On the 11th Istanbul Biennial

Image: Hrair Sarkissian, “Execution Squares” (2008) (detail)

Article published in Ararat Magazine, http://araratmagazine.org/2010/06/11th-istanbul-biennial/:

"It is not difficult to be skeptical of the premise of art biennials, as they are often considered the quintessential cultural manifestation of the neoliberal economy as well as the nexus of culture and tourism. In Turkey, suspicion towards contemporary art has been rampant and self-replicating since the late 1980s when major corporations started to provide institutions with financial support, including the Istanbul Biennial. Predictable arguments propagate that the agenda of the private capital impedes or rather disables artistic practice, by making it dependent, mediocre, and often insincere. In the midst of this ongoing distrust, the 11th Istanbul Biennial deliberately makes more political statements than ever before. In a time when corporations are increasing eager to sponsor critical art production and events, Zaghreb-based curatorial collective WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić, and Sabina Sabolović) face a great deal of protests and condemnations that reek with resentment towards the biennial and its corporate sponsor. Yet, the curators insist that what matters is to negotiate. They might not speak up about the predicaments of the contemporary arts in Turkey, such as the polarization among curators, arrogance towards other artistic practices, and shortcomings of internationalization, but they manage to prompt curious questions: to what extent does the funding source restrict the critical edge of artistic practices? Can art still ignite transformative conversations in politics?

[...]"

How to Begin? Envisioning the Impact of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

Contributors: Regine Basha, Hassan Khan, Sohrab Mohebbi, Didem Özbek, and Sarah Rifky

Edited by Özge Ersoy

How can the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi position itself beyond serving as a pragmatic tool to boost tourism in its locale? What role can it play in the existing arts infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates and the larger area of cultural structures defined by the term “Middle East”? How can this museum accrue value for artworks that are produced in this region and its diasporas? Taking its cue from these questions, How to Begin? Envisioning the Impact of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi presents a collection of essays by artists, curators, and writers. In a setting where all strategic plans and arguments reside in conjecture, this publication not only aims to introduce a set of critical responses to the most recent support structures in the arts, but also imagines alternative possibilities for how these structures might be built and influence the practice of artists, curators, and other cultural producers. This project is the manifestation of creative and critical activity at a time when the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, still unbuilt, is surrounded by questions that linger without answers.

The pdfs are available on the AS-AP website.

City Sense at GarajIstanbul

City Sense: Surveillance, Secrecy, Security, Control
curated by Nat Muller in collaboration with NOMAD

A playful evening pondering media, control, surveillance, secrecy and art in urban environments.
Date evening event: 20 September 2008, 8 pm
Place: GarajIstanbul, Tomtom Mah. Yeni Çarşı Cad. Kaymakam Reşat Bey Sk. No:11a 34433 Galatasaray-Beyoğlu / İstanbul

It is no big secret that urban centers have become sites of surveillance and control. Gone are the days that the urban city dweller could carelessly drift – as the 19th century flaneur, strolling from one area to the other, and then disappear anonymously into the crowds. As our urban experience might have become more anonymous in regard to social interaction, our behavior – how we move, what we see, hear, taste and smell - is becoming more regulated, watched and controlled. Anonymity, it seems, is no longer an option. Our urban sensibilities are often directed, mediated and pre-programmed, either by security measures or by other overt or hidden codes of conduct. It is no coincidence then that how we consciously sense our cities – our “City Sense” – ultimately defines how we position ourselves as citizens.

CitySense offers a playful interpretation on how to actively engage your urban senses and reveals the hidden, and questions the exposed in an evening choc-a-bloc with video screenings, live food and smell installations, live audio-visual performances, and a party to close off the night.

Performance Installations by: Maki Ueda, Wietske Maas. Live Performances: Sasker Scheerder & Radboud Mens, Edwin van der Heide, Koray Tahiroğlu, Not at Home. Video Screenings and installations: MediaShed, Nicolas Provost, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay & Pascal Lievre, Daniël Melse, Matteo Venet, Mattias Geurts, Dimitri van Loenen, Başak Kaptan, Efe Hızır, Dilara Kurtoğlu, Denizcan Yüzgül, and Burak Arıkan.

More info:
http://www.garajistanbul.org/
http://www.kosmopolis.nl/

Los Surcos de la Ciudad

Los Surcos de la Ciudad (grooves of the city) is JR's new large-scale photography installation in Spain where he captures Carthagena's residents and transfers the portraits onto the city's walls. An impressive grand narrative project.

The Rabbit Master

A fairy tale for the family.
Cheers Mofa.

TransDance:2

If you happen to be in Cairo this Friday...

"TransDance, initiated by HaRaKa in 2008, is a series of mini-festivals of a transdisciplinary nature, focusing on dance and movement. It comes as a product of the long research project CONNECTIONS which aimed at raising critical questions around mobility, trans-cultural dramaturgies and transdisciplinarity in the production of contemporary dance.

