Didem Pekün
clip from Of dice and
men, 2011 ongoing
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Expressing the multifaceted and repetitious nature of history, the exhibition hosts the first spatial presentation of Didem Pekün's essayistic video diary Of dice and men (2011 ongoing). Punctuated by significant and occasionally recurring moments — some that are of purely subjective consequence and others that exist as shared, mediated markers in time – the piece exposes the fluctuating rhythms of everyday life. A throw of the dice acts as a metaphor through which to think of individual existence, where the patterns of daily experience are indeterminable. The action also affirms a sense of urgency and awareness of how history is a perpetual repetition but with paradoxical variations. Pekün's location at the time of each diary entry provokes very different verbal reactions and often amplifies the trauma of not being present at definitive moments, reinstating the way that history too easily accumulates with or without us.
which one’s habitual reality begins unraveling at the seams. What we thought impossible yesterday is met with enthusiasm today. What kind of art is possible now? Or is it altogether impossible?"
Chto Delat?
The
Excluded. In a Moment of Danger, 2014
Installation view, A
Century of Centuries, SALT Beyoğlu
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A similarly aligned set of considerations have inspired the specially commissioned performance work Trailer (2015), which takes place three times a week within the space of the exhibition. This series of lecture performances, conceived and performed by dance artists Erinç Aslanboğa, Natalie Heller and Bahar Temiz, looks into notions of personal and collective memory by gathering elements from the past and reorganizing them in a performative frame. The lectures investigate the possibility of creating a space where one can navigate between past, present and future, fiction and reality, and by extension experience their simultaneous occurrence.
Erinç
Aslanboğa, Natalie Heller & Bahar Temiz
Trailer, 2015
Photo: Irmak Altıner
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Other included artistic positions look further back in time, linking ancient history to the present. Two of Maha Maamoun's videos interrogate the legacy of the pyramids. In Domestic Tourism II (2009) a broad selection of scenes from Egyptian cinema, spanning a period of around 60 years, show the pyramids as a backdrop. The film looks at the various ways the pyramids have been re-appropriated from the timelessness of the touristic postcard, and re-inscribed into the complex and dynamic narratives of the city they bear witness to. Maamoun expands her study into the condition of a society that hastily visits and consumes mediated history in the work Night Visitor: The Night of Counting the Years (2011), which revisits footage recorded and uploaded on YouTube by the many men and women who broke into Egyptian State Security buildings on March 5, 2011. This site, of what it was hoped would be past injustices, stands bare for a brief moment before the searching eyes of those it has afflicted and continues to affect.
Maha
Maamoun
Like
Milking a Stone, 2009 - 2011
Installation view, A
Century of Centuries, SALT Beyoğlu
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Hera
Büyüktaşçıyan
Destroy
your house, build up a boat, save life, 2014 - 2015
Installation view, A
Century of Centuries, SALT Beyoğlu
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Shown in the same space is the compilation of works as if nothing has ever been said before us, (2007-2015) by Dilek Winchester. The title is an abbreviation of a sentence from Oğuz Atay’s novel, Tutunamayanlarwhich reads "We are knocking on your doors with an emotion and arrogance unparalleled in world history and without fear of seeming like those who are conceited and behave as if nothing has ever been said before them." Winchester transcribes this phonetically in Turkish, but with letters from five alphabets: Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Latin and Arabic, which were used by the multi-lingual population of the Ottoman Empire up until the Alphabet Reform enforced
the use of the Latin alphabet in 1928.
A new addition to Winchester’s work on language is Negative Epiphany (2015), a series of black prints made by over exposing paper to sunlight today, but developed using old printing techniques, and shown alongside cameras that date from the period 1900-1915. The prints stand in as shadows of photographs that have been shot, but cannot be shown here today.
Dilek
Winchester
as if
nothing has ever been said before us, 2007 - 2015
Installation view, A Century of Centuries,
SALT Beyoğlu
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Several artists explore subjective readings of history from different perspectives, and in particular the effects of national tensions, border divisions and failed diplomacy. The Goodness Regime is a film written and directed collaboratively by artists Jumana Manna and Sille Storihle. With the help of a cast of children, the film investigates the foundations of the ideology and self-image of modern Norway – from the Crusades, via the adventures of Fridtjof Nansen and the trauma of wartime occupation, to the diplomatic theater of the Oslo Peace Accords. Shot in Norway and Palestine, the film combines the children’s performances with archive sound recordings (including US President Bill Clinton speaking at the signing of the Oslo Accords, and Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik’s New Year address to the Norwegian people in 2000) and new documentary footage filmed on location.
Jumana
Manna & Sille Storihle
The
Goodness Regime, 2013
Installation view, A Century of
Centuries, SALT Beyoğlu
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Shilpa
Gupta
Untitled, 2013-2014
Press preview, A Century of
Centuries, SALT Beyoğlu
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On the first floor the major multi-media installation eser (2014-2015) by Judith Raum responds to historical research material dating back to the German Empire's engagement in the Anatolian and Baghdad Railways beginning in 1889. Raum developed this research through diverse ways of dealing artistically with archival material. Along with found photographs and documents, eser comprises textiles, sculptures and paintings produced following observations made on location in Turkey. Raum’s work suggests that gestures and rhetorics of power and domination are the consequences of an economic principle that did not end with the colonial era and in fact persist today.
Judith Ruam eser, 2014
left: Heidelberger Kunstverein detail
right: Installation view, A Century of Centuries, SALT Beyoğlu
Kapwani Kiwanga’s response to the largest uprising on the African continent during the Maji Maji War of 1905 - 1907 in ...rumours Maji was a lie (2014) also refers to German-occupation but this time in East Africa. A pillar of shelving anchors a compendium of objects and references that revolve around notions of belief and explore how history is extrapolated and mediated over time. Included is a video of reworked extracts from the first feature length
3D color film based on the Tsavo man-eaters — legendary lions, which entered local legend for their attacks on people during the construction of a colonial railway.
Kapwani
Kiwanga
...rumours
Maji was a lie, 2014
Installation view, A
Century of Centuries, SALT Beyoğlu
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The last work to be encountered in the exhibition is Yasemin Ozcan’s threehundredone (2008). Among other regulations, Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which took effect in 2005 with moderate amendments since, makes it a crime to insult the Turkish Nation or Government Institutions. The article restricts freedom of thought and expression and has been applied frequently with several high profile court cases of note. These include the prosecution of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007 who was subsequently assassinated. Özcan responded to this tragic event by producing a necklace, adorned with the numbers 301. It is exhibited alongside a two-channel video that also hints at the speed of commodification and the woman’s role in today’s society. The necklace makes a striking, yet contentious statement — one that carries with it not only questions that persist regarding Article 301and its impact, but also our relationship to issues of freedom of expression in general.
A Century of Centuries
SALT Beyoğlu
March 10 - May 24
(© Curatorial text: November Paynter)