An Istanbul in Panorama: Andreas Fogarasi

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.

Imagine a cinema built 1000 years ago

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.

Setting the Scene/Mark Wallinger

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.”