HaRaKa and 100Copies would like to invite to TransDance:2--an evening of improvised dance and music, exploring relations between Sound and Movement, live and unpremeditated, with four musicians/composers and three choreographers/dancers invited to the stage: Adham, Hassan Khan, Reem Hegab, Shaimaa Shokry, Mahmoud Refaat and Nina, Karim Lotfy."

Venue: Rawabet Theatre, Hussein Mimar Street, Off Mahmoud Bassiouny St., Downtown, Cairo (Next to the Townhouse Gallery)
Date and Time: Friday, July 18th, 2008, 7pm

(G)HOST IN THE (S)HELL

DIDIER FIUZA FAUSTINO/BUREAU DES MÉSARCHITECTURES
May 14 - June 28, 2008

"This May, Storefront will inaugurate a solo exhibition of French artist and architect Didier Fiuza Faustino and his Paris-based practice Bureau des Mésarchitectures (Mathieu Herbelin, Cláudia Martinho, Tony Matias, Guillaume Viaud). Faustino's largescale onsite installation (G)HOST IN THE (S)HELL, designed specifically for Storefront for Art and Architecture, will occupy the entire body of the gallery and engage its iconic façade by temporarily interrupting its role as movable, morphable barrier. Using chain-link fence as a medium to entirely encase and isolate the facade's panels, (G)HOST IN THE (S)HELL will explore the complex role that barriers and thresholds play in defining and creating public and private space, ideas central to Faustino/Mésarchitectures' work."

From the Critique of Institutions...

"Representations of the 'art world' as wholly distinct from the 'real world,' like representations of the 'institution' as discrete and separate from 'us,' serve specific functions in art discourse. They maintain an imaginary distance between the social and economic interests we invest in through our activities and the euphemized artistic, intellectual, and even political 'interests' (or disinterests) that provide those activities with content and justify their existence. And with these representations, we also reproduce the mythologies of volunteerist freedom and creative omnipotence that have made art and artists such attractive emblems for neoliberalism's entrepreneurial, 'ownership-society' optimism. That such optimism has found perfect artistic expression in neo-Fluxus practices like relational aesthetics, which are now in perpetual vogue, demonstrates the degree to which what [Peter] Burger called the avant-garde's aim to integrate 'art into life praxis' has evolved into a highly ideological form of escapism. but this is not just about ideology. We are not only symbols of the rewards of the current regime: In this art market, we are its direct beneficiaries."

Andrea Fraser, "From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique," Artforum, vol. 44, no. 1, September 2005

Where We Are Now

"Where We Are Now is a network of cultural, educational, and activist organizations and individuals dedicated to developing coordinated strategies to raise people’s awareness of the multitude of art political activities in New York City. Our goal is to demonstrate how powerful critical voices still exist, ones that cry out for global justice, agency and participation. Using the pivotal moment of the 2008 presidential election, we share a sense that the times have changed and are ours to claim. Through activities as diverse as art exhibitions, days of decentralized action, street performances and pedagogical conferences, we seek to gauge the status of the political in contemporary art, and consider how we may act as resources to one another and to other communities within and beyond New York City.

Where We Are Now hosts monthly network-wide meetings, as well as working group meetings for each of the three working groups--Conference and Pedagogy, Communications, and Arts in Action. The larger network-wide meetings are held on the first Wednesday of every month, from 6:30-8:30pm at the assembly hall of Judon Church by Washington Square Park. The first hour is a network-wide meeting with updates about endorsed projects, report-backs from the three working groups, and discussion. In the second hour working groups will break-out for smaller working meetings. In between monthly meetings, working groups hold meetings in various locations in the city, to plan for the Where We Are Now conference, day of arts in action, and other network projects."

Vortex of Silence

Reading 'Vortex of Silence', by German art historian and critic Doris von Drathen, is definitely refreshing. Criticizing the inadequacy of art history and aesthetic categories to approach and understand the artistic production, the book suggests that the works of art should be embraced as "entities of otherness". The reader is easily drawn into von Drathen's analysis of 24 artists, including Marina Abramovic, Jean-Pierre Boltanski, Louise Bourgeois, Pedro Cabrita Reis, Ann Hamilton, Rebecca Horn, Anish Kapoor, Agnes Martin, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, and David Tremlett, with an emphasis on Aby Warburg's theory that rejects aestheticising art theories as "barren word-mongering." In short, the author argues that works of art should be read through lenses pertaining to larger existential and ethical questions.

Last Thursday, when I was wandering among Jasper Johns's flags, targets and Catenary series at “Jasper Johns: Gray” exhibition at the Met, the comments of the museum-goers that I overheard were only about the "background that looked like Rauschenberg" and "figures that recalled Willem de Kooning." Thinking of my own "gaze" and listening to aesthetic commentaries about the works, I stood mutely and smiled.

