antar's video La Souris is included as a hint for the audience to question what it is they respond to and then choose to see within an artwork. Related Programs: INCIDENCE September 17, 2010 at 7 p.m. Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. Free to the general public. INCIDENCE, a live concert with Hassan Khan, will be presented in collaboration with Slought Foundation. INCIDENCE is a seamless, continuous stream of improvisational pieces and music compositions by Khan accompanied by video sequences specially shot by the artist. *Live Cinema Live: An Afternoon of Conversations.* September 18, 2010, starting at 1 p.m. Trabant University Center Theater, University of Delaware, 17 West Main Street, Newark, Delaware November Paynter and Adelina Vlas, 1:00 p.m. Nora Alter and René J. Marquez, 2:30 p.m. Hassan Khan and Brian Kuan Wood, 4:00 p.m. About the curator: November Paynter has been based in Istanbul since 2002 where she worked as a Curator at Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center until the end of 2006. She was one of two Assistant Curators of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial in 2005. In 2003 she was the recipient of the Premio Lorenza Bonaldi per L'arte – EnterPrize and the first curator under the age of 30 to be recognized with this award. In 2007, Paynter took the temporary position of Consultant Curator at Tate Modern for the exhibitionGlobal Cities, before moving back to Istanbul the same year to work as Director of the Dubai Artist Pension Trust and as a freelance curator. In addition to writing texts for exhibition publications and artist monographies, she has written for art periodicals including Artreview, ArtAsiaPasific, Bidoun, andArtforum. About Live Cinema: Live Cinema is a series of programs in the Video Gallery of the Museum that explore the vast production of single-channel video and filmwork by a diverse group of local, national, and international artists. In the last decades an ever-increasing number of contemporary artists have appropriated these mediums as an artistic outlet, in a dialogue with the early video and Super 8 practices of the 60s and the tradition of experimental filmmaking. Each program of the Live Cinema series focuses on a specific aspect of this work, in order to both map and analyze this important facet of contemporary art production. This exhibition is made possible by The Women's Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Turkish Cultural Foundation. Public events are supported in part by the University of Delaware Interdisciplinary Humanities Research Center and by the Slought Foundation.

Channel one plus one

2010-09-15T15:17:00.001+03:00

It is impossible to predict what effect an exhibition space and time will have on Guclu Öztekin's works. Three weeks ago the floor of Rampa was almost obscured by a scattered carpet of his paintings and sketches. Yet up until the moment that installation began this paper-based portfolio had only experienced its first period of production. Once in the exhibition space, a secondary process, which saw the paintings morph into and with the gallery's walls and floor, began. This undulating, cognitive involvement Öztekin assumes with his works and the new forms and techniques he applies to them as time progresses, forms the essential substance of his practice. While each painting was previously autonomous in its own frame of paper, when re-positioned in a three-dimensional exhibition context Öztekin sets to work once again to assert a new layer of language to unify threads of cross-reference throughout the space.

Öztekin explains his process of working as one of following a series of channels. These channels represent different focuses and applications of techniques, but they do not always follow one direct path and can branch off on another tributary as the context shifts. Several channels clearly prevail within Rampa: firstly and most true to the previous stage of production - there are the paintings that have simply been hung without any on-site alterations; then there are the site-specific wall paintings conceived during the installation period; another channel allows for the multi-layering of works, where either a number of works or techniques become one, or one work becomes many; a common channel is that of erasure; and lastly in contrast to the former, is a play on dimensions whereby what was previously a flat work on paper is now seen in Rampa as a sculpted three-dimensional form. These channels criss-cross the gallery and place the audience in the midst of a web of shapes, forms, techniques and repetitions that express the culminating channel: one of composition.

It is intriguing that most of Öztekin's works start their lives as rather traditionally rendered paintings. Often the canvas is a sheet of rectangular paper on which he paints images that can be read as understood forms – such as faces, characters, cartoon-like vehicles and text. Yet this is just the base for the more defining acts of his practice, within which he speculates on the limits of painting, and more literally on the limits of his own 'traditional' paintings, their surface and content. The act of erasing his own works, by inflicting them with punched out holes and scalpel incisions, results in exquisite textures and allows for subtle movements of light and hence form. Often the networks of holes result in delicate webs of papery lace and when these are suspended over silver foiled wall-tapes as many are in Rampa, they shimmer incandescently, like fragile insect wings. Other works here have been systematically carved away to leave nothing but a skeleton of their original body on the wall and their flesh lies in a rainbow of tatters on the floor. When Öztekin foresees a different type of conclusion for a work he employs glue and water to papier maché the previously flat image into a new enlivened form. A flat face becomes a caricature of itself, or an area of ceiling a landscape of stalactites. If his channels interfere, the erasures can become inverted and are then used as stencils for further creation; or the skeleton of a work that could be hung straight is instead positioned in a wave-like form across a wall painting that then leads into another work and so and and so forth.

As Öztekin breaks loose from his own set of structures, the installation takes on a multi-lingual shape. There are so many details of action and technique in his world that the cumulative experience one enjoys in the gallery can only be momentary. Like the often ephemeral quality of the works on display, their life-time in this symbiotic relationship is not meant to last and each piece will eventually return to a more standard form similar to the one they originated from. So, it is only for this one month that they will live and breathe together and Öztekin's speculations on the limits of painting are turned into a material scenario way beyond the confines of a canvas, a frame or a piece of paper.

To participate or follow?

2010-09-10T14:45:00.001+03:00

(views on the current situation of the Istanbul art scene)

The majority of Istanbul's art museums, institutions, initiatives and galleries opened during the last four to five years. There are of course exceptions. Among the most important of these are the International Istanbul Biennial which started proceedings in 1987 and has since occurred almost every two years, with the eleventh and most recent edition having opened in September 2009. Early permanent spaces included Borusan Art Gallery, which opened in 1999 (but closed in 2006) and Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, which opened its gallery in 2001 and temporarily closed in late 2007 to undergo renovation^¹. Prior to 2004, there were also several artist-run spaces the most well-known being Hafriyat, Oda Projesi and Apartment Projesi and a small number of commercial galleries located mainly in the affluent district of Nisantasi. Galerist and Galeri Nev. remain open, albeit with new or additional premises and work specifically with contemporary artists. Since the strategically timed early opening of Istanbul Modern in December 2004, (to coincide with the European Union's decision to begin accession talks with Ankara) each year more spaces open within three main categories - museum-scale institutions such as santralistanbul and Pera Museum, artist run initiatives that include BAS, PiST///, URA! and Alti Aylik, and most recently new commercial galleries: Rodeo, Outlet, X-ist and Non.

Yet, despite this recent proliferation in the city's array of art spaces, there still seems to be a void that has yet to be filled. This has in part to do with a lack of public money, but also a penchant for the commercial and the spectacle. Hence, the intellectually stimulating, but unusually constructed works that are not made in the tradition of understood art forms such as painting or representative sculpture are deemed aesthetically awkward. These art works are often by local yet internationally established artists and they somehow slip between the spaces that do exist. While there are some clearly focused programs at spaces including BAS and Rodeo, there are still too few that are continuous in their activities and accumulatively productive.

This compilation of a series of conversations with Istanbul-based artists Can Altay, Cevdet Erek and Leyla Gediz was initiated by curator November Paynter in order to consider from different perspectives what element of the contemporary art scene appears to be lacking, why this situation exists and what kind of action can potentially help to make the local cultural sector more complete^².

NP: Let's talk first about the period before the 2009 International Istanbul that is still fresh in our minds, in order to look beyond these bi-annual periods when we anticipate and experience a range of temporary additional spaces, events and critical discussions to boost the variety, number and quality of contemporary art activities for a nominal period of around three months. I want to ask Can and Cevdet about your experiences of living and working in Istanbul before this influx of new spaces started opening around 2005 and why you think that you have not yet had a solo exhibition in the city?

CE: I left the country in 2004 and returned permanently at the start of 2007. During these years I was coming and going, but as I was never offered an agenda to present my work here. I also made no serious attempt to do so. I have been back in Istanbul for two and half years now, but I still move around a lot and feel that few people in the Istanbul art world really know that I am based here and this is partly because there is so little written locally about which artists are presenting where and who is doing what. Since returning I have been asked to do several projects such as an event at Platform in 2007 and three small works during the 2009 biennial; but many requests are for simple projects that can be done with ease and extracted just as easily, particularly performance based work. Some invitations come so unprofessionally late that there is no time to begin to consider realistic production. Still there has been no commercial or solo proposal, and I feel this is likely to do with my work not being easy to handle; it appears conceptual and while art initiatives here aim to be more socially and politically engaged, the commercial spaces are mostly not interested in forms of artistic practice that do not fit their understanding of what art should be.
CA: I have not had a solo exhibition because I have not been invited to do so. The general lack of solo presentations may have to do with Istanbul experiencing a tradition of group exhibitions that could be seen to stem from the model of the most prestigious - the biennial. What has been seen before is taken as the route to follow, it is the only arsenal to take from so to speak. There also seems to be a confusion about curating, in that it is often viewed as being a series of short-term activities that are as simple as bringing a group of artists or even just work together to form an exhibit. Whereas, my experiences from elsewhere and my personal view of the role of the curator is that these individuals should be interested in mutual collaborations with artists and long-term relationships that help to breed artistic production. In this context, the question for an artist such as myself is to consider: what is our responsibility? Is it to show work regardless of the context so that our work is seen and shared, or is it to wait for the ideal context, which may be too long coming?

NP: Returning to the current situation and the period of this biennial; there were a few exhibitions that responded to the lack of solo exhibitions such as Istanbul Modern's exhibition with Sarkis and santralIstanbul, hosting a retrospective of the Turkish artist Yüksel Arslan who is based in Paris and bar an exhibition at New York's Drawing Center in 2008 has been internationally and locally overlooked.There were also other initiatives that appeared to consider what has been missing and took the initiative to fill some gaps. But surprisingly most of these were commercially invested projects such as the site-specific solo show by Güclü Öztekin in an abandoned storage space organized by Galerist, The InBetween – a very formal and well-presented commercial exhibition of internationally renowned artists' works put together by Suzanne Egeran a curator and art advisor based in London and Rodeo's solo exhibition of Emre Hüner that presented new work produced specifically for the biennial period and within an ongoing relationship between the gallery and the artist. What are your thoughts on the parallel events organized this year during the eleventh International Istanbul biennial What Keeps Mankind Alive, which was curated by the Zagreb based collective WHW?

CA: In any similar conversation about this speed of growth in Istanbul I always defend the biennial, because of the potential, and because of the possibilities it has shown the city and individual artists. But on the other hand it really creates these periodical wombs of quasi-structures. Take this year for example; if you look at the parallel events you see this huge array of commercial exhibitions, which is problematic as it sets a single tone and does not leave space for more experimental practices, and when you refer back to the previous biennial in 2007, you will see that then the craze was to open artist-run initiatives. And previous to that the Istanbul Modern was a by-product of the 2003 biennial. That said, I still support the biennial for its activities and exhibitions; I am just more interested in the systems that form a 'whole' situation and how artists and young people perceive what is being presented, as the critical aspect is what happens locally alongside such an event as the biennial. While the biennial is not responsible for peripheral activities, this year in particular the coinciding exhibitions are not clearly defined except by commerciality. And this year, a new trend saw people from outside of Turkey coming to Istanbul to open such exhibitions.

NP: Can you expand further on this approach of opening ‘types’ of spaces and how the tendency in Istanbul seems to be to formalize entities automatically, without taking the time to allow them to shape a specific, but as yet undetermined form?

CA: It seems that there is too much emphasis on branding and identity. Of course not every artist initiative in the city approaches their activities with this attitude, but definitely there is a lack of formation, meaning that spaces do not give themselves time to evolve into what they will later be identified as, instead they rush to define themselves. It also feels like there was this diagnosis of there being no artist-run spaces a few years ago, and this diagnosis was sort of solved or 'cured' by making artist initiatives, or forms, or collectives that immediately acted as artist initiatives. In a sense some of these felt too constructed, and they are essentially adopted identities, which is a problem also.

LG: I agree that there seems to be such a need for defining what a space is rather than letting it grow organically. The scene in Istanbul is young, and artists, audiences, and collectors pressure new galleries into taking on, or proposing to immediately position and name, the definition of what they understand a gallery to be; be that an institutional or commercial model that they have likely experienced elsewhere first. The attitude is that branding in all fields should be aspired to and the same goes for galleries, where those who have the loudest voice and most heavy-handed impact are those the artists desire to be tagged as part of, by extension when the 'main' commercial gallery is full the younger artists are open to other rising brands that they imagine others will soon also aspire to, which is an aggressive approach to creativity.

CA: The need to label it, to name it, to build an attitude, which without being formulaic are structures that should be allowed to happen and evolve over time. And anyway, why do we need definitions? I think the Berlin-based Turkish curator Adnan Yildiz said about the current absence of Platform Garanti “that because it was such a polar force, its temporary absence blurs everything.” That polar position was a clear agenda - to build an archive, produce work and make exhibitions – and this gave structure and set out the other polar positions available to the rest of the art scene.

NP: Picking up on your mention of Platform, I think we would all agree that its inauguration by Vasif Kortun helped power Istanbul's contemporary art drive. During its initial years of development it attempted to balance many needs, encouraging different forms of presentation, with elements of production and exchange. It appeared for me as a foreigner, who was working with Platform at that time, that during its early years from 2001 to 2005 there was a clearer structure to the rest of the art scene in Istanbul, despite it being very small. But, with the sudden speed of growth that began in late 2004, somehow various gaps started becoming much more defined. In 2005, Platform was already becoming more institutionalised, its residency program had expanded to include numerous international guests each year, and the institution had clear plans to further formalize its embodiment by looking-forward to the potential for a new model, a more stable financial situation and a fully-resourced building that would house far more than just the gallery, studios and offices. At the same time some of the city's other clear sites of artistic endeavour had also shifted their position or disappeared^³. Today I feel we have encountered a period when cultural structuring starts to be put in motion, but it is still finding its feet and therefore the earlier more simple structure, one that is in fact relatively recent, becomes one that we recall with great fondness. How do you feel about these changes and developments and Platform's position and current closure in particular?

CA: A space can evolve as Platform did initially (from an office for archiving and conversation) into a larger structure that in time gives way to various smaller initiatives who then go on to take the previous form of the forerunners. But at some point, perhaps the one we are at now, there will be a moment of saturation and dilution, because the obvious way to fill the now clearly presented gap is to bring the obvious – meaning to bring what is seen in other cities rather than allowing natural development. The biggest failure of modernisation for many countries including Turkey is the issue of feeling like it is lagging behind, and in particular in Istanbul this has created a culture of copying and replicating, a situation where people follow rather than participate in global discourse. This is not so valid for the individuals who continue to pursue interesting artistic production, and also what was relevant about Platform was that it positioned itself as a participant rather than a follower. But, generally there is a hunger in the rest of the system (collectors, art spaces, institutions) to become what has been seen to succeed before or elsewhere. The nostalgia for Platform needs to be channelled into a shared momentum where schools of thought are considered as a current urgency.

CE: The major spaces that do exist do so on the back of a physical embodiment of what a museum or gallery should be – they have the architecture, some structure, but their programs are almost as static as their walls. They are not fresh, free-moving or willing to experiment. Many of these spaces were set up with one key person directing their program, interests, and focus. As they are all private this is their prerogative, but it closes down accessibility and sets a specific agenda, which is often very similar for each institution.

NP: This lack of art spaces creating and channelling decisions through committees and boards, at least those that are clearly defined and made public, certainly creates an incestuous situation both for the artists being invited to present, and also the professionals invited to work within these institutional walls. And because of this, it feels that at the moment there is no seriously functioning space that belongs to the community, and no space that is interested in listening to the broader interests of those it is hoping to claim as its audience. The only entities that do this to some extent are artist collectives such as Hafriyat, but then the community is made up of their own very close-knit group of members. Other examples seem more interested in their local doorstep community, or social integration, rather than offering a professional structure.

LG: One of the early models that appeared to have a board-like structure was Apartment Projesi. Selda Asal, the founder of this space in the Tunel area of Beyoglu, created a situation that artists could approach in the knowledge that their work and proposals would be considered. On the other hand, if you wish to progress with an individual position the best approach is to keep it small, focused and with character, as progression does not necessarily need to be about expansion.

CE: It would be great to have a situation where fifteen to twenty people are invited to discuss the program of a certain space, where idea-sharing becomes normal practice. The situation is still very much based on personal relationships, and therefore it is rare that a process of consensus results in an invitation to exhibit. Without advisory committees it is impossible to confirm who is really producing the most interesting and valid work.

LG: This lack of open conversation is also due to the lack of it taking place in the educational arena. There has been hardly any change in educational policy over the last twenty years in Turkish universities’ art departments. There is a reluctance towards renewal, and few opportunities for part-time teaching, or circulation, and so things remain stagnant and there is little space for new conversation or chain reactions of communication. The other problem is that art departments do not often offer studio spaces, and so even while studying artists are working from home. Then later after graduating it is extremely hard to survive, and again there are few studio opportunities, which means that so many artists continue to work from their parental home. Art schools can act as laboratories where there is support and advice that feeds production. They can also teach the professional structure of living as an artist; but if this does not exist within education and artists rely on galleries for this information then a risky hierarchy is put in place.

NP: Another major factor to consider in this conversation is the lack of public funding for contemporary culture in Turkey and how this has affected the developing art scene. Unlike the existence of several Arab funded initiatives (The Arab Fund of Arts and The Young Arab Theatre Fund to name two), the system for channelling private philanthropy transparently, and with a clear channel of application and grant giving overseen by a board, has not yet been formalized in Turkey. This leads to the dilution of funds between many different spaces, people and potentials. Essentially there are many spaces claiming to be permanent and white-walled, but often without a financial plan that supports them beyond the first year or two.

