FROZEN WAVES
NEW WORK FOR YAMA, ISTANBUL
Babak Ghazi Mustafa Hulusi Paul Snowden Mark Titchner Eva Weinmayr
Curated by Michelle Cotton and Sylvia Kouvali
6 SEPTEMBER – 4 NOVEMBER
Marmara Pera Hotel, Mesrutiyet Caddesi Tepebası 34430 Istanbul
11 – 14 OCTOBER
Urban Screens Manchester 07 Art & Events Programme
Manchester Metropolitan University All Saints Garden Oxford Road, Urbis Cathedral Gardens
"Frozen Waves will broadcast new work by Babak Ghazi (UK), Mustafa Hulusi (UK / Cyprus), Paul Snowden (NZ / Germany), Mark Titchner (UK) and Eva Weinmayr (UK) via publicly-sited screens in Istanbul and the UK.
The project has been commissioned for Yama, a public art programme hosted via a 6m x 9m diode screen on the roof of the
Marmara Pera Hotel in the centre of Istanbul. Since July 2006 Yama has presented work by artists including Wael Shawky (Egypt), Ahmet Ogut (Turkey), Köken Ergun (Turkey) and Jenny Holzer (USA). The screen is sited 72 m above street level in Tepebasi, a busy square in Beyoglu overlooking the Golden Horn and is visible from various points in the city.
Titled after a chapter in Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1937 dystopian novel, We, Frozen Waves will play a continuous programme of media work on the screen during the hours of darkness. Five atists employing visual and textual codes familiar from the language of commerce and the information economy were invited to develop projects for Yama and their short works have been informed by the architecture of the screen, the Lumacom technology and the local context.
The format of Frozen Waves is concerned with the role that technology plays in structuring communication, occupying what the architect Robert Venturi refers to as an ‘iconographic surface’, a façade that functions as a source of digital information that is by nature subject to renewal and change.
Frozen Waves will launch during the professional preview for the 10th International Istanbul Biennial in September 2007 and forms part of the public art programme for the annual, international Urban Screens Conference hosted this year in Manchester in October."
For further information contact
Sylvia Kouvali yama.opening@earthlink.net or
Michelle Cotton michelle@melocotones.co.uk
More information.
