Untitled / Becoming Istanbul

Anyone not pleased with the biennial? Anyone ecstatic about it?

First impressions are important. In order to get the best first impression possible I got my accreditation for the biennial way ahead of time and attended the press conference as late as possible so that (a) I wouldn't have to wait in an insane line to get my pass and (b) I wouldn't have to listen to any not-so-interesting corporate babble before I went in to see the show. I was being overly cautious you see, and it turned out to be the right call. As most journalists scrambled for their press passes, I started walking in Antrepo 3, among the structures that presented the works that had been kept a secret for so long. Though I wanted to walk fast and see the whole thing, works like Camilo Yáñez's Estado Nacional 11.09.09 Santiago de Chile made me stop and stare for a long time. The Companion that the press package included was also of use, both in guiding me through the show and presenting brief interviews the curators Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Pedrosa had done with the artists.

Meriç Algün Ringborg
 Ö (Ortak Harf)

The interviews are not necessarily introductory. They are more like the advanced class you take before you get a chance to take the 101, which is always better because then you sort of have to go back and do the basic research yourself. This educational tendency – but not in a i'm with stupid sort of way – is also seen in the curatorial choices made in the show. Expanding around five group shows that take Felix Gonzalez-Torres' five works as their point of inspiration, the show depends on the curatorial strategy of making sense together and in relation to each other; presenting a structure in which the viewer is able to imagine their own additions to the show... for example at some point I really wished Ali Miharbi's Last Time were there. But even though it wasn't, the suggestively expanding show seemed to invite such interventions.

This was my first visit to this year's biennial, where I could only skim through one of the two venues (Antrepo 3). It felt substantial, exhaustingly intense and required rigorous viewing, perhaps even a guide.   However, one could just as well walk among the works without even reading the tags, as they would in a museum they go to often, not because the works were all familiar or clichés but simply because most of the show lends itself easily to a narrative or an overarching aesthetic. Most people I spoke to throughout the biennial season – both in and outside of the arts "industry"– said they preferred to read about the works from the companion as they wandered through the venues.

Raymond Pettibon

There was certainly a lot to learn from an engaged viewing of the show. Many articles appeared condemning the show of being political, or not political; engaged, or hermetic; educative or self-absorbed. What struck me was mostly the things it accomplished.

Having begun their process with a conference attended by the curators, artists and viewers of the previous editions of the biennial, Hoffmann and Pedrosa mapped out what they would do and allowed the viewer to judge the show on its own principles.

From the get-go the curators declared that they didn't want to spread into and engage with the city. Fair enough. I felt this was a legitimate strategy, especially considering the criticisms previous editions got for being tourist attractions, and even making tourists out of local viewers. This was also a risky and inconvenient strategy for them when urban transformation seems to be the hot topics of the times... As a consequence one of the foremost, and widely unchallenged critiques was that the show was "hermetic", that is, sealed off from its immediate surroundings.

Milena Bonilla

Capital / Sinister Manuscript

Though this is a good point, it doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Yes, the works engaged with global rather than strictly local issues and yes, the artists chosen were predominantly
Latin American. In defense of its focus on issues of global concern that have yet to become pertinent in İstanbul, I find this show quite premonitory. Though the prime minister of the country may claim that any and every global crisis is bound to pass us by, a rising dissident movement against and an ultimate questioning of the capitalist system are undeniably shaping the global context. Given this background, it seems like it is İstanbul that is hermetic rather than the biennial show it hosted.

The Latin American experience in alternative economies was a conveniet area to draw from. Not only that, but it was also a geography that the İstanbul art scene was not necessarily familiar with. Once again, this was because İstanbul is hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world despite its booming economy that has integrated itself "successfully" to the global markets. One should keep in mind that the world does not consist of the finance capital New York, Europe the cradle of culture and the oil fields in the Middle East.

Ahmet Öğüt
Perfect Lovers

It seems to me, therefore, that the "hermetic"ness of the biennial turned out to be a powerful strategy in surpassing the illusion that placing art into certain parts of the city actually achieves much integration or engagement. It was rather a sense of foreignness that helped us make sense.


Simultaneously however, a local institution, SALT did engage with the city once again in a different manner. Instead of placing art in the context of the city; the city – in all its aspects from current statistics to historical debates – was placed into an art space. Viewing of the show gives across only a minuscule part of what SALT's triple programming of Becoming İstanbul, The Making of Beyoğlu and 90, a series of talks, aims to achieve. Its much more ambitious goal seems to get people genuinely engaged with the city, its economy, food, water, people, politics and all the rest.