CA: While I am suffering from a lack of structured institutions and funding, I am not willing to speak positively about over-formalising these things as while structured funding has its advantages, it creates a situation of support and control that pre-defines the nature of works, and to some extent even the content. It also generates in the long-run, as far as I can see from similar situations in different countries, a soft knowledge - a kind of language that grants access to these funds. Then, of course a lot of responsibility is not on whether you establish such funding bodies, but on how they are to be run. On another completely personal level, I always ask what it would mean, if we turn into document filling, box ticking funding applicants. A balance is required between the super-relaxed, unstructured, free-but-poor approach and one that is super-addressed, well funded, yet possibly involves an entropic loss of artistic validity.

NP: We should also consider issues of collecting, preserving, archiving and documentation; as well as critical response. With Facebook taking over the role of even the invitation, there is little physical material generated, and hence artists are sometimes showing their work in a void of any further mediation beyond the site-specific presentation within the gallery. Yet recently a number of institutions have started to publish; BAS, Yapi Kredi, Garanti Galeri and the larger museums, and others are rigorously archiving such as Platform Garanti, so is the problem more related more to critical response and a certain form of sharing of information?

CE: The lack of a local periodical, a form of Documents –which includes simple and clear records of who did what and where (in Istanbul and for Istanbul connected artists)- is one of the main problems. Even the most enthusiastic art related people often find it hard to follow each other's practices and projects. The Platform archives is one place you can find this information, but it is limited as it is a physical space, a room. The best thing that an artist can do to benefit their own position both locally and internationally is to launch a well organized and frequently updated personal website with the hope that people will follow your activities. The other or additional option, which happens in Turkey as a regular practice is to send group emails or Facebook events for each activity you undertake, which for me is a very aggressive way of sharing information.

LG: These conversations need to take place first in terms of sharing experiences and opinions in an ongoing manner so that the critique is first-hand. Forms of transactions that are not purely commercial can play a key role. Artists, writers, curators, gallerists, collectors, academics, students and viewers must play a collective role in establishing and sustaining dialogues, by organizing and attending seminars, panel discussions, by following blogs, by voicing opinions wherever and whenever possible. This is the only healthy way of creating, chewing and consuming art. And this is where Istanbul fails today still. As Turkey's recent history would tell us, people have lived through oppression, which has taught them to remain silent. Perhaps more than anything else, Istanbul needs participants who are not afraid to fall into and create conflict.

CA: A process of distillation needs to take place that could be through writing, critique and reviews that do not fall into a self-celebratory mode, to produce discussion about the work that is around. What remains from various hyped moments are the artists who continue to produce work of a high standard and the spaces that continue a vigorous program. In terms of hype, the new breed of commercial galleries and their fellow artist initiatives are not so distinct from one another; that is where critical writing can help in terms of homing in on the best examples of the definitions we have been struggling with.

1Platform Garanti 's space on Istiklal Caddesi (street) is currently undergoing a major renovation and the new institution will take a new name and direction that combines the former Platform with the activities of Garanti Galeri (a gallery that focused on design, architecture and urban planning) and the Ottoman Bank Museum, to create an approach that incorporates a variety of disciplines in addition to the presentation of contemporary art within its program.

2 Altay, Erek and Gediz were invited to participate in this conversation for particular reasons. Neither Altay nor Erek have presented a solo exhibition of their work in Turkey and yet their work has been shown widely internationally. As an additional note, they are both involved in other cultural disciplines at a professional level, these being architecture and music respectively. Gediz is represented by Galerist and has had many shows with the commercial gallery. Her interest in creating a space with an educational tone that she describes as one of 'supervision,' saw the inauguration of the gallery Splendid in 2008. Splendid closed in 2009.

3 For example, Oda Projesi opened in 2000 in an apartment in the Galata area of Istanbul, but the artist collective were evicted in 2005 due to the process of gentrification in this neighbourhood. Several commercial galleries that started less formally such as Galerist have gone on to open several spaces in the city with a very business-like approach.

An Istanbul in Panorama: Andreas Fogarasi

2010-08-04T09:08:00.005+03:00

For citizens of Istanbul the lack of public space and the confused function of the few open/green spaces that do exist is a commonly talked about phenomenon. In line with this local debate, the specific nature of what public space is, if it exists at all and how it is used and understood were the first concerns that Andreas Fogarasi confronted when commissioned to produce the My City contemporary public art work for Istanbul. Despite the lack of open ground-space, as Andreas commented to me, many people do share a different kind of commodity of space - that of the view. In Istanbul this view is panoramic and reaches out across the city and incorporates four different masses of water: the Maramara Sea, the Black Sea, the Bosphorus Strait and the Golden Horn. The old Byzantine city of Constantinople, which was contained by the city walls, is built on seven hills. In addition a large majority of the more recent city expansion is steeped down the valleys that circumference the Bosphorus and the edge of the Marmara. Therefore many people are fortunate enough to have at least a glimpse of water from their windows. Even when on street level one can often catch a view of the horizon looking out across to the European or Asian side of the city depending on where you are looking from.

While this incredible democratic condition is still prevalent, new high-rise apartment and office developments are being built that begin to compromise what was once a given right. Andreas put it this way when we met in Istanbul in May this year: “Of course this democratic condition is changing and the option on having and maintaining a view is becoming more and more associated with commercial activity and capitalism. In addition buildings and estate are marketed for simply having a view”.

Interested in the process of commercialising something as unco-optable as a view, Andreas has been photographing the city to compose his own series of framed views within and on the surroundings. From this process of image construction and his experience with making architectural spaces, Andreas started also researching the history of panorama-making. The term panorama was first coined by the Irish painter Robert Barker to describe his all-inclusive paintings of Edinburgh. These paintings set the structure for many future panoramas, as they were unusually shown on a cylindrical surface and viewed from the inside. Andreas explains to me that Constantinople was fairly commonly composed as a panorama due to its unique skyline and watery platform. For his My City proposal he is imagining to create a contemporary panorama on Istanbul that “like a 19^th Century Panorama; a city illusion where the painting or image surrounds you, in this version you would also enter from below and stand within the painting. The work will function as a platform with the panorama surrounding the visitor so that at first it blocks the actual view of the urban context, but it is at the same time a democratic and open view to the work itself.”

Because there is so little open space within Istanbul and the city is very dense, Andreas imagines his panorama travelling to different sites to open up a space for contemplation in different areas of the city that each host their own cultural habits and contexts. Andreas goes on to say that it will be a “temporary architectural attraction like the travelling fun fair that pops up in different locations for different audiences.” Yet, he see it as a “dysfunctional fair that abstracts the true architectural structures of the city and is happily confused about its position being between that of a landmark, an attraction and an event. In this way it will connect different experiences of the city and the city's social infrastructures.”

There are three key considerations that feed into Andreas' My City proposal – history, informality and the contemporary architectural site. The historical element relates to how the city has been captured and viewed in the past, the contemporary is the need for strong architectural positions and a rethinking of public space, and in terms of the third Andreas refers to informality in relation to the city's gecekondu (gecekondu literally translates as roof-overnight – meaning that if you can build a roof overnight the site is yours) dwellings. He intriguingly compares the gecekondu construction, to the shift in building models since the 19^th Century when the best floor was the ground floor and now the best floor is the penthouse. He sees a mimicking of this process in the way the informal housing of the gecekondu areas develops – where, as more homes are built, each one is located slightly higher up the hills of the city, and hence gains new a better view than its neighbours below. These new sets of references, where some things are recognisable and others not, is something that will also be explored in his proposal. For example his interest in a sculptural entity based on an architectural model means that he wishes to use local materials that seem permanent, such as marble, but in a temporary and transient way. Likewise, while panoramas have in the past been based on a visual language that decodes the composition of the horizon, Andreas' version will most likely be composed of text. He wants to give the audience of the work “the impression of standing in a new environment” that holds clear memories and associations, but has to be at the same time further imagined through personal responses to what a panorama can be and represent in light of the speed of development of a specific city – Istanbul.

2010-07-16T20:43:00.001+03:00

What we believe

2010-07-01T11:53:00.003+03:00

We are invited to embark on a pilgrimage with the people, ideas and visual imagery in Wael Shawky's video series of works collectively titled 'Telematch'. It is possible to delve in and out of this group of works in the same way that Shawky himself seems to do - sometimes he shows just one work form the series and other times different combinations. At Darat Al Funun he shared with his audience the first ever screening of 'Telematch Crusades', which on this occasion was presented in tandem with 'Telematch Sadat' and 'Telematch Shelter'. In addition two of his other video works appeared alongside, the earlier 'Al Aqsa Park' and more recent Larvae Channel II'. The lineage of the 'Telematch' series is becoming more and more clear over time as Shawky adds new works to the collection (the others in the series include 'Telematch' Suburb', 'Telematch Supermarket' and 'Telematch Upper Egypt'). So it is interesting to consider how his productions that are made under other titles, outside this series, sit alongside the expanding world that is 'Telematch'.

The term Telematch was coined by Shawky from the name of a television game-show originally broadcast in Germany in the 1970s in which teams from different towns would come together and compete in various contests. Initially two towns were involved, but later up to five communities would contend against one another. Often the people participating would be dressed up in ornate costumes and were essentially co-opted as performers of a game within a game, played out for the mesmerised television audience. These peoples' crossing from one town to another, or to a neutral space where a tournament would be battled out and the resulting effect of this transition and coming together of cultures (that first sit in contrast tand then later combine), is what interests Shawky. In a conversation with William Wells, Director of the Townhouse in Cairo Shawky said: “In most of my work I have been aiming to construct a hybridized society. A system of a society in transition, a condition that is not clear, a translation. I see my role as that of a translator- this translation is heightened the closer I come to a system of an actually existing society.” His intrigue lies in where people come from, where they belong and where will they return to once a game, be it a Telematch experience or a real movement and conflict within history, has been played out. He questions whether there is the possibility for two apparently opposing societies, which have previously viewed each other as 'the other', to become hybridized – and specifically due to the result of a game that brings them together to sparks a coalition of sorts that could remain?

The spirit of Shawky's works appears to be complicit with this notion. It is therefore easy to loose the chronological progression of his practice and instead his works nestle together in a vessel full of what he describes as 'translations'. We can pull out different pieces one by one and imagine that in fact the same thing is always being translated, but depending on the day and context, and how the world is currently functioning, Shawky's translation appears just slightly differently in each attempt he makes. Could the works themselves be a hybridisation of one expression that we are simply seeing in slightly different ways?

In each 'Telematch' video the road is usually dry and dusty, but the seductive golds and creams of the desert sand and the blues of the sky and sometimes the sea are all immersing. We fall into a magical scenery that acts as a backdrop for the series of stories that Shawky's translations make all the more compelling as he liberates each one from actual history. Within this moody-landscape first 'Telematch Sadat' plays out. It is a re-enactment of sorts of the 1981 assassination and burial of Anwar El Sadat, the third President of Egypt.. Two processions come and go, but all the players are children that Shawky has brought on board from two different towns in the Delta. These children are too young to have seen the shockingly infamous live-broadcast of Sadat's assassination on television. The capturing of this event on a direct live camera-feed is clearly related by him to the potential of the original Telematch project – a game within a game that captures every move and is being scripted by its writers not by its participants. The children here are probably also not yet aware of the significance of Sadat's assassination and its impact on their lives and certainly not, by extension, of its meaning for understanding the power of television and even more remotely the formations of video art in Egypt that would follow. In this re-enactment their participation is innocent and they perform what is requested of them without an agenda, as if the story they suddenly find themselves a part of has yet to be written.

'Larvae Channel II' zooms in to portray two family members seated in their home who ramble about their situation freely, under a veneer of animation technique. This elderly man and woman are the only speaking characters within the composition of works shown at Darat Al Funun and yet their script, while their own, is confused and again circles around topics, theories and religion.Talking about the history of the region since 1948, the tensions between religions and also the different ranks in society, theirs is a description of a fractured and dispersed society. Yet one sentence at least brings them and those around them together as the man says “our bed, the earth is still our bed and the sky our blanket.” The more precise nature of their spoken references act as pin pricks of intensity alongside the other videos, to remind the audience that within any 'game' real people's lives are at stake. Here Shawky blurs their visual impact and their identity, but their voices and words remain loud and clear.

We then step back in time to explore the scenery of 'Telematch Crusades'. Again Shawky casts children to play out the main roles, and they respond as an army of slightly bemused donkey riders arriving at a castle. On this occasion the re-enactment posed is more ambiguous, the story more circulatory. The group circumference the castle, their intentions unclear. Is Shawky's translation here one that clears the pages that have previously been written? As his neutral group of actors meander through the sand, trying to find their bearings, they do not seem to worry too much about the outcome of their endeavours. One young boy is seen in the last frame backdropped by the vivid blue of a tempting sea and as he descends from the donkey his mind could easily be focused on running and jumping into the waves to break free from the structure of the game he is no longer enjoying. Hence, any conclusion to this crusade that could speak of the far-reaching social and political impacts that the history books refer to melts into the landscape.

Another animation, Al Aqsa Park (2006), is a digital rendering of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount on the same site as Al Aqsa mosque, seen spinning on a central axis like a ballerina ride in a fun fair. This work connects back to Telematch Crusades as it presents a site that was given over to the Augustinians during the Crusades and the Dome of the Rock as turned into a church for much of the 12^th Century. Shawky’s version of the dome is bleached of all colour and with its golden dome and famous blue Iznic tiles washed of grandeur, the mosque assumes a solitary, timeless and endearing modesty. Shawky is of course more than familiar with Al Aqsa’s importance to Muslim culture. For more than fourteen hundred years, it has been venerated throughout the Islamic world as one of the holiest sites after Mecca and Medina. A centre of pilgrimage internationally, it was to Al Aqsa (the farthest mosque) that the prophet Muhammad made his night journey from Mecca and ascended to heaven to receive the commandments, including the five daily prayers, before returning to Earth to communicate them to the faithful. The Dome of the Rock is the oldest existing building in Islam, and so Shawky uses it in his work as a symbol of what he refers to as ‘the situation of Islam now’.

As the video progresses the rendered dome gains speed, spinning faster and faster like a carousel. It gradually tilts enough to reveal blinking lights beneath its foundations, an image that is more funfair sensation than religious wonder. Shawky’s initial solid and calm homage of contemplation begins to seem out of control. Shawky prefers to maintain his original comparison to a waltzer, a fairground ride that similarly tilts as it spins, which he was always afraid of in childhood due to the participants’ surrender to its attendant and ultimately a game; a clear reference so the Telematch television project. This acceptance to let go, suggests Shawky, in a way mirrors religious belief—particularly given the lack of individual manoeuvre, or control that can be asserted in either case. The artificial novelty value that the dome assumes in 'Al Aqsa Park' works as a symbol that hybridizes different systems, one of strict religion and the other of amusement and leisure. Although there are no literal, or historical relationships that connect these two cultures, they both rely on another system – one of belief.

Finally in this exhibition is 'Telematch Shelter', just one part of the four-channel video installation 'Darb El Arbaeen (Forty Days’ Road)', 2007. The piece becomes all the more ambiguous, but also compelling, when seen alone. A train of children walk to a strange, peaked rock-formation in the desert and enter by means of a tarpaulin door. Others then leave, the procession endless and direct, but without clear cause. As if an ark, the rock admits all who come to its door and then expels them back into the desert, now without categorisation. The peak and its environs could easily have escaped from a 'Star Wars' scene or the film 'Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves' where the treasure lies behind a magical cave door that can only be opened with the secret word “simsim”, both infamous moments in popular culture, that are adaptions of more historically bound mythologies. The sound track of this work, as well as all the other works bar 'Larvae Channel II', is a dull rumbling, a kind of generalised white noise, or the impossibility of silence. This repeated strategy again loops together the works and if we were to close our eyes any translation is possible in our imagination. As they exit 'Telematch Shelter' to the right of the screen, perhaps these children too, just as the audience does, encounter another 'Telmatch' experience, forever caught up as part of the neutral community that drifts in a hallucinatory vortex in search of a transformed and as Shawky too seeks via his practice, hybridized society.  

Imagine a cinema built 1000 years ago

2010-06-03T21:42:00.005+03:00

Clemens von Wedemeyer is well-known for his video art works, which often consider the role and position of the audience versus that of the actor, in relation to both cinema and theatre. His 2009 solo exhibition at the Barbican in London (that then went on to tour) was titled “Fourth Wall” - the name given to the “imaginary screen” that actors conjure in order to believe that they are alone and without an audience. It is this “fourth wall” that Clemens attempts to break down in many of his art works to offer the viewer an insight into notions of representation and belief. For example, his video work “Occupation” involves a group of 200 extras being given contradictory directions on a set at night, so that it is impossible for them not to question the situation and its purpose. As the atmosphere grows increasingly confused, the extras become conscious of their roles as both protagonists and viewers of the cinematic set-up that has been created for them to experience their own condition.

When we meet to talk about his forthcoming public art commission for the Turkish city of Mardin, Clemens explains that he initially imagined making a feature film, but that after several site visits he began to feel that this kind of response would not be embedded enough. He could foresee that the complexity of language barriers may be limiting and was very aware that he did not want to put himself in the position of “scripting others' roles.” Instead Clemens began looking back on reels shot during each site visit and the daily activities and people they involve. From his personal experiences in Mardin and following on from works like “Occupation” he is now keen to form a work that is composed of and for the people that live in the city. The work will emerge as a kind of documentary practice, but one that focuses purely on the act of filming with a subjective view. When completed and screened the inhabitants of the city will be able to see themselves in relation to the city and against the city as backdrop via a cinematic set-up created for them by Clemens.