Although reading the book is not easy at all, the after taste is quite satisfying.


(Thanks, Melis.)

Old / New Routes

过去/现在 -- 通道
中亚录像展
OLD / NEW ROUTES
A selection of Video Art from Central Asia
BizArt Art Center, Shanghai
Exhibition Dates: January 12th – 20th, 2008.
Curated by Stefan Rusu. Under the auspices of Defne Ayas.

The Old/New Routes project is an exhibition and publication that explores the nomad specificity of the Islamic states after the collapse of Soviet Union. An overview of the present situation of the Central Asian context by an external viewer becomes imperative; this compiled visual material by guest curator creates a retrospective look at the internal processes of the social-political evolution and cultural background.The idea behind the project is overlapping networks and the relationship between these two traditions—the archaic-nomad one and the present-day post-industrial culture—that provides a synthetic equation and cumulates an extraordinary cultural load. In such way the practices oriented toward the re-use of tradition become the necessary tool for articulation of contemporary art discourse that establishes the nodes of resistance to inertia, apathy and historical amnesia. The project consists of an exhibition Old/New Routes to take place in Shanghai, China at BizArt Center and a publication under the same title. With these actions we intend to deepen and open the process of cultural exchange between China and Central Asia, with a special focus on video production from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Participating Artists: Abilsait Atabekov, Erbolsin Meldibekov and Alexandr Ugay from Kazakhstan, Veaceslav Ahunov, Serghei Ticina from Uzbekistan, Ulan Djaparov, Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev from Kyrgyzstan

About the Curator:
Stefan Rusu is artist and freelance curator based in Chisinau, Moldova currently he is working as project coordinator at the Center for Contemporary Art/Chisinau. In 2005/2006 he attended the Curatorial Training Program at Shtichting De Appel from Amsterdam where he co-curated Mercury in Retrograde (www.mercuryinretrograde.com).

Exhibitions: educational?

"[...] I abhor the supposition that exhibitions should be informative or, god forbid, educational. Is the work of Godard or Hitchcock or Beckett or Lecompte or Adams or Ashbery or Kiley or Gubaidulina or Serra or Koolhaas or Starck or Westwood or Cragg or Reed or Koons educational? These works, and all of their cousins, are full of ideas--bold, provocative, shuddering ideas-but do they teach us something?

We should never confuse the fact that cultural practices affect us, change us, stimulate us to think and see and hear and feel differently with the supposition that they teach us anything. Once something teaches you something, it thinks for you. This is a point that eludes even the promising young mess specialists and punk whippersnappers à la Obrist, who, for all of their bravado, continue obediently to inscribe their work in the service of the Big Idea. Rotton once said, 'I may not know much about music, but I know it ain't got nuffin' to do with chords?' Worth remembering."*


*Jeffrey Kipnis, "Who's afraid of gift-wrapped kazoos? Dedicated to David Whitney," in What Makes a Great Exhibition, ed. Paula Marincola (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, 2006), pp. 97-98.

PiST///: Talk on PERFORMA

PERFORMA is a New York based non-profit interdisciplinary arts organization committed to the research, development, and presentation of performance by visual artists from around the world. PERFORMA’s objectives are to commission new performane projects in visual arts, to present a dedicated performance biennial in New York, to consult and collaborate with art institutions and performing art presenters around the world to create dynamic and historically significant performance programs, and to offer an ongoing educational platform for expanding the knowledge and understanding of this critical area of visual art and cultural history.

PERFORMA's Associate Curator Defne Ayas and PERFORMA '07 volunteer Özge Ersoy will give a talk on PERFORMA projects.

December 28, 2007
6.30 pm, PiST///, Istanbul

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Kar amacı gütmeyen, disiplinlerarası bir sanat organizasyonu olan PERFORMA, performans sanatının geliştirilmesine, sunumuna ve bu alandaki araştırmalara adanmış New York merkezli bir kurum. PERFORMA, görsel sanatlar dahilindeki yeni performans projelerini desteklemeyi, sadece performans sanatı üzerine kurulu New York'da bir bienali faaliyete geçirmeyi, uluslararası sanat kurumlarıyla beraber çalışarak dinamik ve tarihsel önemi olan performansların üretimini teşvik etmeyi ve görsel sanatlar çerçevesinde performans sanatının önemine dair bilgi paylaşımını kuvvetlendirmeyi amaçlıyor.

PERFORMA Küratorü Defne Ayas ve PERFORMA '07 gönüllü çalışanı Özge Ersoy PERFORMA hakkında bilgi verecek, projelerini anlatacak.

28 Aralik 2007
18:30, PiST///, Istanbul

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PiST///
Dolapdere Caddesi
Pangaltı Dere Sokak
No 12 / 14 / 16
Pangaltı 34375
Istanbul TR