Becoming İstanbul is basicly a database of information about the city; images and documents that SALT has gathered and archived over the years. Ranging from news source photographs to art works, the contents of this database will also be available online after the show. Currently it can be accessed from a room full of screens where viewers can weave their own reading of the archive. They are also invited to pitch in their own documents and projects by leaving them inside the boxes available in this room.

SALT Galata Library

The tripartite show comes with three publications, Becoming Istanbul an attempt at creating an encyclopedia of the city, Tracing Istanbul, which consists of aerial photographs and discussions of the "causes and effects of changes in İstanbul's urban texture" and last but not least, Mapping İstanbul, a collection of aerial maps visualising the city. SALT seems to have taken on an almost endless project of understanding, mapping, visualising, encyclopedizing, and representing the city that is İstanbul. Such endevors have driven generations after generations mad. SALT seems to be taking it one step at a time and what we have seen so far is only a peek into what is yet to come.

from Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin's
rare books collection at
SALT Galata Library

Already, the newly functioning Galata space is hosting a new show that presents yet another aspect of the city. Tayfun Serttaş's display of the archives of Foto Galatasaray traces the demographic changes of the city through a neighborhood photographic portrait studio; a rather informal and creative approach that has the potential of being read along with data as well as being taken for what it is: a visual documentation that gives us an intimate and personal perspective. The new space also hosts Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archeology in the Ottoman Empire 1753-1914. 

Both these shows are accompanied by beautifully made books - more great news for those of us willing to give up our beds for new shelves. However, the books can also be read in the new SALT Galata library, which is a gem in its own right. Containing the Osmanlı Bank Archives, the Platform Garanti Library, the Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin archive among others, the library is constantly growing and has great potential to stimulate critical production in İstanbul. 

Reading İstanbul [Biennial]

Like many others, the İstanbul Biennial has always been situated in reference to the city; trying to integrate itself into it, sparking debate about it, changing it; or nowadays, doing the exact opposite of that and ignoring it. Its first edition, Contemporary Art in Traditional Spaces in 1987 was followed by another with the same title in English, but with a slight nuance in Turkish. While in the first edition the word space referred to buildings or structures (yapılarda), the second referred to surroundings more generally (çevrede) in which the exhibitions were held.
The 9th edition of the biennial was even named after the city. Co-curators Vasıf Kortun and Charles Esche had written at the time that "this biennial is for and about İstanbul". Though they were perhaps talking about a more specific for and about in terms of the strategies they used and decisions they made, this statement was also an echo of the idea of a biennial in the first place. From the get-go the İstanbul Biennial - sometimes because of necessity, sometimes for sake of practicality - made use of the historical quarters of the city. And by history, one shouldn't only think about the historic city that "has been home to such and such many empires". The 10th edition of the biennial (Not Only Possible but also Necessary: Optimism in the Age of Global War), curated by Hou Hanru, had the biennial goers visit the spaces of a much closer history that spun the Republican Era. This was an experiment in making İstanbullus themselves tourists in their own city, seeing as how so few of us local visitors had set foot in the İMÇ before. İMÇ, short for İstanbul Textile Traders' Market was juxtaposed with AKM, short for Atatürk Cultural Center. This space on the other hand was a place İstanbullu biennial goers had probably frequented more often, since it was the main cultural center where the "high-arts" such as classical music concerts, theaters and the occasional opera took place until the twothousandsies. By 2007 when Hanru decided to use it as a venue for the biennial, the building was facing the prospect of a radical face-lift. The debate surrounding the destruction and replacement of this one building in the center of İstanbul's cultural and political life reflected, in crystal clear terms, the culture wars that were being waged since the 90s. A spectrum of opinions about the project ranged from the possessive tendency of "empathizing with the Byzantines and feeling under seige" to advocating for change, which would entail the so called "periphery" to be somehow incorporated in the center of the city and rooting for the underdog from a rather disdainful position none the less. The complex dynamics of the city's inevitable and rapid change was somehow also experienced in going through this edition of the biennial, proposing Optimism in the face of the culture shocks the route it had set itself posed.
The previous, 11th edition of the İstanbul Biennial had seemed to me to be the least involved with the city, both in terms of its thematic redness and it's use of previously used venues. At a point when İstanbul's Left hadn't yet found good reason to make its leap to confront the "bankers"; the event was more of a global reflection on the state of current affairs elsewhere. No wonder. "What Keeps Mankind Alive" the curators wrote in their introduction, "does not seek to take local specifics as some sort of prism to read the global [...] nor does the exhibition strive to reveal to cultural tourists yet another aspect of this fascinating 'metaphor city', bridge between Asia and Europe, nostalgic symbol of an Ottoman Empire troubled by its unyielding determination to modernise, now an ambitious global metropolis....".
The previous edition of the biennial therefore, constructed its relationship with the city precisely by ignoring it. It isn't easy for me to discern how much of this was purely a gimmick. In retrospect, it feels as if it may have been a turning point in the way the biennial relates to the city. Rather than touting the "culturalisation of politics" as the curators wrote, perhaps it is time for the biennial to "politicise culture".