To achieve this mirrored perspective of the community with and upon themselves, a major element of Clemen's My City project will be a solid and permanent form that will initially host the film and introduce the potential for an alternative public space. He says: “One of the first things that fascinated me in Mardin was the stone used to build the historical city. Now, today, when new buildings are built, even though they may be structurally assembled from concrete, they are clad in the same locally quarried stone blocks!” It seems that the importance of the stone and its weight in the city, as well as the lack of any visible public art, greatly inspired Clemens' considerations of what to propose for the My City commission. The context of Mardin and the potential of leaving something behind that would become part of history came to be pertinent for him: “I felt it was important to build something, as this challenge is about fitting something into the city and it is a place that experiences confusions of territory. It is not clear what is public and what is private.”

A new cinema had been built in Mardin in February 2009 and a film festival has been running for two years in the city. But, before this cinema was completed Mardin had no projection space for some time as the previous cinema had gone bankrupt. Clemens realised that it would be interesting to contribute to this new cinematic endeavour, because as he describes: “a cinema can contribute a different, or a third form of cultural arena.” He adds: “Mardin's historical buildings are the city's main visitor attraction and as these are renovated in the hope of creating a new touristic museum context, in which parts are rebuilt and others demolished, it seems fitting that public space is incorporated.”

All these thoughts have fed into Clemens' idea to create a “screen of desire” that he will locate in Mardin as a statement of potentiality. This screen, in its first sketch-ups, alludes to the one built by the architect Le Corbusier atop his infamous modernist residential project Unite d'Habitation in Marseille, France (1947-52). Le Corbusier's idealist community proposal can be imagined as the perfect, classic, public cinema. Since Clemens' first observations of the historical stone constructions of Mardin and his ideas of trying to create a cinema that could have been imagined as part of the city's history, the project has developed to focus more on how a modernist structure would function in the city. Along with a group of architects in Istanbul Clemens is now developing a design for a screen that will fit into the city context as a current addition to its layers of history and that reflects the basic elements of an open-air cinema venue.

Initially, a plinth with a projector will stand opposite the monolith screen and projections will occur after dusk. But Clemens is very clear that he does not want to create something that has one function and meaning alone, and that what he produces should be open to interpretation and use. After an initial screening program that will include Clemens' own video work, it is possible that the projector will travel throughout the city to create a moving cinema with a life of its own. The screen meanwhile may continue to be used for film projections, or it may simply sit as a reminder of how a site of public and active space can be created. Located on the west edge of the city, overlooking the plains to the south in Syria, the screen will connect to the sun's pattern of setting and through this relationship with light and shadow another trope of cinema reveals itself. Regardless of whether there is a projection taking place, the structure will, like a sundial, be altered and shaped according to changes in the weather and time. In this way its timeless nature will both represent the type of cinema that could have been imagined many hundreds of years ago, when Mardin was first being established, while at the same time it will physically introduce a contemporary arena for the city that will exist as a current, valid and active public space.

DOMUS

2010-06-01T22:52:00.005+03:00

Never Neutral

2010-04-30T16:02:00.007+03:00

Opening 6 May 18:00

7 May – 5 June 2010

Chris Marker, Enrique Metinides and Dara Birnbaum

1st fl. (previously URA), Misir Apt.

Istiklal Caddesi, Beyoglu, Istanbul

Never Neutral is an exhibition of works by Chris Marker, Enrique Metinides and Dara Birnbaum that explore the shifting and complex use of documentary composition within visual art practices. As opposed to theatre based non-fiction film which utilises actors and sets, documentary has come to present "life as it is" (Dziga Vertov). Beyond these methods are artistic practices that accept and enjoy the responsibility of personal viewpoints and sensibilities that bleed into acts of documentation.

Sans Soleil (Sunless), 1983, by Chris Marker, combines original and stock footage to stretch the genre of the documentary form into a sensitive reflection on memory and human existence. This influential film conveys many places and multiple world views, but in the end it is coloured by Marker's own concerns about the permeability of time and life. Although Sans Soleil uses the vocabulary of a documentary, its passage over many continents and time periods, as well as Markers' specific empathy for humanity, separate his film from being a documentation in a very intimate way as it is imbued with his personal values.

Photographs ranging from the early 1960s through the 1990s by Enrique Metinides were taken as journalistic shots, many of which were published in Mexico City's newspapers such as La Prensa, Alarma and Crimen. Metinides published his first photograph at only 12 years old, and as for many photographers or filmmakers, the camera became his "second eye". Throughout his career he was attracted to accidents, crimes, disasters, and human suffering. While he officially captured these events for the media, his personal interest was to compose scenes that grew out of and embedded the event. His ability to incorporate bystanders as members of the crowd, as well as responding to the camera, implicated himself within the images, giving them a life beyond the realm of the immediate press.

In an early video work by Dara Birnbaum, Cannon: Taking to the Streets, 1990, the artist positions her experience of expressing a political voice during the first Bush era. Breaking with traditional documentary format and using tools from low and high ends of video technology, Birnbaum replays events of student activism in the United States. She cuts, edits and adds special effects to VHS reels taken by other participants of the 1987 event "Take Back the Night" a march held at Princeton University held to voice concern over sexual harassment. Birnbaum's re-compilation of others' footage depicts the march itself and the strong reactions it solicited, in a format that allows documentation material to appear in public as a concentrated, cohesive statement.

Curated by November Paynter and Mari Spirito with Special Thanks to - Simone Subal, Peter Blum Gallery, New York; Amelia Hinojosa, Kurimanzutto Gallery, Mexico City; Karina Daskalov, Goodman Gallery, New York; Rebecca Cleman, Electronic Arts Intermix, New York; Lisa Spellman; Attila Pelit; Cengiz Tanc; Mihda Koray and Robbie-Lee Valentine.

image caption: Enrique Metinides

Sin titulo / Untitled Hotel (Hotel Regis terremoto, Ciudad de Mexico), 1985

Courtesy the artist and Kurimanzutto, Mexico City

Ciprian Mureşan, Galeria Plan B, Cluj

2010-03-01T14:16:00.002+02:00

“If we wanna understand the Humans, we gotta see them at their lowest. The Evil—as they call it—that’s what we study today.” This line is the protagonist’s pessimistic view of humanity that opens Ciprian Mureşan’s video Dog Luv, 2009, which premiered at the Romanian Pavilion in the Venice Biennale last year. Based on a script by Saviana Stânescu, Dog Luv was presented at Plan B alongside Untitled (Tom Chamberlain), 2009, a video that teases out the titular English artist’s painting practice. Mureşan’s solo exhibition was the first in the gallery’s new location within an old brush factory—a compound that brings together five galleries and twenty art, design, and performance studios. The artist’s own studio is downstairs, as are those of three other gallery artists; Chamberlain had installed a group of paintings in the artist-run space Laika next door. This cooperative setup has filled an urgent need. Romania still lacks cultural infrastructure; rather than wait for the authorities to act, a core group of artists independently collaborated to take over several floors of the factory. At Plan B, the pairing of Dog Luv, which deals both with the fragile teacher/student relationship and human character more broadly, and Untitled, with the artist working as lone warrior, made perfect sense as a self-critique from within the collective.

Stânescu's dramatic text about humanity’s horrific appetite for torture, interrogation, and execution is played out in Dog Luv by five beautifully hand-crafted puppets of dogs. Maddog, the leader and teacher of the pack, encourages his students to recite the names of various forms of torture practiced throughout history. They do so willingly, rapidly firing off a list that includes stoning, crucifixion, genocide, and water-boarding. He goes on to specify that “the backwards spelling of DOG as GOD is not completely arbitrary.” But it does not take long before his disciples have turned upon him and the play becomes one about the act of torture rather than its theory.

Dog Luv was presented to the left of the space, and to balance its dark intent, Mureşan seems to have looked to the angel on his right shoulder to find Tom Chamberlain. An accomplished painter, Chamberlain works by laying down thousands of repeated, patterned brushstrokes using diluted pigments. The content of each canvas is indefinable and the iridescent surfaces seem evanescent. In production, only the glistening of the wet paint hints at the shapes being formed before each section has time to dry. Mureşan’s video follows the development of one painting and was screened in almost real time over three consecutive days.

The shimmering white of Chamberlain's painting-in-progress on the right thus sat in stark contrast to the dark costumes, backdrop, and content of Dog Luv on the left. In the middle, Skull Study after Holbein, 2009, a pencil drawing of the anamorphic skull Hans Holbein included in The Ambassadors, 1533, may have been Mureşan’s attempt to create a tensile connection between the two videos. The subject’s visual ambiguity is an obvious symbol of mortality, but it also reflects the distortion of Chamberlain’s paintings when viewed in reproduction. The trope somehow bridged the gap between two very different stories of humankind, one of a conspiracy that leads to hatred and violence, the other of the individual who aspires alone.

Setting the Scene/Mark Wallinger

2010-03-01T10:04:00.002+02:00

British artist Mark Wallinger is in Çanakkale for the second time to explore potential sites and participate in meetings with the city mayor and local authorities about his My City public art proposal. As we discuss his ideas for the work, a large cargo ship, the British Curlew, heads north up the strait towards the Marmara Sea. Mark takes a photograph and explains some detail about the curlew's (the bird) distinguishable bill, a knowledge he acquired when he was a young ornithologist many years ago. The name of the boat seems familiar and Mark thinks he saw the same one on his last visit, a repetition that seems more than relevant to our conversation as he later goes on to talk about his ideas for a public artwork in Çanakkale.

Mark originally considered himself a painter, but during his M.A. and a period of teaching in the art department at Goldsmiths, University of London in the 80s, he was left with a different appetite for his own artistic practice. He goes on to explain that, “as a painter one could happily work within the confines of the form whilst also having the satisfaction of doing a day’s work. To work in a variety of forms requires patience. You have to wait and trust the ideas will come.” His infamous commission Ecce-Homo, a life-size sculpture of Christ that occupied the “Fourth Plinth” in London's Trafalgar Square in 1999, set a new tone for his work, and afterwards he started receiving numerous commissions for public artworks, but while many have been asked of him, not all are realised.

One of the projects that did make it to fruition was commissioned by Andrea Schlieker (the curator who also nominated him for the My City project) for the 2008 Folkestone Art Triennial in South England. Mark describes Folk Stones (2008) as “not being a commemorative piece, or about making a grand statement. It was inspired as something more intimate and embedded in the locality of Folkestone.” Folk Stones is a collection of beach pebbles laid out in a massive square, each one individually numbered from 1 all the way up to 19,240 to correspond to the exact number of British soldiers killed on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The work is inspired by the one million soldiers who left from Folkestone Harbour to fight on the battlefields of France and Flanders. Mark describes the numbering as “a significant yet pointless act... a modern-day recalling of the labour of Sisyphus.”

Folk Stones is now a permanent public artwork, which clearly engages with the city of Folkestone, and as Mark points out it does so “without being commemorative, or celebratory and without using languages of imperialism.” For him, these aspects are some of the most important when thinking about what a public artwork should be and do today. Iconic sculptures are often based on photographs and hence are forms of commemoration that are merely three-dimensional versions of found images in bronze or stone. Such public artworks simply send the viewer back to the photograph, they are symbols of the past and identifiers of glorious or tragic moments in this history.

At this point Mark proposes that, “Perhaps Picasso's painting Guernica was truly the last major public artwork (in terms of art in a new expanded field).” He goes on to say that, “There is nothing for the people in Çanakkale. There is the horse of Troy – a desperate request from Hollywood to insert some kind of touristic reminder, and then there is the text on the hills of Gallipoli that also speaks to the passer by.” In a sense, both the horse and the text act like promotional materials, created only for those who come and go too quickly to absorb the two main historical memories that this city holds – Troy and Gallipoli; on the other hand, there is really no public entity or statement that has been made for those who live here. In contrast, Mark's work in Folkestone was successful in that it did something quite quietly. The emphasis and context directed the local audience's attention to something in the past without stating facts of history. In this story of public art, Mark wants to create for Çanakkale an artwork that is heartfelt, visceral, and that is both a response to how the locality affects him and is also made for the city's people.

With these thoughts in mind, Mark recalls that when first invited to the My City project and on being given the site of Çanakkale, he started thinking about the knowledge he already had on the area, the little he knew about Gallipoli, the history of Troy, and the confluence point of the Dardanelles as a place for both trade and conflict throughout the ages. His initial thoughts for Çanakkale became an extension of the work he produced in Folkestone. He says he liked the notion of having thought about a “Western front on the one hand (Folkestone) and that he was now looking at the ramifications of a front at the other end of Europe.” Excited by this prospect, but also nervous of the intensity of the history of Çanakkale, the next concern of his was, “Where does one start when there is so much to address?”

While London has been Mark’s main inspiration as it is his base, he has, over the years, worked in a number of divided cities including Lefkosa and Jerusalem. He says that, “Somehow these places feed into all the following work. While a new context can be daunting, by accepting the gifts a place has, new inspirations feed you.” Yet, he also realises that he is recognised for having made several important works that refer to wars and their historical legacy, and that here again, this could be what is expected of him. Although he does not have more than a few experience of Çanakkale, he says, “I feel I have some legitimacy to be working on a public artwork here, given the involvement of Britain in the battle of Gallipoli and the fact that this needs to be a history that is taught more in the UK. What is the meaning of Empire, what could they mobilise?” He also mentions other related references such as English dramatist and poet Christopher Marlowe's unfinished minor epic based on the legend of Hero and Leander, as well as Lord Byron's poetry, and first ever documented swim across the Hellespont from Europe to Asia in 1810.

With so many potential inspirations, it was in fact the sea, its persistent use and the people’s connection with the “back-forth motion of the Dardanelles,” that detained Mark for a while. But, he says, “at the same time, the idea of a Camera Obscura or a similar system felt right. He is thus working on a proposal that will create the opportunity for its audience to notice or identify something that makes a spark and at the same time presents a stately and mythological phenomenon that is relentless. Closing the conversation with a reference to Joyce's Ulysses and the mythology of Cyclops, Mark says of the view across the strait, “Here, yesterday suggests tomorrow. Sometimes something momentous takes place, on other days nothing seems to change and the differences are imperceptible. My work will offer a contemplative excuse to keep looking. Sometimes it is nice to simply frame something.”

As the land expands

2010-02-20T22:28:00.032+02:00

2nd March - 15th April 2010

Al Riwaq Art Space, Bahrain

Can Altay, Fayçal Baghriche, Osman Bozkurt, Shezad Dawood, Mounir Fatmi, Mariam Haji, Basim Magdy, Randa Mirza, Mohamed, Huma Mulji, Rana El Nemr, Fahrettin Örenli, Güclü Öztekin, Mounira Al Solh, Miha Strukelj; with video screenings by artists including Köken Ergun, Ciprian Muresan, Wael Shawky and Erzen Shkololli.

Organised by November Paynter in collaboration with Al Riwaq.

As the land expands is an exhibition that includes art works chosen for their determined urgency and prevalence to the context of Bahrain and the local audience. Taking as a starting point the pool of works in the collection of the ‘Artist Pension Trust, Dubai’, for which Paynter is the Director, over 100 art works that cover a range of media, subject matter and aesthetic tendencies were presented on video and slide to a group of artists and curators during a two day workshop held at Al Riwaq in late 2009. From this presentation a number of art works that seemed the most important to show to a wider audience in Bahrain were selected by the group.

Certain themes and interests dominated the workshop conversation; these included issues of ecology and in particular land reclamation, the speed of urban development in the region and most specifically, in terms of the success and reach of the Al Riwaq gallery, the need to present art works that would provoke a reaction from the local audience. Thus, while the curatorial process was determined by a group decision, and the works presented here do not all relate to any one theme, they do all respond to the location and the current interests of those who participated in the initial selection process.

To make a coherent presentation, a few additional art works have been added to expand on certain themes and ideas, and to also activate the desire to present work in the surrounding neighbourhood of the gallery to include outdoor interventions such as the work Red Zone (a car-cover sewn from kaffiyeh) by Mohamed and a series of open-air video screenings.

Al Riwaq Art Space

P.O. Box 54622

3 Osama Bin Zaid Avenue

Adliya, Bahrain

Telephone: +973 17717441

Fax: +973 17715421

info@alriwaqartspace.com

www.alriwaqartspace.com

Ciprian Muresan / Yama

2010-02-06T19:02:00.011+02:00

For the first time Yama hosts a hand-drawn animation that appears like a sketch on the night sky. A commissioned work by Romanian artist Ciprian Murean Untitled (2010) stems from conversations about his earlier work Pioneers (2008), an installation comprising forty lithographs that depict different children holding bags to their mouths. Many have misread the simple act that appears in each frame and assume that the children are blowing the bags up in order to burst them. Despite their naive appearance, they are in fact shown sniffing glue, a heartbreaking and depressing sight that is all too common in certain inner city areas and one that is particularly familiar to the public of central Istanbul. At the foot of the Marmara Pera and around the zone of Istiklal Caddesi every night young boys can be seen holding a bag of glue to their faces in the same way.

Rather than directly reference this act Muresan instead plays on the misreadings of his previous work and has produced for Yama a more humourous, but still dark, take on the issue. This time, just one child is highlighted and he is seen blowing up a frog that despite its inevitable likelihood of bursting surprises the boy as it explodes into thousands of pieces. A fun gesture turns out to be a cruel or perhaps simply un-controllable act and at the same time the image of the fairytale frog that turns into a prince/princess is thwarted. As we look up at the dark sky Untitled lights up Yama for a few seconds to propose that anyone can make a wish, but in an instant this bubble bursts and the sad reality of disappointment and broken aspirations that afflicts these individuals takes over from the childhood innocence of the frames before.

Commissioned for Yama by November Paynter.

Ciprian Muresan (b. 1977) lives and works in Cluj, Romania. He is an artist and the co-editor of VERSION artist run magazine and from 2005 an editor of IDEA art + society magazine [www.ideamagazine.ro] In 2009 Muresan was one of the representing artists for Romania at the 53rd Venice Biennale; the same year he also participated in among other exhibitions The Generational:Younger Than Jesus at the New Museum, NYC; Communism Never Happened, FEINKOST, Berlin and Incorrigible Believers, David Nolan Gallery, NYC.

Haris Epaminonda

2009-11-15T22:57:00.001+02:00

To the right of the entrance hangs a small, framed book page that depicts a man looking up at a towering termite mound. The unusual scale and perspective of this landscape with figure sets the tone for the formation and play of space experienced in Epaminonda’s “VOL. IV.” The exhibition follows Epaminonda’s solo presentation “VOL. I, II & III,” which took place at the Malmö Konsthall earlier this year, and here the mazelike reorganization of the space contains a series of three-dimensional collages that Epaminonda describes as “sentences. ” While the first is made up of just one found folio—the image of the man and termite mound—subsequent collages mix bought sculptures placed on pedestals with both black-and-white and colorful secondhand bookplates framed and hung or, in the densest composition, stacked against the wall. Her desire to play with traditional museum hierarchies and the usual formats of display is evident in each scene, but also in the way the presentation feels like an illustrated encyclopedia from which different images or shapes are allowed to haunt the memory, the relationships among them left open to interpretation.

What is striking is that the only objects made to measure by Epaminonda are the beautifully crafted pedestals, each one handpainted in a shade of white or eggshell gray, alongside carefully chosen palettes for the numerous frames. This attention to certain details shifts focus onto the pieces whose job it is to support the objects of display, pieces that in this exhibition also take on the more prominent role of masking and hiding selected iconography. A final statement locates the entire exhibition: A delicate wooden sculpture ensquares the gallery’s central column in a tense embrace, framing it as an implied image that ironically can never be captured in publication.

IDEA - Gulsun Karamustafa

2009-11-02T11:19:00.006+02:00

Interview with Gulsun Karamustafa

Contribution to the bird family of the Buyuk Londra, 2009

2009-10-21T23:40:00.002+03:00

Hayv Kahraman

2009-10-15T23:23:00.003+03:00

Ghada Amer

2009-10-15T23:12:00.000+03:00

Rehang

2009-09-03T11:22:00.007+03:00

Rehang

Opening 5 - 7 pm, Friday 11th September

Rehang is a temporary intervention that will take place in the lobby of the Büyük Londra Oteli for the duration of the 2009 Istanbul Biennial.

In this infamous drinking haunt of Istanbul, paintings and objects by artists Anna Boghiguian, Farida El-Gazzar, Hala Elkoussy, Gülsün Karamustafa, Alisa Margolis and Shahzia Sikander will replace some of the existing framed works and paraphernalia that have for years decorated the lobby.

Hotel lobbies notoriously contain prints, paintings and ornaments and while these are often franchised selections, in the Londra's case they are personal acquisitions. The art works included in Rehang sit easily within this eclectic environment, yet at the same time the lobby creates a very different context for the works' appreciation compared to their usual viewing situation in a white cube gallery space. In this unique setting the included art works become first and foremost objects of decoration, but their references to notions of hybridity, layers of tradition and complex cultural concerns sets them apart from the myriad of found and collected items that surround them. It is this shared platform that creates new narratives and memories for the art works, as well as the Londra's surrounding possessions that may well share similar aspirations with regard to their selection, but are considered from a different perspective and usually do not involve a position of intent. At the Londra, Rehang raises questions of taste, value, commodity and how an art works' environment and location relate to its populist acceptance and its appreciation as an object of art.

Curated by Sylvia Kouvali and November Paynter

Grand Hotel de Londres / Büyük Londra Oteli

Mesrutiyet Caddesi. No: 117 80050 Beyoglu Istanbul

Collection Dubai

2009-08-24T12:11:00.012+03:00

The exhibition Collection Dubai brings together works by artists that involve practices of collecting, or of accumulating material that is then presented in a gathered format. This ranges from artists who consistently photograph the same type of environment to create a very tight series of images, to others who have collected found material that clearly works together in a collection of like messages or references and finally to those who follow one idea so succinctly within their practice that their ongoing output in itself clearly forms a collection. The other half of the title: Dubai; is intentionally ambiguous and is included in order to question the titling of something as broad and diverse as a collection of art; in this case with regard to a specific collection* that the exhibition's participating artists have been invited to include their work in, even if they have no contact with the city or its newly formed art initiatives. The title therefore questions what it means to use a regional tagging device, in this collection's case as a verifier and a commercially understood entity. The inclusion of the name Dubai also in part refers to the current trend of copying and accumulation that is taking place in the UAE, which, by extension, the work of Lamya Gargash references. In her series of photographs Familial Gargash obsessively brings together a collection of lesser-known imagery from the Emirate's, the bedrooms and lobbies of its local 'one star' hotels, offsetting the Dubai tag's usual analogies of style and glamour.

Amsterdam based artist Fahrettin Örenli has been invited to present a new installation of his fanatically created drawings and photography that form part of his ongoing research into conspiracy theories that often stem from the EU's strategies of integration and the West-East oil pipeline. In contrast two works by Sophia Tabatadze are theoretically collections, but exist as the only element of a potential ongoing practice.

An installation of three videos from Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin's series Incidents present hundreds of images taken in three locations in which disparate tales are woven together to present the touching impression of how individuals can control and organise one moment in space and time, as the world continues its activities around them. Ivan Moudov's Fragments is an incredible assemblage of collected parts taken from different artworks that Moudov found in various museums, galleries and art centers in Europe. The suitcases that contain Moudov's collection act as a portable museum that traces a precisely selected artistic heritage.

In contrast Tarek Zaki's History of O gathers a group of mundane circular objects that are cast to look like rare and valuable archeological artefacts. As Mamali Shafahi works on 2500 collages that hint at the many truths, lies, tensions and ambiguities that exist in and surround Iran; Nasan Tur's installation Good News presents in a newspaper format a sample of infamous media images that at the time of going to print illustrated stories telling only good news, but which in retrospect have not always encountered such happy endings.

*The initial motivator for the framework of the exhibition was to consider the structure of the Artist Pension Trust (Dubai), an initiative that offers selected artists the opportunity to invest works into regional collections in a shared scenario of risk diversification and mutual participation. These collections are temporary and variable as works are committed and sold over a forty-year period and ultimately all the works are dispersed.

Opening reception Saturday 5 September 2009, 21.00 hrs

Exhibition until 25 October 2009

Location: SMART Project Space, Arie Biemondstraat 105-113, Amsterdam

Tape Republic

2009-08-12T15:54:00.009+03:00

Istanbul is a patchwork of commodity zones, where specific types of products cluster together, classifying themselves and the neighbourhoods they inhabit. For example, leading down to the Galata Tower is the 'music hill', so nick-named for its series of shops that stock musical instruments and DJ hardware. Just around the corner is the 'lighting district', a glittering constellation of window displays, each one hosting an array of chandeliers, lampshades and behind the scenes switches and bulbs. Classic tourist hubs of similar same-zone products include the Egyptian spice market and the fish bazaar. Then there are the more locally frequented such as the sewing machine floor in IMC and the hardware street of Karaköy. The repetition of what is for sale in each of these areas is phenomenal. Shop after shop will seemingly sell almost identical produce, leaving unacquainted passers-by with concerns as to how anyone makes a living. Yet, despite occupying prime, central city territory, many of these shops are just the display floors for trade purchase, where bulk acquisitions of a particular light fitting, or reams of cloth are made.

Istanbul's most famous production-lines include those in textiles and finished garments, with 'made in Turkey' a common tag on multinational fashion brands such as H&M and M&S. There is one district in the city that caters for a precise genre of lower-level clothing 'brands'. Common name tags include Red Star, Romana Botta, Collins, Motor Jeans and Junker and these all generally migrate east rather than west. This district is Laleli, an area of around two square km that contains over 50,000 shops all selling ready made textile garments to ex-Soviet countries to the tune of $5 billion a year. This extensive business apparently all takes place off the record in what appears to be an inner-city, unregistered, tax-haven.

Every day hundreds of packages of clothes are dispatched by boats and trucks first to the Ukraine and Bulgaria before they are dispersed further afield. Until 2001 these parcels would accompany flying customers as luggage, but since 9/11 the airlines started to refuse such packages, not because of them being overweight or because of custom issues, but because of the way they were wrapped - with brown tape, lashings of it, sometimes covering every inch of the black sack or cardboard box containing the product within. It is this extreme use of brown tape that caught artist Osman Bozkurt's interest and not only its application on the parcels, but the fact that its popularity has become something of a local obsession, with its stickyness and usefulness meaning that it ends up everywhere in Laleli.

Bozkurt's work Tape Republic (2009), first shown as a large, multi-faceted installation in the exhibition Europe XXL at Lille 3000 (2009), is a homage to the district of Laleli and the unlikely product that has for him come to classify it more so than its textile trade. Bozkurt first began documenting the multiple uses of tape on the streets as a short-term solution to fixing broken handles and dummy limbs, marking territory, softening the edges of road bollards, to contain escaping electric wires within their lamp posts and even to replace - with thick stretches of back and forth action - the missing woven seating of chairs. These simple ways of 'getting by' and 'making do' are common sights in Istanbul, yet here the tape's prolificness forms a visual unity and classifies Laleli's preferred tactic of improvisation.

The street-found subsidiary and non-official uses of brown tape are the remnants of a more industrial approach to its application by the local cargo companies. One cargo company even requests that all packages it handles are completely covered by brown tape. The resulting indistinguishable brown, shiny lumps are then tagged by marker pen with the numbers or text that refer to their destination, although given their visual uniformity it is obvious that many must go missing in transit.

In the installation Tape Republic a selection of these packages take center stage. Without an assigned destination they sit in the gallery space as sculptural entities and as a sort of memorial to the final products of Laleli's activities, before they become untraceable, caught up in a system of diverse distribution. In the gallery space the packages emit recordings from small speakers hidden in their interiors that play out the sound of brown tape being drawn, sliced and applied, over and over again. This never-ending rhythm links to a film that captures the skill and speed of two cargo guys precisely wrapping their products. It takes about two rolls of tape to cover an entire sack or box and there is a clear pattern of application that has been mastered over the years. A special technique for breaking the tape involves rapidly creasing a section sticky side down and then speedily tugging at each side so that it splits at the fold. Then come the handles, which are spun and tweaked into shape. Like the lessons of the tape's potential usefulness seen in Bozkurt's photographs his film uncovers another unknown skill of convenience – the cutting of tape without a knife or scissors, a trick that every visitor to the exhibition will later try out at home.

Tape Republic collects all the little nuances of Laleli and its tape obsession in order to refer to much larger global circuits of production, consumerism and distribution. While Bozkurt puts on view a micro world that is unregistered and unregulated, it is a pool of activity that supports so many people and links into a regional network with historical and cultural precedents. The free use of tape in Laleli, is reflected in Bozkurt's works where he allows it to extend beyond the parameters ofTape Republic. The sticky substance with its pungent chemical smell, hangs uncut from the edges of the photographs it supports and unfinished rolls remain ready for future use on the floor. And so, like the unregulated world it contains in Laleli, the tape is in Bozkurt's work both specifically applied and at the same time left to its own devices, a metaphor for a community that binds itself together through a system of shared aspirations and the possibility to remain flexible.

The columns held us up

2009-08-01T15:59:00.002+03:00

The columns held us up

2009-07-02T22:13:00.013+03:00

Nedko Solakov

2009-05-25T18:50:00.000+03:00

Encompassing three decades of his work, Nedko Solakov’s retrospective at the Sofia Art Gallery is his first large-scale exhibition in Bulgaria since 1988. Curated by Iara Boubnova and Maria Vassileva, the exhibition is arranged in chronological order, with each year of his production––from 1981 to present––noted on a board. The show begins with a selection of Solakov’s early oil paintings, which brought him acclaim in the 1980s. Some of these are gathered in groups, are displayed on the floor, lean against the gallery’s plinths, or are installed on the columns. This unconventional arrangement introduces a momentum to the spatial layout and allows the visitor to clearly understand the evolution from Solakov’s figurative paintings to his installations and videos, which underscore his deft ability to compose complex and extremely detailed stories.

The genius of this retrospective lies in the way it creates a narrative thread that journeys through the development of Solakov’s works, so that the exhibition appears as a new work itself. In the style of many of his hand-annotated works, such as his ongoing “Wallpapers” series––of which there are three in the exhibition, from 1993, 1995, and 2002––Solakov has added a written commentary of short penned texts on the plinths, on walls, on the floor, and next to works throughout the show. The viewer is in effect led through the exhibition by Solakov, but unlike didactic gallery labels, this commentary is not descriptive; instead, it appears as an element of the works on display and as an added layer that functions as the retrospective’s own narrative. Also framing the entire presentation is a rendition of Solakov’s 1998 work A Life (Black & White), wherein two painters––one making the walls black and the other following to return them to white––work for one month at opposite sides of the gallery. This perpetually changing yet rhythmically repeating backdrop animates the space and transforms the presentation of Solakov’s linear biography into a web of shifting narratives, which, in turn, like many of his works, propose a more complex and cyclic chronology.

A Play in a Panorama

2009-03-23T17:57:00.000+02:00

The scenery is magnificent. The scale and drama that make up the vistas of crags, crevices and clouds, breathtaking. In the midst of this, while nature timelessly endures, Bashir Borlakov stages momentary acts, or as he describes them 'sentences' in history that are then forever locked into the memory of an otherwise perfect landscape.

In Panorama 7, seven men, mere dots in a vast mountainous range, pull determinedly on a rope. Whether they are rescuing someone, lowering one of their number, or pulling a hidden load is unclear. This could easily be a scene from a film, in which the result of the seven men's endeavours might appear in the next frame, but Borlakov captures them still in their act and so the sentence they begin to write remains open.

There are six other images in Borlakov's Panorama series. Although they are all shot in the Caucasus Mountain Range, in Russia close to the Georgian border, the composition of the land is strikingly different in each photograph, as are the human acts these backdrops both conceal and reveal. In the furthermost left corner of the first image is a scene so small that it can be easily overlooked, but when noticed, it evokes a pang of concern as two men are seen bending down in a meadow battering something with a heavy rock. In another, a body appears to have been taken from the trunk of a car and is being held in an odd position dangerously close to the edge of a rock face. In the following images there are four more unusual events - a man is elevated against a perfect blue sky hanging from the legs of two flying white geese; eight women in traditional dress walk in line across a plateau; a uniformed man, assisted by another undresses, while behind him a third crouches naked in the grass; finally a group of boys stand tentatively looking over a cliff edge as if about to dive.

Photographed in a place of Greek legend - the mountains where Prometheus was chained to a rock with an eagle eating away at his liver as penance for giving man the gift of fire - myths are easily born and tales of the immortal, heroes and tortured soles infinitely cited. The term Panorama is taken from the Greek Pan horama, meaning the all-viewing, which is a perspective that it is already impossible for mere mortals to see fully unless via a constructed and often artistic creation. Adding to this lineage of spiritual observations Borlakov seems to include in his works clear references to Biblical imagery – the eight women form a line of pilgrimage, the man lifted by white birds hangs in the shape of a crucifixion and at the same time, along with the de-robing and hence metamorphosis of the uniformed guard, his freedom via flight refers to potential resurrection. The implication of these symbolic gestures can in our present day be taken to cite issues of political turmoil, corruption and racial hatred, but in the end, Borlakov's works pertain to all and none of these sources. Instead he does no more than imply at what these narratives might entail and by using the form of the panorama cleverly implicates the viewer within his composed environments. Humbled by the power of nature and unnerved by the impossibility to ascertain what is actually going on, or of what happened before and what will happen after these events, we are forced to acknowledge our suspicions and to battle with the natural urge to make judgements based on nothing more than a still image.

And so we ponder. Are these events connected? Is the body taken from the car-boot the same one that was being beaten by rocks and is later seen being pulled back from the valley by the seven boys and their rope? Should we imagine that these are horror stories of torture and murder, or are they harmless gestures that simply arouse suspicion? The tension within these images is further magnified by the Jurassic sense of time and scale that features on a grand-scale in contrast to the small interventions undertaken by mankind. And yet, even amidst these awesome sweeps of nature, the most microscopic human presence and action demands explanation. While the drama of the activities going on is somewhat belittled in the face of the much larger force of nature, the implied issue of morality in these acts is so controversial that man maintains his position as the other most dominant and erratic power to exist on earth.

Taipei 08

2009-02-13T13:25:00.000+02:00

Sothebys

2009-02-08T16:24:00.001+02:00

Mousse City Focus Istanbul

2008-12-10T16:33:00.000+02:00

2008-11-02T20:17:00.001+02:00

Sunday, November 2, 2008
Kunsthalle Basel presents:

Catching Breath - Film programme and artist talk
In addition to the solo show Mutual Issues, Inventive Acts by Ahmet Ögüt (APT Dubai) in April this year (20.04.-08.06.2008), Kunsthalle Basel presents an event in two parts:

11am-12.30pm Part 1:
Film programme with works from Ziad Antar, Lamia Joreige, Mounira Al Solh (APT Dubai), Ahmet Ögüt (APT Dubai) and Erkan Özgen.
With an introduction by the curator November Paynter.
Location: STADTKINO BASEL, Klostergasse 5

2pm-3pm Part 2:
Artist talk - Ahmet Ögüt and November Paynter (Director, APT Dubai) in conversation
Location: Kunsthalle BAR, Steinenberg 7

Picking up on the expression of hope often used by Ahmet Ögüt to describe a certain aspect of his practice, this video programme includes works by Ögüt as well as by other artists that appreciate and elaborate the many nuances of this feeling. The artists' references range from the inspiration created on encountering the unexpected, to the anticipation of certain forms of freedom imagined via acts of escape, to the lure of the other and personal moments alone, with each video individually involving its own perspective of hope that is experienced like a breath of fresh air.

Single admission: CHF 12.-/6.- for members of Basler Kunstverein
Combi-Ticket for films and talk: CHF 20.-/10.- for members of Basler Kunstverein
Reservation: 061 206 99 00/01

In cooperation with CULTURESCAPES - Türkiye.
Further information on the festival www.culturescapes.ch

Further information on the event
www.kunsthallebasel.ch/events/events/340

2008-10-27T19:19:00.000+02:00

NADA VIDEO NIGHTS
Wednesday 10/29
6:30-8pm

at John Connelly Presents
625 W 27th Street (between 11th and 12th Avenues)
NEW YORK CITY

We now continue our series NADA VIDEO NIGHTS into October with a special feature program in collaboration with Artist Pension Trust (APT) that will be screened at John Connelly Presents. Popcorn and Grolsch beer will be served. You are encouraged to bring a lawn chair or a blanket. We'll have Astroturf on the floor to give a sense of that "out-of-doors" experience. We look forward to seeing you there!

Admission:
$5 suggested donation
NADA Members - Free

Wednesday 10/29, 6:30-8pm

Feature program: The State We're In- A selection of videos from the collection of the Artist Pension Trust (Dubai) that in different ways and via a wide variety of references seem to offer pertinent reflections on the accumulating states of global turbulence, and the resulting feelings of indecision and confusion. Curated by November Paynter, Director of APT Dubai, and independent curator, the program features work by Fahrettin Örenli, Ergin Cavusoglu, Ahmet Ögut, Vlatka Horvat, Basim Madgy, Loukia Alavanou, Wael Shawky, and Mario Rizzi (APT Dubai).

Short program: Favorite YouTube videos submitted by Miami friends: Nektar De Stagni, Thomas Hollingworth, Bhakti Baxter, Federico Nessi, Samantha Kruse, Nicolas Lobo, Victor Barrenechea, Martin Oppel, and Kevin Arrow. Curated by Ruba Katrib, Assistant Curator, MoCA North Miami.

For more information on NADA VIDEO NIGHTS or if you have any questions or concerns regarding other New Art Dealers Alliance (NAD) public programs please contact Frederick Janka at frederick@newartdealers.org or (212) 594-0883. Please visit our website for more information www.newartdealers.org

Radikal

2008-07-26T15:36:00.000+03:00

2008-07-08T20:50:00.000+03:00

New Ends, Old Beginnings

July 11th - September 3rd, 2008
Bluecoat and Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool

Can Altay, Ziad Antar, Lara Baladi, Cevdet Erek, Tarek Al Ghoussein, Chourouk Hriech, Randa Mirza, Michael Rakowitz, Hrair Sarkissian, Sharif Waked and Tarek Zaki.

Curated by November Paynter

>Can Altay, Mirrorworld, c-print, 2008

The cities of the Arab region are incredibly diverse in their form and character, including sites of ancient civilisation, as well as some of the most youthful urban establishments in the world. Similarly, their heritage and contemporary culture are varied and complex. While cities such as Baghdad struggle in the midst of war to protect their museums and architectural heritage, others like Cairo attempt to balance tensions between ancient history and 21st century culture. In some urban centres, including Damascus and Beirut, the structural skeletons of tomorrow’s heritage have been overtaken by rapid and incomplete development, or the devastation of war. Then there are cities such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi that are in the early stages of promoting a new urban cultural legacy by creating a space for the arts from scratch and housing selections of international art from collections such as the Guggenheim and the Louvre.

New Ends, Old Beginnings investigates a very particular geographical sphere through artists’ responses to the many layers of local and everyday culture, a perspective that the world’s media often overlooks or avoids making visible, preferring instead to present images that shock and manipulate. Questions the artists engage with include: what aspects of a city's culture can and should be saved and shared? How can hundreds of years of history co-exist with current and future cultural practices? Can a newly created cultural hub ever be considered as authentic? An examination of heritage in its many forms - as physical, symbolic and traditional elements of urban reality - also informs how these cities are perceived by those from outside. What does tourism mean for cities of the Arab region and how abstracted is the virtual tourism fed to us by the media?

Considering the questions above, the works included in New Ends, Old Beginnings reveal features of, and help describe current responses to, the situation of cultural heritage in the Arab region through a contemporary lens. Works included in the exhibition have been carefully selected and commissioned to reference the specific themes of heritage, cultural industry and tourism, and to take into consideration the practices involved in protecting, maintaining, re-evaluating and perceiving heritage via art.

This exhibition has been supported by The Henry Moore Foundation, Liverpool City Council, Zenith Foundation, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool Culture Company, Esmee Fairbairn.

Galleries at the Bluecoat:
Open daily, 10.00am – 6.00pm
0151 702 5324
info@thebluecoat.org.uk
www.thebluecoat.org.uk
the Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool L1 3BX

Open Eye Gallery
Open Tue – Sat, 10.30am – 5.30pm
Closed Sun – Mon
0151 709 9460
info@openeye.org.uk
www.openeye.org.uk
Open Eye Gallery, 28 – 32 wood Street, Liverpool L1 4AQ

Isabel Schmiga

2008-07-05T13:52:00.000+03:00

Polis

Schmiga is fascinated by an object or idea’s potential to change state, whether literally or figuratively. In many of her works existing objects such as ties, leaves, marbles and forks, or printed images and diagrams are transformed into new, more conceptually complex versions of themselves. But in her work Polis, her starting point is an extremely specific emblem – it is the Turkish Police badge, a designed composition of imagery that is already a socially and politically charged effigy.
Schmiga's version of this badge in her work Polis presents an extremely uncanny proposal. Through a layering of a carved relief atop the original design, Schmiga draws attention to the badge’s eerie skull-like shape: the outline of the skull is already marked out by the symmetrical, aerial view of a police cap that creates the shape of the badge; the double eagle insignia forms a mouth; the crescent moon and star motif an ominous third eye. As in Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors, 1533, the layered representation is rendered as if in anamorphic perspective and only becomes clear when viewed from an angle. As the cut outs appear and their depth gives a slight shadow, a perfect skull exudes. In this camouflaged state, the badge, like the police it adorns, amalgamates an aura of protection with an implication of fear.
Schmiga became obsessed by this authoritarian ornament after spending several months living opposite a police guard in Istanbul, Turkey. For her, the feature of the skull was always present in the shape and detailing of the badge and her double-relief print was made as a response to the image she believed she was seeing all around her. This badge is omnipresent in Turkey, seen on the police uniform, as well as the forces' cars, buses and stations, so its appearance in Schmiga's work is in part due to its being an everyday encounter, just like any other repeated image she was currently experiencing for the first time in the context of this location. For her this badge, as with any other object, was available to be taken and morphed by her personal reflection. So while Schmiga's work Polis of course refers to a media acknowledged concern about Turkey's police presence, attitude and occasional use of disproportionate force, as well as to a general atmosphere of contradiction and awkwardness that is caused by tensions of group mentality and nationalism, it is also a simple response to a visual slippage created by the shape and design of the badge.
This slippage is then pushed by Schmiga, so that other signs and symbols become more obviously integrated into her interpretation of this emblem. By placing the mouth of the skull in line with the double-eagle motif, she visually replicates a different statement of nationalism, the preference for males to don a moustache. The third-eye is formed by Turkey's flag, suggesting the overriding presence of National authority, but at the same time it is a reference to Islam and the rule of the former Ottoman empire; a combination of associations that can be read as the eye of knowledge, a control of will, or a system of belief, all issues that are very pertinent to the political situation in Turkey today.
When exhibited Polis consists of a repetitive series of Schmiga's photographic reliefs snugly butted up against one another filling the length of an entire wall. There are never less than five of the framed images presented at one time, a reference to the group presence of the police in Istanbul especially in the central entertainment zone of Istiklal Caddesi. Here police are nearly always present in groups of at least three, and often usually five or more. During public demonstrations or pre-publicised events when the police anticipate their necessity, they often outnumber those they are supposedly protecting, but are in fact waiting to control. In Basel for Schmiga's exhibition in von Bartha Garage, 60 of the badges were positioned in a slightly uneven line hinting at the meagre allowance of individuality given to each member of the formation, as well as the tension felt in numbers and in the expectancy of friction. The skull seen in such prevalence and force also replicates the gas masks often worn prematurely by the police before the potential, or actual release of tear gas, a practice that is not uncommon in the current climate of the city.
Hence for a variety of reasons and on many levels Schmiga's work creates a sense of deja vu for those who live in the vicinity of this badge. As the skull was always there for Schmiga, it is now also always there for those who have experienced her work. Through a simple visual act she has marked a new relationship between the public and their encounter with this particular sign of the police. More importantly her work encourages a more general moment of reflection for us all on society's level of acceptance of forms of power and control in our every day environment.

Lamya Gargash

2008-07-05T13:21:00.000+03:00

The found rooms of Presence, along with their furniture, ornaments and décor, project a sincere, vulnerably human dimension. Each space exudes a feeling of loneliness and sorrow at their owner's abandonment. It is sometimes the state of deterioration that marks their lack of occupation, but in others, which were vacated perhaps just a day or two earlier, Gargash's steady, concentrated perspective captures the heavy atmosphere of desolation. While it is normal for the inhabitants of a home to become affectionately attached to its material elements and to experience sentimental feelings toward bricks and mortar, Gargash's photographs suggest that here in Dubai this condition works in reverse and that it is the apartments and buildings that are left prematurely in distress, while the previous occupants are happy to move on and let them go.

Things become 'old' or at least 'outdated' extremely quickly in a city that lacks an identifiable history of more than 50 years. Alone in its old age the Fahidi Fort is believed to be the earliest standing construction in the city and dates back to around 1799. The courtyard houses of Bastakiya where Gargash ironically exhibited her work earlier this year were built in the 19th Century, but even these buildings have been renovated with a mask of perfectly smooth wall-cladding that confuses their authenticity and brings them in line with the rebounding, replicative tone of the city.

Dubai's sudden and continuing acceleration of development, where new hotels, malls and homes appear every day, has infected its population with the constant desire for renewal. Gargash can remember the first shopping mall opening when she was seven or eight years old. In its wake and that of many other malls to follow, a style of 'conformative consumerism' exploded in the city. Family's began to trade their suddenly unfashionable homes for new modern alternatives. They would not even bother to take many of the house fittings and their possessions with them to their new abode, because these too were also already out-of-date. With no clear sense of an aesthetic, historic lineage of culture and identity to adhere to, the city's inhabitants moved on to adopt an homogenous modernist style of interior décor. In this process, a cultural leap was made that all but deleted the potential design and fashion preferences of the 80s and early 90s. While this seems to go unrecognised, or is of no concern to much of the population of Dubai, there are some who like Gargash, reveal a sense of nostalgia for a lost moment in time that can now never be.

The resulting atmosphere of non-stop change and a lack of material attachment with the past is clearly conveyed in Gargash's photographs. Fairly recent tastes in interior decoration that were formed by the post-oil-culture generation – grandiose chandeliers, co-ordinated wallpaper and upholstery, decorative tiles and early-model air conditioning units - together chart the beginning and end of a very short period in local domestic history. It is these key stylistic themes that provide the composition of many of Gargash's photographs and where her use of natural light eerily taunts the interiors, dulling the soft furnishings and gently tracing the ornamental details, rather than instilling in them a breath of fresh air, or life.

A variety of rooms are included in the Presence series, all found by Gargash in homes abandoned or about to be vacated. Certain of these have already become generic spaces with few references to their former lives, while others cling on a while longer to a scattering, or occasionally all their furnishings. A perfectly symmetrical and very decadent Majili (an Arabic sitting room) prematurely takes on the mood of a constructed museum set as Gargash's photograph predicts its coming demise. A series of lounge rooms, all complete with matching curtains, cushions and carpets, are already a dying breed. In one of these rooms the television set is turned on, the still it hosts stamping the date and location on the photograph, in expectation of a future generation's curiosity.

These 'about to be left' interiors are juxtaposed by images of neighbouring sites that were perhaps photographed only weeks or months later into their abandonment, but are already empty and run down. These scenes seem to condense time, but in fact show how quickly a space can fall into decay. In an image that focuses on what would have been a grand spiralling stairwell and in others of the same apartment building this acceleration of physical change is strikingly clear. On several floors that were functioning as a lobby and living quarters only a month or so earlier, Gargash found stacks of old loaves of bread. In the short time between being abandoned and its inevitable annihilation and redevelopment, this inner-city apartment space was being temporarily used to dry a local baker's unsold and excess bread to later feed his farm animals. In another photograph a chair sits alone, sadly looking out to sea. Its back is torn of fabric and a broken down air conditioning unit shares the same room. The subject of the work is not the unkempt objects or the empty chair, but the broken spirit and soul of a space and most specifically the absence of a person who should still be enjoying this view of the sea, sand and palm trees.

Gargash's series of photographs both depict and are conditioned by the perpetual velocity of the surrounding built environment. While she struggles to shoot certain spaces before they become obsolete, in only a year or two there may well be none left for her to discover. In the meantime her photographs are already acting as an archive of this unprecedented speed of change and in time they will be one of the few existing traces of a style and period of living that for now many are more than happy to leave behind.

OÙ ? Scènes du Sud – Volet 2, 2008

2008-07-05T13:05:00.000+03:00

The Stamp of a new Rhythm

As this exhibition takes a step east from its predecessor, from surveying artistic production in the European countries of the Mediterranean, it encounters that of a less easily defined geography positioned around the East Mediterranean, which is more often referred to in geopolitical terms as the Balkans and Middle East. This complex collection of countries share a common colonial history, as part of the substantial land area marked by the conquests of the Ottoman Empire, a fact that is the source of many contemporary problems and prejudices. The Balkans and the Middle East are now related by an analogous process of political reconstruction and their continued perception as an 'other' and a peripheral (despite the EU accession of a number of the Balkan countries) entity to the West and Europe Central. This is what continues to unify the region as a whole and what simultaneously makes independence from its past context implausible.

The need to understand how this shared history and mutual heritage has fed into contemporary culture, and through this, the attempt to analyse and at the same time culturally transcend a myriad of interrelated political tensions, led to a series of national and geographically specific survey shows held in Europe in the 2000s.1 Curated and exposed in the west, many of these exhibitions imported art and artists as tools of national and regional representation. Surprisingly, the Balkans and Middle East were rarely brought together as the combined focus of a major exhibition, preference being to look at the situation of one or the other as an opposition to the notion of 'Europe'. In confrontation of this Western interest in Balkan art and the missing link of its consideration alongside the Middle East art situation encouraged Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center to organise in 2003 the conference and conversation series south…east…mediterranean…europe, with writers, critics, curators and artists invited to participate from Sofia, Skopje, Jerusalem, Cairo, Belgrade, Beirut, Zagreb, Istanbul, Tirana, Pristine, and Sarajevo.2 'The meeting focused upon rethinking artistic production, cultural geography and possible future collaborations in South-East Europe and the South-East Mediterranean, otherwise known as the Balkans and the Middle East'.3

Then in 2004 the 5th Cetinje Biennial titled Love it or Leave it curated by Rene Block and Natasa Ilic also considered this notion of 'opposition'. The biennial press released proposed that the exhibition would 'trace affinities and differences within cultural and political conditions and practices, which - according to the general perception - question the Balkans and the Middle East as two regions of different value systems. Applying its political and economical systems, the Balkans positions itself as part of Europe - but represents, at the same time, a transit area to the Middle East. Sources and origins of the current artistic situation of two different regions will step into dialogue'.4
While the trend of national and regional representation persists, curatorial strategy now tends towards presenting a more analytical response of individual artistic practice rather than merely assuming a geographically defined response. In the meanwhile, the initially accepted condition of export from the Balkans and Middle East, that had been the main structure and hope of support for artists from these regions, began to loose its appeal. Instead this repetition of geographical representation fed a desire for new forms of self promotion and installed the realisation that if an artistic environment was valuable enough to be imported by others, then it should be valued, established and acknowledged with as much commitment on home soil.

This shift to a process of glocalisation from a previous acceptance of globalisation has in the last decade, led to the region's artistic centres recognising their potential as future art hubs that can now import an audience rather than repeatedly exporting art. With the gradual support of new money, private investment and public support from elsewhere, the family art tree began to grow, to incorporate a much wider spectrum of artistic activity and to nurture better communication between key individuals and institutions within the combined region. Most recently the growth of a contemporary art market mediated through a plethora of new commercial galleries, as well as major art fairs such as the fairly established Art Athina and the only two year old Art Dubai, has in part precipitated a formative, but self-orchestrated, regional rhythm of production, exhibition and sale.

As the 'art biennial' continues to proliferate ever more rapidly around the globe, its presence and calibre in a country and region can be taken as one indicator of the development of a community based art situation. The instigation of such large-scale exhibitions suggests that there are individuals keen to broaden their local horizon, to both import talent from elsewhere and to promote their own selected talent and ambition more widely. Regardless of the relationship of these events to economy and tourism, their coming, if delivered with focus and expertise, is generally a sign that artistic abundance and its acceptance is a primary trigger.

A survey of these large-scale initiatives is perhaps the most obvious place to start when looking at the current artistic activity in a given region, especially if looking from outside. These events can also be considered as a basic comparative to their coevals in the international scene. The biennial model, while not a constant form of artistic support, is one that instigates a flurry of activity, exchange and to an extent quality control. These attributes are invaluable in fostering the early stages of an art scene and developing it to international level. As almost all the artists invited to present work in this exhibition have participated in one or more of the region's biennials, let us first look at their development here.

Founded in 1987, one of the oldest and most revered biennials in the world, the International Istanbul Biennial, takes place in a pivotal position internationally. Located in Istanbul, a city that for centuries acted as the centre of the Byzantine Empire as Byzantium and then the Ottoman Empire as Constantinople, this metropolis now sits between numerous geographical, geopolitical and cultural zones. While not the capital, it is the largest city and the cultural centre of Turkey, a country that is strategically important in relation to the Middle East and the Balkans as it both divides and joins the two. In this context, Turkey appears to flirt with its own regional classification, sometimes being grouped as a part of the Balkans and in terms of religious politics to an extent with the Middle East, and of course at the same time it sits between the East and the West, Asia and Europe, the Orient and the Occident. This context of being seen as both a part of and a separate entity of so many different types of physically and politically described regions gives the art initiatives in Istanbul the possibility to encourage composite networks of communication. In turn these relationships present the opportunity for Istanbul to play a pivotal cultural role in the creation of a very particular and inclusive art situation.

Having celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2007, the biennial in Istanbul has played an important role in recognising national artistic development over several generations as well as the need to invite international artists and their work. Those working on the biennial realised early on the importance of bringing together the country's neighbouring artists and arts professionals into a shared discourse that focuses more specifically on the surrounding geography and its evolution. As early as the third biennial in 1992, curator Vasif Kortun's exhibition Production of Cultural Difference included a high number of participants from countries east of Europe notably many from Bulgaria, Poland, Russia and Israel. 'The press conference before the biennial's opening revealed how important this event was to the participants. The Israeli spokesperson noted the opportunity for establishing a Mediterranean dialogue; the Bulgarian, the challenge of dealing with new freedoms and of associating on equal terms with artists from countries with contemporary art traditions....the Russians, the importance of seeing what they have produced out in the world. And so on. There was an obvious sense of optimism that goes with new beginnings'5.

In 1995 Rene Block's curatorial directorship of the Fourth International Istanbul Biennial paid particular attention to the invitation of artists from Balkan countries, with artists coming from Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Serbia and also several from the Middle East including those from Iran, Israel and Egypt. It was Block's desire to create an intercultural meeting ground, to have a real engagement with Istanbul and to 'avoid having the exhibition turn into a kind of international road-show temporarily plunked down in an exotic locale'6.

The 9th Istanbul Biennial curated by Vasif Kortun and Charles Esche deepened this resolve with almost fifty per cent of the exhibition's artists living in or coming from the Balkans, Middle East and other closely related countries of Central Asia. The biennial proposed 'an exhibition structure that would fold out of and reveal its context – the city of Istanbul' This was achieved by inviting many of the participating artists to spend up to three months living and working in Istanbul, commissioned to respond to the 'urban location and the imaginative charge that this city represents for the world'.7 Now, with the announcement that the curatorial collective What, How & For Whom (WHW) from Zagreb will curate the 11th Istanbul Biennial, the strongest statement yet of a desire to intensify these neighbouring relationships has been made. The appointment of a voice of collectivity and also one of local specificity is a far cry from the tourist-venue hosted biennials of the city's past and the traditional solo Direction of the biennial model. This bold step entirely shifts the potential of the Istanbul Biennial and could anticipate the next opportunity, following the predominance of 'place' in recent curatorial initiatives and the ultimately unsuccessful re-imagination of Manifesta 6 in Cyprus as an experimental art academy, to spark a new genre of biennial making both for this geography and internationally.8

Another more recently acclaimed exhibition force in the region is the Sharjah Biennial. Although active since 1993 it first gained serious recognition in its 6th rendition when it was announced that the aim was to introduce a new era for contemporary art in the Gulf. Since then, Director Jack Persekian has introduced a key motivator for the art scene in the Gulf by establishing a residency programme that runs in parallel to the biennial. This enables artists to 'spend time in Sharjah and to engage with the Emirate and its context and to conduct an ongoing series of workshops and collaborative projects that will broaden the educational opportunities currently available to local students including the College of Fine Arts at the University of Sharjah, and College of Art and Architecture at the American University'.9 This is yet another example of a new mode of production and support that mainly focuses on its neighbouring art scenes for its own success.

In 2007, two major new biennials in Greece were added to the regional map, the first taking place in Thessaloniki and the second in Athens. The physical proximity of Istanbul to Thessaloniki and in turn to Athens marks one of many potential independent art circuits, much like the Asian Biennial calendar, that can now be negotiated outside the established US and European art systems. Such networks are sparking a new era of exchange. They also create opportunities for artists to travel to neighbouring countries, which ironically was previously much more difficult and unlikely in terms of visas and funding than travelling to the more normalised zones of Central and Northern Europe.

Other big periodic exhibitions that have come, gone or remain in the region include the currently suspended Tirana Biennial in Albania; two editions, with the third planned in 2009 of the Riwaq Biennial, Palestine; the less revered state-sponsored Cairo Biennial, which is likely to be superseded in terms of credibility by the proposed Photo Cairo exhibition planned for December 2008; the previously mentioned Cetinje Biennial in Montenegro; and the Periferic Biennial in Iasi, Romania, founded in 1997.

Two other successful initiatives that are working to rethink the traditional biennial model and at the same time involve themselves more intimately with the locally existing institutional base via working with independent organisations are Meeting Points and Home Works. The Meeting Points festival organised by the Young Arab Theatre Fund has gradually expanded its reach to create a circuit of sites of intervention in the Arab World and beyond. In its 5th edition in 2007 events and exhibitions took place in Amman, Damascus, Beirut, Ramallah, Cairo, Alexandria, El Minia, Tunis, Rabat, Brussels and Berlin. Over a seven-week period, theatre and contemporary dance performances, visual art exhibitions and nights of film screenings, established zones of creativity and bridges of exchange, the aim being to support talented young individuals as well as emergent cultural spaces.10

As the title suggests Home Works invites others to enter a site of exchange for contemporary art in the Arab World, in Beirut, Lebanon. Initiated by Ashkal Alwan (Of Colors and Forms) The Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts, the week long forum takes place every 18 months and is composed of lectures, performance and film screenings. Like many of the festivals in the region Home Works holds the character of a pilgrimage for the many artists and cultural workers that have moved away to live abroad. Their return and also the coming together of natives, immigrants and visitors creates an assembly that is personal and specific. This is due to its location in Beirut, a city, which despite its venerated art scene does not have a permanent museum or art institution to speak of. As its main art centre, Ashkal Alwan has for many years considered itself as functioning 'with no permanent address', but continues to offer art projects and local artists a form of institutional framework.11

While large periodic activities introduce a wave of accelerated cultural interest, due to their local specificity 'they are neither truly indexical, nor, as in the marketplace, formed in reference to each other and they come together only by virtue of being planned to happen at such and such dates every two years.12 In addition, each one in turn, heavily relies on its local, continuous support structure and network, a crutch that is not always so easily relatable or perhaps self-explanatory within the global art labyrinth. Due largely to a lack of public funding, in many of the countries of these regions there is a clear divide between the professionalism of the biennial model, down to the next contour of well considered arts initiatives - the region's main independent arts institutions. There are few fully and well functioning museums and this 'museum void' is only just beginning to be targeted. One reason for this is the repeated mistake of assuming that the replication of western museum examples, such as Istanbul Modern's take on Tate Modern, will work without specific contextualisation elsewhere. Perhaps more controversial is the importation of existing brands as in Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island project, a completely constructed cultural district, which is set to include a version of the Louvre and Guggenheim Foundation. The concern for many of the already existing institutions is their lack of direction and mediocre policies for collecting contemporary art.

While contemporary 'museum' practice seems to allude governmental cultural departments, perhaps it is the resolve of the independent art centres that will gradually redefine this role and eventually take their place. While it is impossible to mention all of the many arts spaces that have had an impact in these regions, be it temporary or more permanent, there are some that have grown in tandem with their local art situation and are now major players in terms of artistic support, intellectual critique, production and curatorial practice. To name but a few, and to focus on those that grew up together we can include the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art in Cairo, Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center in Istanbul, The Institute of Contemporary Art in Sofia and WHW in Zagreb. These institutions, variously funded by both private and public money albeit from elsewhere, formed a critical approach and adapted their development according to changes in their site specificity. They have all nurtured a generation of artists, working with them and supporting their practice as well as promoting it internationally. Each one is far more than an exhibition platform, in fact the focus is more often on production, archiving, research and debate. A more recent effort of some of these institutions is to introduce a residency programme, a triangular relationship between themselves that takes place without European involvement. This exchange, in person, of ideas and cultural beliefs, presents the most meaningful circle of art collaboration yet to be formed in the larger region. The effects of this simple act will be long felt, enlightening the younger generation of artists to related histories and current social and urban conditions, as well as providing access to an intimately shared structure of support and knowledge, one that can subsume larger projects, museums and biennials to result in a correlation of artistic evolution.

1. For example Balkania curated by Roder Conover, Eda Cufer and Peter Weibel in 2002 at the Nueue Galerie Graz, Austria; Blood and Honey: Future's in the Balkans curated by Harold Szeemann in 2003 for Essl Collection in Klostrneuburg, Austria; Call Me ISTANBUL ist mein Name in 2004 at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany; Contemporary Arab Representations curated by Catherine David, various venues, 2001 – 2003; In the Gorges of the Balkans curated by René Block in 2003, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany.
2.The project was sited within the context of In The Cities of the Balkans, the second part of The Balkans Trilogy, a project initiated by Kunsthalle Fridericianum.
3.south...east...mediterranean...europe conference press release, December 14 – 16, 2003 http://platformgaranti.blogspot.com/2004_01_01_archive.html
4.Love it or Leave it, 5th Cetinje Biennial press release, by curators René Block and Natasa Ilic.
5. Sarah McFadden, “Report from Istanbul: Bosphorus Dialogues. 3rd International Istanbul Biennial Exhibition Turkey”, Art in America, June 1993
6.Gergory Volk, “Between East and West: The 4th International Istanbul Biennial, Antrepo, Hagia Irene and Yerebatan, Istanbul, Turkey”, Art in America, May 1996.
7.Istanbul Biennial Press Release, (2005): www.iksv.org/bienal/bienal9
8.Manifesta 6 was due to take place in Nicosia, Cyprus in 2005 under the collective curatorial approach of Mai Abu ElDahab, Anton Vidokle and Florian Waldvogel. Manifesta 6 was cancelled three months before the opening.
9.artist-in-residence. www.sharjahbiennial.org
10.www.meetingpoints.org
11.www.ashkalalwan.org
12. Vasif Kortun, Unpublished text, 2007.

New Ends Old Beginnings

2008-06-01T14:19:00.000+03:00

Financial Times Arts Survey

2008-03-17T11:55:00.000+02:00

Emily Stokes in conversation with November Paynter, Director, Artist Pension Trust Dubai and freelance curator based in Istanbul. March 17, 2008

Emre Huner, Panoptikon, 2005

How does Turkey fit into the region?
I have been working within the Turkish art scene for over five years and although this region is often reduced to very specific geographical areas, Turkey continues to hover in and between many of these zones. It is an interesting position for the arts and especially the younger generation of artists, whose practice has been informed by tense regional relationships on the one side and European accession talks on the other.

Which contemporary Middle Eastern artist most interests you at the moment?
An artist who has received much attention this year in Turkey and abroad is Emre Hüner.

How did you come across his work?
Hüner presented two works at last year's 10th Istanbul Biennial. He is also one of the artists participating in the recently initiated Dubai branch of the Artist Pension Trust, a financial services firm for artists. His work Panoptikon is going to be shown in the Bidoun programme of video screenings during this year's Art Dubai Fair.
To create his animations, Hüner collects hundreds of objects in personal encyclopaedias. He then brings these images together to create imaginary worlds, such as that of Panoptikon, which combines an Ottoman-era miniature aesthetic with scientific representations of invention and war. While Panoptikon hints at a dystopian future for society in this region and beyond, a more recent work, Boumont, which was filmed on handheld camera, focuses specifically on Istanbul and the story of a lone man wandering the inner city's already deserted and decaying industrial areas.

Does his work tell us anything about the way that contemporary art is developing in the region?
The art coming out of Turkey is diverse and does not follow such a clear line of thought and key thematics as that of some of the other art scenes in the region. So while the practice of archiving is fairly common, Hüner's approach to cataloguing the world around him is unusual: it is not about noting key happenings, events and images (whether real or factitious), but rather about creating the possibility for these moments to be imagined. While he touches on the problematic political relationships of the region, he does so through references to independent layers of history that he converges to present mythical, yet recognisible events.
A key theme in Hüner's work, which is also being touched upon more frequently in artistic practice across this region - because of the rapid growth and density of some of its larger cities, as well as the tension in reconciling new culture with heritage and tradition - is the effect of excessive consumption, dense population growth and shifting customs and beliefs. To describe a world that is being planned and progressed too rapidly in the wrong directions, Hüner has filmed the forgotten areas of Istanbul, previously unexplored by artists in preference of sites of development. While Istanbul's rash of new high-rise housing and gated communities may speak of a certain prescribed future, one that craves documentation and theory-based response, it is the decaying inner-city industrial zones and the environments of Hüner's animations that open the future and the possibility for change to the imagination.

Bashir Borlakov

2008-03-01T13:14:00.000+02:00

The scenery is magnificent. The scale and drama that make up the vista of crags, crevices and clouds, breathtaking. Yet the panorama in this photograph is a stage for one moment, or as Borlakov describes it 'one sentence' in any number of stories. While nature continues timelessly all around, seven men, mere dots in this vast landscape, pull determinedly on a rope. Whether they are rescuing someone, lowering one of their number, or pulling a hidden load is unclear. If this were a film the result of their endeavours might appear in the next frame, but instead the sentence they write remains open.

There are six other images in this series, all shot in the Caucasus Mountain Range in Russia near the Georgian border. The composition of the land is strikingly different in each one, as are the acts these backdrops both conceal and reveal. In the corner of one image, two men batter something with a rock; in another, a bundle is thrown from the trunk of a car; in the next, a man is elevated by two white geese; eight women walk in line across a plateau; uniformed men undress; a group of boys stand tentatively looking over a cliff edge. The imagination runs riot. Amidst this awesome sweep of nature, even the most microscopic human presence demands explanation, a before and after. Is the body from the car the same one that was beaten and is here being pulled back to be identified?

In a place of Greek legend, the mountains where Prometheus was chained to a rock, myths are easily born and tales of the immortal, heroes and tortured soles can be infinitely cited. So while Biblical imagery (a pilgrimage, a crucifixion and resurrection) appear obvious in their implication, references to political turmoil, corruption and racial hatred can just as easily be applied. In the end, Borlakov's works reference all and none of these sources and he simply lets the blind lead the blind and the sighted close their eyes.

Art Without Borders

2008-02-01T14:32:00.000+02:00

A Few Retrospectives; Cevdet Erek

2007-12-19T16:44:00.000+02:00

In advance of Cevdet Erek’s forthcoming exhibition we can rehearse its form as if a musical composition. In such a study the introduction would be Ruler. While this work implies a fixed linear measurement that denotes a complete period or retrospective, it does not set a single tempo, but many, each corresponding to a myriad of personal interpretations. It is perhaps pertinent that this is one of Erek’s most recent works, a project that stems from a residency period spent in Cairo, where civilization first mastered the rule of the ‘golden section’. This system of divine proportion is studied and applied in art, architecture, mathematics and music, disciplines that are all fundamental aspects of Erek’s work. His art is to combine their influence, to propose the essence of an original site-specific situation and subject, resulting in a form of ‘golden section’, or a series of innately human reflections on time and space.

The simple applications of rhythm and compression of time in Ruler are more visually tactile and active in Studio. In this video, which can be described as the refrain of the exhibition, his hands release an embedded rhythm. Like an off-duty percussionist or wind player seen impulsively tapping their thigh, while the memory of the source still lingers, for the viewer the effect is an anonymous pulse. Studio is presented in a scaled-down, sculpted version of the studio where the original act took place. Held captive in their own enclosure, the now involuntary tapping fingers are bolstered by a swinging metronome that perhaps keeps true time, or else attempts to offer a more basic translation of the digits’ infinite performance.

A Few Retrospectives is not an exhibition that proposes any kind of conclusion, because for Erek there are always new renditions to consider as his works’ evolve. But for now the last movement is SSS (Shore, Scene, Soundtrack), a proposal for a performance that imitates nature in order to capture the essence of the sound of the sea as it laps the shore. It is said that the proportions of nature and art follow the same ratio and SSS is in a way a formula that attempts to prove this hypothesis. Its translation of nature takes place via the act of stroking a carpet, a process of recording, interpreting and playing back, through the medium of humanity. The acts and thoughts that make up the essence of SSS have since been published and like a musical score this manuscript is available for anyone to take up and in turn perform their own expression of the composition.

Global Cities, Tate Modern

2007-11-22T17:06:00.000+02:00

We all Laughed at Christopher Columbus, part three

2007-09-26T19:24:00.001+03:00

Today in History

2007-09-26T19:19:00.001+03:00

Book Launch

2007-06-07T09:48:00.001+03:00

Lala Rascic - Pilot 03

2007-04-29T23:58:00.000+03:00

Wael Shawky

2007-03-28T00:35:00.000+03:00

Ola Pehrson: Hunt for the Unabomber

2007-03-21T13:30:00.001+02:00

From 1978 until his arrest in 1996 Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber (university and airline bomber), targeted individuals with a campaign of mail bombings. In all he sent sixteen carefully crafted bombs to academics and scientists, members of the air force, airline officials, and individuals working in public relations and in computer stores, killing three and injuring a further twenty-nine people. The mistake that led to Kaczynski’s capture was his demand that his antitechnology manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future,” be published for full public scrutiny in a major national newspaper. In the end the US Department of Justice agreed to the publication in the hope that it would help with the capture of the Unabomber, and the text was excerpted in the New York Times and published in full in the Washington Post on September 19, 1995. It was Kaczynski’s younger brother David who recognized the arguments against an industrialized society and the style of writing as those of his brother. Based on this evidence, the suspect’s identity was finally reported to the FBI.

In 1998 Kurtis Productions Ltd. and Towers Productions Ltd. produced a half-hour documentary based on Kaczynski’s notorious bombing campaign and life story entitled The Hunt for the Unabomber. Ola Pehrson spent several years re-creating this documentary in his own unique way. Pehrson’s process was theoretically very simple. He selected a series of stills and animations from the original documentary and then modeled them in a variety of everyday materials such as clay, junk, thread, and polystyrene. Nearly all his creations were formed as three-dimensional objects, and they included everything from newspaper clippings, which he made and then drew and wrote on by hand, to environments, locations, and photographs that all became intricate three-dimensional models. Even the documentary’s on-screen quotes took the form of handcrafted speech bubbles, rather than being applied via computer during the editing process. Although the number of objects kept rising—because, as Pehrson stated, “the reality of the quantity and form of models required for this remake remains elusive and utopian”—he eventually assembled enough handmade re-creations to shape almost every detail and scene to be found in the original documentary, and he personally acted out all the included interviews. Once these elements had been filmed in the correct order, and the original soundtrack had been added, a new documentary that is just one step further away from reality and yet no less authentic than the original was created.

When exhibited, Hunt for the Unabomber is shown as an installation, which includes Pehrson’s version of the documentary, as well as around 120 models used in the video. By including these delicate but often scrappy sculptures, Pehrson raises a number of allusions to the practice and philosophy of the Unabomber. Even before the publication of “Industrial Society and Its Future,” it was known that Kaczynski was obsessively concerned with the advancement of technology and its application in society. He feared that while humanity gained power through technological tools, the individual was losing the ability to freely make personal decisions. To somehow reiterate these concerns, he began to construct personalized bombs from extremely basic, found materials, which led to his secondary FBI code name: “Junkyard Bomber.”

This interest in playing with or subtracting the technological devices used in certain modern-day processes is apparent in a number of Pehrson’s earlier works. In two installations from 1999, Desktop and Yucca Invest Trading Plant, Pehrson presents a new way to imagine the relationship between a virtual world of computer programming and a possible physical embodiment of its existence. In Desktop, a 10:1 scale re-creation of a standard Windows 95 interface is painted on one wall, in front of which hang plastic models of the desktop’s icons. This arrangement is filmed and shown in real time as a 1:1 image on a computer screen on the opposite side of the exhibition space. In a similar way to the installation Hunt for the Unabomber, the process of intricately creating a step away from reality results in a more physically present and personally heartfelt interpretation of the original subject. In Yucca Invest Trading Plant, Pehrson’s subjective approach to dealing with technology is materialized via a yucca plant wired up to the stock market. As all living organisms, including plants, emit electric impulses, here the yucca’s amplitude readings are translated into currency via a computer. Based on the plant’s success, it receives in different doses its own essential currencies: water, air, and light. While the yucca plant replaces a young urban businessman, in a later work, NASDAQ Vocal Index 2003–04, graphs tracking share prices of companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange are translated into sheet music, and members of local choirs are invited to vocally interpret the current situation in each market.

It is a clear development in his practice that Pehrson selected the subject of Kaczynski’s life as presented in a “produced”’ documentary format. For Pehrson a documentary such as this, based on historical events, is no more than a re-creation of reality anyway. He sees it as a combination of memories, ideas, and representations of the world that can be embodied via found photographs and mimicked events, or just as honestly described by reproductions of these occurrences modeled in clay. Talking about the overlaps in reality and fiction, as well as the combination of the objective and subjective in documentary making, particularly in Hunt for the Unabomber, Pehrson said: “Some of the representations, in both the original version of the documentary and in my remake, are highly subjective visual statements, which carry little visible resemblance to the original subjects. In contrast other moments present minutely precise copies of say a house, or a photograph of a relevant person. Many scenes, in both versions of the film, are highly neutral in relation to their connection with the actual events told. A specific airplane for instance, which in the original film has to become any airplane, since it is impossible to show the actual plane from the earlier event, is in my version represented by a winged detergent bottle.”

Ola Pehrson tragically and prematurely died in a car accident near Ljusdal, Sweden, in 2006.

Theodore Kaczynski is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the federal prison in Florence, Colorado.

Note: All quotations from the artist are from e-mails sent to the author in the spring of 2005.

November Paynter is curator of Platform Garanti CAC in Istanbul and is currently on leave to work as a consultant curator at the Tate Modern in London. In 2005–6 she was assistant curator of the Ninth International Istanbul Biennial.

Biography
Ola Pehrson (1964–2006) was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He studied art at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, and received a master of arts degree in 1997 from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Stockholm. Pehrson's solo exhibitions include those at Galleri Lars Bohman, Stockholm; Galeria Noua, Bucharest; and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh. His work has been included in group exhibitions in Sweden at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and the Malmö Konsthall and in Japan at the Yamaguchi Museum of Art. Hunt for the Unabomber was included in the Ninth Istanbul Biennial in 2005 and the Twenty-seventh São Paulo Biennial in 2006. This is the first solo exhibition of Pehrson's work in the United States.

Christodoulos Panayiotou

2006-12-12T17:05:00.000+02:00

Christodoulos Panayiotou’s works are all performance-based and collectively they span every level of what one could describe as a spectrum of the performative in art– from creating a space for activity such as dancing, to the directing of actors and events, to the recording and tracing of both the artist’s and society’s ‘performances’. His practice is therefore difficult to sum up. To explore his works via a method of chronology or cross-referencing feels redundant, in favour of looking at it as a series of branches that stem out from a performative centre. Panayiotou adopts a similar process in his analysis of his own work, most specifically, at this moment in time, in relation to one of his more literal performance works Slow Dance Marathon (2005 - ).
Slow Dance Marathon was first realised in Thessoloniki in 2005 on a stage set up in a wooded enclave, at an outdoor mini-concert venue, in which a chain of people danced to well-known love songs. Each person would dance for one full hour, with alternate partners changing every 30 minutes and so on, and so forth, until a whole day and night had passed. The second rendition with the same title was organised for Tel Aviv. Here an additional 24 hours were added, making the marathon a two-day affair. As anticipated, the third in the series planned for Istanbul, will take place over three days. Unlike similar artist-initiated events, Panayiotou is more interested in the sociological interactions created by the situation than the psychological reasons why people agree to participate. He admits that his intention is open to interpretation, but for him it is about creating a relational space, and the way people act within that space produces an opportunity to decode and analyse a spectrum of ‘amorous dialectics’.

_{Slow Dance Marathon, installation view}

The act of ‘slow dancing’ resurfaces in a number of Panayiotou’s other works. He finds this form of dance radical in comparison to other social dances, in the sense that it boasts emotional familiarity and the generation of a radically intimate space while being totally accessible through its lack of codified moves. In Forever is gonna start tonight (2004), which like all of Panayiotou’s works is part performance and part real life, the audience in the role of participants are invited to enter into a series of actions and dialogues with the three performers, one choice being to enter into a slow dance. As one-to-one relationships are formed the work unfolds like a soap opera, but one that is part script, part improvisation and part reality – the performers maintained their own identities and personalities while on stage. Within this work, the degree of literal performance rises and falls throughout its duration, as do the levels of intimacy between the audience and the performers. In a way this work simply restages aspects of life itself, which Panayiotou describes as a form of theatre, in order to interrogate certain forms of representation.

_{Christodoulos Panayiotou, Truly, 2005, Video installation
Photo: © Panos Kokkinias}

Another branch of his practice includes works like Sunday (2005) and Alkadashlar (2006) part of the work Truly (2005) for which Panayiotou won the Deste Prize in 2005, and most recently Prologue: Quoting Absence (2006). For these Panayiotou takes on a more directorial role, as the emotional impact of the works is less to do with the experiences of the protagonists, and has more to do with the appreciation of its audience who are confronted with it in the end result. For Sunday, 80 street cleaners were contracted to collect over two tonnes of confetti from the streets of Limassol following the city’s grand carnival parade. The confetti was then taken to the Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre and piled to one side of the space, a sculptural remnant of a collective experience. To create the video Alkadashlar Panayiotou’s orchestration stretched even further to commission fighter planes from the British base in Cyprus to draw the shape of a heart in the sky. The work was shown in Istanbul on a Lumacom screen atop the towering Marmara Hotel in Taksim Square to coincide with the visit of the Greek Foreign Minister following the mid-air collision between jousting Greek and Turkish fighter planes over the Aegean Sea. The symbolic timing of this screening, its location and monumental proportions emphasise clearly the way Panayiotou plays with the various roles of artist-director, performer and audience within his constructions. This is also clearly evident in Prologue: Quoting Absence, a work commissioned by Modern Art Oxford that is a conversation on the theme of absence between four Oxford University scholars from the academic schools of Philosophy, Theology, Astrophysics and Arts. Played in an empty gallery as a form of ‘reversed landscape’, the desired intellectual conversation that comes about as the result of experiencing a work of art, is in this case, already there. As with Slow Dance Marathon, Panayiotou plans to develop this work in two further parts with a video and a performance epilogue, perhaps making this the new pivot for his practice.

Contemporary (Performance Issue) January 2007

We all Laughed at Christopher Columbus, part two

2006-10-21T19:12:00.000+03:00

Roderick Buchanan
Jeremiah Day
Omer Fast,
Runo Lagomarsino
Deimantas Narkevicius
Amalia Pica
Florian Wüst

_{Amalia Pica, To Everyone that Waves}

There is a fine, but clear difference between an artistic reconstruction of an historical event made in order to question, or reconsider social attitudes of interpretation; and an artistic interpretation of a past event created to explore newly applied layers of meaning that effect its reading today. The former considers the truthfulness of historical representation, the problematic dialectic between collective memory and factual source, and more often than not it is a personal quest instigated by the artist in order to understand an important moment in their own relative history. It is also a topic that has of late been applied more and more often curatorially to explore a distinct artistic practice that focuses on the reconstruction of historical events to explore their past and current significance - from re-enactments to documentary videos.

The difference in the angle of the latter approach - that of artistic interpretation of an historical event - is that the artists’ relationship with the referenced moment is based on a pure infatuation with a specific happening. This interest is nurtured through research and intrigue and results in a work that is an individual, artistic interpretation, developed from a subjective point of view.

Such an approach can be a one off-affair, a fascination with a particular moment in time that the artist cannot let lie. When after having worked through every facet and detail of it for themselves they choose to produce a work of art that is then several layers removed from the original factual source. Alternatively, the approach described becomes a repetitive strategy, whereby the artist selects a series of partially related incidents in history as starting points for artistic examination as in Jeremiah Day and Florian Wüst’s practice. Wüst for example has researched one seminal happening after another that made an impact on American and German history. The list incorporates, amongst others, the matter of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the so-called Spiegel-Affäre of 1962. In each of his final interpretations he uses a similar system of working that adopts video or audio, wall drawings and installation, so linking his selected subject matters via the aesthetic of his own oeuvre and thus in a new area of classification and at a new moment in time.

Two exhibitions, the first at Stedelijk Museum Bureau in Amsterdam, the second at Platform Garanti in Istanbul and a future publication aim to explore these inspired investigations of the past. The exhibition at Platform is composed as open in plan as possible, to allow the works to form a journey and the events explored by the artists to be viewed individually, while at the same time as part of an ongoing conversation. Although the subject matter of the works is not related, or consequentially linked in history in any acknowledged way, there are points of allusion through the artists’ similar approaches and attitudes. The significance the events considered is already determined in collective, internationally distributed history. Without disregarding this underlying historical significance, the artists form new interpretations of the subject matter that can be read autonomously, as well as in relation to the past they reference. This is most evident in the way the selected artists embrace the fictive within incident, without being compromised by feelings of responsibility to accuracy.

The statement ‘We all laughed at Christopher Columbus’, adopted and adapted by Runo Lagomarsino became the linchpin in the first exhibition at Stedelijk Museum Bureau in Amsterdam and remains in place as the title of the exhibition in Istanbul. As this statement continues to maintain a strong presence, a new work by Lagomarsino inhabits the exhibition. Casi Quasi Cinema presents in a model cinema the flyer text handed out by the US Directorate for Special Operations for a screening of the film The Battle of Algiers (Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo 1966) when it was shown at The Pentagon in August, 2003. The Pentagon considered the film a useful illustration of the problems faced in Iraq and the flyer read, as does the text in the work:
How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.

Two other works in the exhibition reference specific films. Omer Fast’s two channel video Spielberg’s List is constructed from the experiences of persons who participated as extras in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. Spielberg shot his film on location in Krakow and employed thousands of local residents for the dramatic recreation of the historical events on which the movie is based. Some of the extras are old enough to have also experienced these events as they occurred in reality earlier in their own lives. Their recollections as witnesses and as viewers – indeed their duplicate first-hand experiences – bracket a fifty-year span during which events turn into movies, memory into filmed narrative. Fast mixes and juxtaposes footage of the constructed Plaszow film set with the neighbouring landscape. Interviews with extras who recall scenes from the film, are re-edited in the subtitles to offer more literal references to their fictive origins. In addition the videos include clips shot on the ‘Schindler’s List Tours’, thereby showing how notions of memory and place are both expanded and put under duress when history turns into film and when these layers are combined in a new multi-dimensional artistic interpretation.

The Role of a Lifetime by Deimantas Narkevicius features interview material with controversial British film director Peter Watkins, best known for his genre-breaking fictional documentary The War Game, 1965. Narkevicius' film combines three distinct elements. The first is his interview with Peter Watkins, recorded in Lithuania where Watkins lived for many years in the course of his self-imposed exile from Britain. The second is a sequence of drawings of the Lithuanian landscape, some depicting an unusual theme park, Gruto Park, a repository of Social Realist sculpture from the post-war era. The third comprises scenes of Brighton shot over an extended period by an amateur film enthusiast and never intended for public consumption. The Role of a Lifetime creates a space for Watkins to discuss his ongoing wish to liberate the film going audience and allow them the opportunity to be involved in a film’s research. And, by presenting his thoughts in a work by an artist interested in exploring the history he has created, his desire to encourage people to think about time, space, structure and process is intensified twofold.

Formed in a similar vein to consider memory, history and its interpretation through film is Amalia Pica’s work To Everyone That Waves. The 16mm footage shows an event organised in the harbour of Amsterdam of people waving farewell to those boarding an old sailing ship. Pica describes a fake collective memory that is generic and stems not from the literal historical event – in this case mass migration from this harbour to the Americas - but from the many fictive responses reproduced by film, media and our imaginations. By taking advantage of the presence of an old ship, asking those in its vicinity to participate on the spot and using an old black and white film format, Pica layers together different fictional associations with no true accuracy to historical fact, to produce a personal interpretation of how we might imagine such a scene now.

Reflecting on the limitations of historical description Jeremiah Day’s project on the reconstruction of monuments in Washington DC sets an interesting precedent for the reconsideration of what memorials mean in our current society. His installation of photographs, text and sculptural elements take as their reference the renovation of major memorials and monuments in DC during the summer and autumn of 2004. He proposes that this process of reconstruction is no coincidence but a symbolic re-organisation, initiated to parallel the USA’s shift in political discourse. On each of the photographs Day has handwritten notes suggesting his claims of propaganda, that offer a fragmented form of storytelling.

Florian Wüst's installations deal with the ambivalent relationship between subject and state. This relationship is constantly changing under the productive pressures of renegotiation and reassessment. Nonetheless, and as also explored by Day, the defining power of the state tends to treat signs, images and language as malleable material even where they refer to concrete historical events and conditions. Under these conditions discourse is likely to turn into doctrine. The installation Protecting freedom until there is no freedom left (2004) uses J. Robert Oppenheimer as the historical lens through which past and present histories are artistically examined. "Oppenheimer, who has often been called the father of the atom bomb, later refused to support the hydrogen bomb program of the U.S. government. Following this refusal he was accused of being a communist and subsequently lost his security clearance and his official advisory positions in 1954. By concentrating on the form of communication of the actors and the subjective approach of those involved Wüst lifts the discussion out of an abstract political context and presents a series of personal characterisations.

Whereas in Wüst’s work, actors are brought in to render an interpretation of the Oppenheimer story in Roderick Buchanan’s video History Painting real soldiers present a current interpretation of their predecessors of two hundred years ago. Filmed in Wellington, Tamil Nadu and Catterick, North Yorkshire during the summer of 2004, the film projection features newly passed-out soldiers from the Madras Regiment in Tamil Nadu and their counterparts in the Scottish Infantry Division. In 1803, the predecessors of these young men fought alongside each other at the Battle of Assaye. Both regiments still carry the Assaye colours, featuring an elephant, and the victory at Assaye is central to their respective sense of honour and identity. Although Roderick Buchanan’s new work has its roots in a particular historical moment, its reach is more contemporary and more complex in ambition.

Curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen and November Paynter

THE INSPIRATION OF HOMEKöken Ergun interviewed by November Paynter

2006-10-12T19:00:00.000+03:00

Those who left Turkey in the 60/70s to follow opportunities in Europe and America rarely returned. But, now the trend has shifted and this generation find it more productive to divide their time between home and away, to communicate the inspiration they get from life in Turkey elsewhere and to share their experience of living elsewhere back home. Köken Ergun’s movements over the last six years, during which time he has lived between Istanbul, London and New York, exemplify this tendency. His inspiration, he says, nearly always comes from home, in particular from Istanbul and yet he finds it beneficial to produce work elsewhere with distance from the original subject and in the context of a different form of cultural perception. This method of practice results in complex questions that relate to locality and geography; how a work about the Islamic headscarf, or military presence in Turkey translate outside the context that Ergun knows so well and uses as inspiration?

Coming from a background of theatre and performance with a dominant interest in bodily stress, Köken Ergun’s videos explore facets of the intersection and anxiety that hover between Turkey’s secular republic state and its Muslim population. In his work Ergun proposes that the choices a community must make in a situation that is plighted with rules and state decisions on the one hand, which often remain unregulated on the other, result in forms of bodily stress. Two recent works in particular reflect these issues. The first is Untitled, 2004 and the second I, Soldier, 2005. In Untitled the artist presents a series of self-portraits of himself applying and donning a variety of headscarves in different styles and with different ties devised by a range of Islamic traditions. Viewing a man undertake this procedure at first gives the work a comic stance, but the austerity and seriousness of his intent and later his tears imply the societal contradictions and trauma that this solitary appendage induces. Whereas Untitled is concerned with a female, religious relationship with the bigger societal picture, I, Soldier presents the opposite extreme of bodily trauma experienced in Turkey, that from a male, secular position. Filmed during a state holiday dedicated to the youth of the republic, this two-channel work shows a soldier voicing with grandiose authority a nationalistic military poem. In Turkey every male youth must complete a period in the military and many view this imposition as a form of mental and bodily trauma. In I, Soldier it is not only those in official uniform that are seen going about their regulated duties, but also boys from the military school who perform rehearsed activities sometimes in synchronisation with the rest of the group or in competition against one another. Ergun’s interest in specific cultural bodily trauma; how he explores and relates to them within his work and how he feels about the different ways his work is understood in Turkey as opposed to elsewhere, form the crux of this interview.

Please tell us a little about your interest in theatre and performance and how you moved away from these fields to begin working as a contemporary artist.

I think I have always been “dramatic” in a sense. When I was a child I always dreamt of “the other”, almost always being better, stronger than “the self”, but not because I was unhappy with my current state or upbringing. I think I just liked fictionalising and dreaming for the sake of creating a different world around me. So I would dramatize other states, other people, like I was creating my own mythology. My roots go back to the lands of the Ancient Greeks of Asia Minor so I was already very familiar with the myths and legends of the Aegean from an early age. One of the reasons I wanted to study theatre was because of this connection with Greek mythology and theatre.

Maybe I also sensed an existential suffocation at that early age towards the greater world (not necessarily to my immediate surroundings) and escaped from that general reality by being dramatic. Istanbul is a very grey city, it can be very depressing in the winter, very misty and dirty, even more so during my youth. Not everybody is lucky enough to have a fantastic view of the city or the Bosphorus, and sometimes all you see is a grey city skyline, a poor skyline. I remember Istanbul being perpetually grey, and even as a child I understood about the political struggles and the hard times that consumed it. I knew that there was a better world out there, one that was not so full of struggle and political contestation. So I pictured our surrounding reality from the position of different characters all the time. I could easily relate to those who didn’t live in Istanbul, those that came from other places, non-places. I still like these non-places and enjoy the ability to locate myself somewhere else that is not necessarily anywhere in particular.

Through this relationship with a drama of sorts, I ended up being accepted to an acting school having attended an audition merely to test my abilities. I entered prematurely which perhaps manifested its problems later on and thus I soon realised that theatre was not for me. Or rather this form of representation was not for me. I didn’t find it sincere. I disliked all those Checkovs and Shakespeares. They didn’t fit my body, my body was too Eastern for them, but the teachers forced us to adjust our bodies to these heavy minded creatures that existed in their plays. For me there was little of interest in theatre produced between the time of the Ancient Greek writers and Beckett. The body in these two examples were closer to mine. All the plays and characters that came after Euripides and before Beckett were a mere nuisance to me. With a few exceptions of course, like Maeterlinck who I still feel comfortable with.

Then, just as I was preparing for auditions for film schools I found myself working with Robert Wilson. He showed me a different aspect of theatre. He made me aware of the importance of timing. Not specifically his own timing, but a sense for timing in/for a work of art. I think this is one of the most important aspects of an art production. It is all about timing, as Bob (Robert Wilson) would say.

Bob wouldn’t teach me things, he wouldn’t teach anyone anything. What he did was much more interesting, he would create a space for you to think that there is an alternative. This is very important and many people who criticize his work today overlook this important motive in his teaching. Once you understand that there is another, you can move on yourself. This is pretty much similar to the teachings of Shamanism, Taoism, or that of Bektashis in Turkey. As soon as I understood this other, I moved towards contemporary art and away from theatre, also away from Bob’s work, which I found a very natural development, and I think he would be comfortable with it too. So, with this new sense of timing that I had acquired, I felt more comfortable working in the field of contemporary art, especially with video and performative video.

Can you explain why you chose not to pursue this new sense of timing within the genre of performance itself and instead chose to work mainly with video, which steps away from the live act of performance into that of documentation?

I am still not content with the representation techniques of either theatre or performance. Many things disappear in repetition or staging. In other words, there are two kinds of performance: the first is performed not for the sake of performance, but for any other reason, either to continue the flow of life (like eating or sex) or to serve a cultural reason (like discipline or punishment). The second is performance made only for the sake of re-performing these first forms of performance. It is pure repetition, but we are somewhat afraid to call it so. We call it art instead. We call it theatre. Brecht said “everything is theatre”. It is true, but then why repeat it on stage and ruin it? I have gradually come to have a problem with this. When I was in the first years of my acting studies I absolutely loved the idea, but now I prefer the first form of performance, the natural one. Actually you don’t even need to describe it as natural because there should not be an unnatural. Just like in Chinese thinking there is no gender, so being male or female doesn’t mean anything and being naked doesn’t mean anything either… I want the Western world to be more like this in terms of performance.

It would be interesting if there were no theatre for a while, no stage, no performances, just a very long hiatus; during which period we can come to accept that everything is an act of performance by itself, without direction by another. The world exists and moves by itself, not by mankind. The whole idea behind Western performing arts is the central figure “I”. And this is why I don’t like the theatre we see everywhere, or the performances we see in the art world. The most selfish “I” is still too central. Both the actor and the director think that by putting themselves in the foreground they will achieve something. What they achieve is a perfect repetition. Or perfect egoism. But, I think to re-present a performance (of the first form) by another un-live medium like video is more interesting. This is why I started to document performances of the first kind and apply my own direction with a very little editing, just to help link the timing of the individual segments into a single work. I don’t want to add more to the original performance I have simply filmed.

How do you differentiate the way you experience and are inspired by your home city of Istanbul and other cities you have lived in such as London and New York?

I have never been as inspired by any city other than Istanbul. This doesn’t mean that most of my works taste of Istanbul, as they say. I think it is the embodiment of the city and its character in my work, and in my character. In a city you grow up and interact with; you copy attributes of its architecture, its people, its public transportation system, its nightlife. I operate pretty much like the architecture of Istanbul for example. And with architecture I am talking about the architecture that you wouldn’t even call architecture. It is an architecture, which develops not according to styles or creators (again the “I”) but according to necessity and rules of daily life. So just like the two forms of performance I described earlier, architecture also comes in two forms. It is the first form that integrated with my body, but the second I was taught to integrate my body with.

Unfortunately, in modern Turkey we are taught to live in the organized and self-centered world of the Western culture. Just imagine: teaching a child of Istanbul to live as a Western urban citizen in an organized system. Imagine what he sees around him and what he is taught. This is why the new expensive schools in Istanbul are built outside the city like gated communities of say 70s/80s London, so that the children of wealthy Western-type families can’t see the real world outside. This points out the most obvious character of Istanbul: it is a city of dichotomies. This city is the epitome of being ‘bi-’. It can embody any given attribute in two or more different states at the same time with an absolute chaotic comfort. For example, if you leave it to its most natural form, many Western attributes will not apply here. But, we don’t leave it to its natural form we force it to change. We raped this city and its people to look like, to feel like, to walk like, to dress like Westerners. The petrified, mutant body that comes out of this rape is what inspires me the most. And ironically I am one of these mutant bodies, so I constantly question my own existence and my own positioning in Istanbul first as a micro-cosmos and also in the world as macro-cosmos.

On the other hand, in Western cities I am more interested in the minorities than the indigenous community. In New York for example, I am inspired by black culture. Although we Turks have no immediate historical or geographical similarities with them, I feel closer to them for some reason. I think it is something to do with trying to distance oneself from colonial attitudes. I first felt this attraction to black culture at a nightclub, in one of the legendary Body&Soul parties. Everyone was dancing with the same enthusiasm and exorcism I saw in the countryside of Turkey. I was not taught to dance like that, I was taught to imitate the Western detached way of dancing. It is very hard to explain. I can’t describe it with words…

Can describe the ideas behind ‘Untitled’, 2004 and ‘I, Soldier’, 2005.

Both are similar in the way they deal with the mutant body I mentioned earlier and its dichotomies (I deliberately use it as plural) in both works I celebrate these dichotomies. The headscarf piece Untitled was inspired by a deliberate and ugly act of the current president of Turkey. The wearing of headscarves is not permitted in state controlled spaces in Turkey, such as its universities, court-houses and even the parliament for that matter. Despite Turkey being one of the strictest secular countries in the world, its public elected a conservative party known with Islamic tendencies, which was actually quite successful for a while. However, as soon as they came to power the lowbrow, high-bureaucrats and the army started to exaggerate the headscarf issue, which is an ongoing argument since the 70s. On the Republic Day the president always hosts a ball at the presidential palace, which is also another state space where headscarves should normally not be allowed. But because almost all wives of the members of the Islamic democrat party wear turbans (headscarves), in order to avoid this clash of the secular and sacred, the president arranged for and distributed one-person invitations to the ball in effect allowing only the husbands to attend. This outraged me and I wanted to apply the stress of living with a headscarf on my own body. So I made Untitled in which I wore different types of headscarves over and over until eventually I burst into tears at the end.

The work I, Soldier is a personal exorcism about my fear of the military discipline and also my secret attraction to its male qualities. There are two national days in Turkey dedicated to certain age-groups: the 23rd of April (denouncing the Ottoman parliament in Istanbul and opening of the new Turkish parliament in Ankara, in 1920) is dedicated to kids of primary school age, and the 19th of May (the start of the war of independence against the Allies in 1919) is dedicated to the youth of high school age. So, during one’s schooling, you experience both of these horrid relics: for the celebrations, children are trained to take part in choreographed performances, which take place in the biggest stadium in the city. And despite the bitter Istanbul weather (it often rains during these two days, even colder in the eastern parts of the country) you are forced to wear tights, march around the running circuit, salute the mayor and an available general, make ridiculous shapes, mimicking both the socialist-realist ceremonies (and some of the Russian Futurists for that matter) and the Olympic games… So one day, I decided to video tape all the state day celebrations of the Turkish republic one by one, thinking that I would put them all together at the end. But, there was one soldier that I came almost face-to-face with in the stadium, screaming nationalism from the top of his lungs, and it was his position that encouraged me to make a single work around the May 19th celebrations. Every male citizen of Turkey has to do his military service for twelve months and I still haven’t done mine because I am studying. When I listened to this one soldier it occurred to me that I would be trained in the same manner whenever I do my military service. Even after six months of completing the work, I am still afraid of him, my hair stands on end when I hear him screaming. The more I show him to other people the better I will exorcise him. So I think it is a very personal work, but it also means a lot in different ways to other people. One curator resembled it to Leni Rifensthal’s Olympia for instance…

“I, Soldier” was shown in the hospitality zone of the 9th Istanbul Biennial in the exhibition “Free Kick” which met with political backlashes. Were you concerned that your piece would also create controversy in this context?

I was a little bit concerned about that specific soldier in the work, who reads the poem. I recorded his entire performance at a very close angle and didn’t ask his official permission. But on the other hand, this entire performance in the stadium is open to public and anybody is allowed to film it. That is the whole idea behind this public performance, promoting pride and honour of your homeland. I had infiltrated into the space where usually only press is allowed, but still, as part of the loose discipline that you see in Turkish police, the guards who are supposed to control that area didn’t even ask me what I was doing. If you look “different” enough, they wont touch you. They think you are the other, eccentric media/artist type. This is part of the chain of dichotomies that I keep talking about. The irregular use of discipline in Turkey is something I absolutely adore. The Western world would describe this as “uncivilized.”

“Untitled”, (2004) was recently shown in New York, how was the response there different to the response in Turkey?

Most viewers there found it beautiful, and intriguing. I can never forget an Upper East side type woman with heavy make up and huge hair exclaiming: “Oh wooow! This is so beautiful, I’d love to have it in my living room!” If you don’t know the wide conflicts around the issue of the headscarf, it is natural that you would find it beautiful, because in a way it is also playing with religious portraits in Western art but this is not the primary concern of the piece. My concern was more about portraying the stress on the female Islamic persona, enforced by the secular state. America is not a secular state first of all, so they are not familiar with the secular sanctions against religious practitioners. It is not part of their life yet, but I am sure it will be. This work can best be understood by viewers who are enlightened about Islamic practices, because it is complex and confusing enough and I like that, I like to point to one direction, but shoot in another. For example, although I have a critical approach to the military pride in I, Soldier, I also like the fact that some elder women in Istanbul cried while watching the work. They thought it promoted the army in a very strong way. You see, nowadays because of the new government the army is criticized a lot in public and the elder generation finds it hard to believe cause they lived with it for so many years. When I showed it to my mother and aunts they also thought I was promoting being a soldier in Turkey.

Do you think that the bodily stress that you perceive in these subjects is just that, a perceived stress from outside, or is it a stress that is also endured by the subject and how do you differentiate between the two?

It is her stress and my stress combined, and both are very internal. In other words, I didn’t make this work as an Orientalist would write about Beirut from his cold home in Weimar… The headscarf issue has been an ongoing issue for the Turkish public as long as I remember. It is all around us, whether you are a believer or not. So there is absolutely no way of staying perpetually isolated from this bleeding wound in our society. Over the years, my observations accumulated to be able to have a general idea of what these women are facing and prior to performing the piece for video, I spent time with friends and distant relatives who wear headscarves. I have listened to their stories about the hardships as well as the comfort of wearing a headscarf. You would always read such stories in newspapers, or see it on television, but this is perceiving the stress from the outside. Because there is the medium of “the media” in between you and the subject. And most of the media in Turkey is either pretentious (mimicking the West), or controlled in one way or another by the state or corporations who suck on the tits of the state. But when you get in a closer human contact with the türbanlılar (Turkish slang for women who wear turban) you can appreciate their dilemma more. On the one hand, you have the Islamic religion, which says you have to obey the book, Kuran-ı Kerim, which in turn says all female believers should cover every part of their body, but the face and hands. If you consider yourself a Muslim woman, you must apply this to yourself. At least this is what they believe. Then on the other hand, you have a republic of only eighty something years on top of an Islamic empire of five hundred years who prohibits women covering their head in state controlled spaces. Is this freedom?

Of course as a third aspect to the story, comes radical Islam, which we Turks knew and experienced centuries before the West woke up to its reality after 9/11. Radical Islam operated solely by male power and intellect, often uses the turban as a symbol for their case against the secular state. They often use the word “chastity” in relationship with the turban, placing the other women who don’t wear it in the category of prostitutes, and this in return forces the turban wearing women, to act like symbols of chastity. Can you imagine a bigger stress than this? At the end, as you can see there are three major kinds of stress imposed on a türbanlı women; one by the religion which orders them to cover up, the other by the state which “encourages” them not to, and third by the radical Islamists who uses them as the symbol of their case/movement. Therefore, the women who wear the türban cannot be free and detached from all these major stressors, but they will also not go out there and scream at the top of their voices that they are stressed. To think like this is very naive. So they often keep the depression inside, which I find very sad, and unfair. It is these feelings, which bring me close to them. I know that having been raised with a secular-Western attitude, I cannot fully appreciate their situation, but I definitely got a hint of it when I was wearing these turbans and constantly watching myself at the mirror. It helps to deconstruct your given identity for a moment.

November's

Vahap Avşar

We All Laughed at Christopher Columbus at SALT

SALT Beyoglu

April 9

Table Forest

Pigeons are People - Can Altay

Etiquette - Gülsün Karamustafa

La vie est à nous

Shifting Ink

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Channel one plus one

To participate or follow?

An Istanbul in Panorama: Andreas Fogarasi

What we believe

Imagine a cinema built 1000 years ago

DOMUS

Never Neutral

Ciprian Mureşan, Galeria Plan B, Cluj

Setting the Scene/Mark Wallinger

As the land expands

Ciprian Muresan / Yama

Haris Epaminonda

IDEA - Gulsun Karamustafa

Contribution to the bird family of the Buyuk Londra, 2009

Hayv Kahraman

Ghada Amer

Rehang

Collection Dubai

Tape Republic

The columns held us up

The columns held us up

Nedko Solakov

A Play in a Panorama

Taipei 08

Sothebys

Mousse City Focus Istanbul

Radikal

Isabel Schmiga

Lamya Gargash

OÙ ? Scènes du Sud – Volet 2, 2008

New Ends Old Beginnings

Financial Times Arts Survey

Bashir Borlakov

Art Without Borders

A Few Retrospectives; Cevdet Erek

Global Cities, Tate Modern

We all Laughed at Christopher Columbus, part three

Today in History

Book Launch

Lala Rascic - Pilot 03

Wael Shawky

Ola Pehrson: Hunt for the Unabomber

Christodoulos Panayiotou

We all Laughed at Christopher Columbus, part two

THE INSPIRATION OF HOMEKöken Ergun interviewed by November Paynter