In the absolute silence surrounding the upcoming edition of the İstanbul Biennial one is left to ponder on a few leads... the Remembering İstanbul Conference held last November, whose transcripts will be published as the biennial opens, and the thematic - not-so-thematic - framework the curators Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann have set: Felix Gonzalez-Torres. One immediate similarity with the previous edition is, perhaps that the biennial is set to revolve around a figure. Though it wasn't somehow perceived as such,  11B had intended to create a "prism for viewing the works, a context in which they can be read in explicit reference to Brecht's conscious political engagement and methods". I don't think anyone really took the time to pick apart the Brechtian aspects of any of the works... Honestly, who even skimmed through Jameson's Brecht and Method or Benjamin's Understanding Brecht?

This time around the curators turned out to be more bookish and imposed this very bookishness onto their viewers by not allowing for the program to be announced before the biennial starts. Instead, in a slight breach of silence, Jens Hoffmann provided a pretty intense reading list on Art21's new column Inspired Reading  that includes Orhan Pamuk's 2003 memoir İstanbul: Memories and the City as well as a more theoretically dense list of thinkers that range from Marcuse, Arendt, Agamben, Merleau-Ponty and my current favourite Jacques Ranciere.

This more intellectual pre-press for the biennial, as opposed to announcing big names has, so far, either irritated people or intrigued them. Or both? As the biennial begins, the curators' hope is probably that people will look at and see the exhibitions with no pre-conceptions fuelled by the ranting critics who write things out of their behinds before they even see anything. As the biennial opens, there will also be three other books related to the 12B coming out.

With the biennial being so low-key pre-opening, however, the parallel events have run amok. Perhaps now these side events will take on the job of dressing the city up for a cabaret.. or maybe strip it bare to expose its not so glamorous faces..

While the former will be handled by the gazillions of pop-up shows in historical venues scattered throughout the city, the latter, it seems, will be taken on by SALT, in their second comprehensive show Becoming Istanbul. Much like a biennial itself this one show has surrounded itself with parallel programs, such as The Making of Beyoğlu and 90, events, and talks. Drawing from the endless resources of the former trio Ottoman Bank Archives, Platform Garanti, and Garanti Gallery which came together under a new multi-faceted, inter-disciplinary SALT earlier this year; the show provides the viewer with a vast ocean of material and an almost infinite number of ways in which to view it. At a point when the Biennial itself has withdrawn from the city (it will only be using Antrepo buildings), this exhibition may just help us recognize how contemporary art today relates to its surroundings...

Three books will be coming out along with this exhibition, Becoming İstanbul, Tracing İstanbul, and Mapping İstanbul. Put those next to Remembering İstanbul and a lot of people will have to go to IKEA to buy a(nother) shelf!

Well, since this biennial season it's in fashion to be bookish allow me to share my tower of a reading list too!

Starting from the top are the three small booklets of the last three İstanbul Biennials, followed by a catalog of Becoming a Place, a show which Vasıf Kortun had curated 10 years ago at Proje 4L. Sadly this gem of a book is said to be out of print so I truly hope someone will make it available on the internets. Right below that is the essential translation of Sibel Yardımcı's dissertation Meeting in İstanbul: Cultural Globalisation and Art Festivals followed by Orienting İstanbul, Cultural Capital of Europe? out from Routledge in 2010 and newly translated and in print from Metis. The following book is a volume edited by Çağlar Keyder, also originally published in English as İstanbul: Between the Global and the Local (the Turkish translation seen in the photograph from Metis, 2000). David Harvey's Spaces of Hope still seems relevant! Right below that, the brownish book is Beral Madra's notes on the first seven editions of the İstanbul Biennial - the first two of which she directed - along with her notes on the Venice Biennale in those years (1987 - 2003) called Art Every Two Years: Biennial Writings (1987-2003). The newly available Biennial Reader and the Bergen Biennial Conference transcripts just to be really bookish about it. And last but not least, an old issue of ToplumBilim magazine  from June 1998 which has an İstanbul Biennial section and an unpublished dissertation by Ayfer Bartu Candan (whose writings appear in the Çağlar Keyder collection, so no worries) Reading the Past: The Politics of Cultural Heritage in Contemporary İstanbul (1997).

Don't get too consumed in this list though, the biennial kicks off in 10 days! Counting down.. 10... 9...

106 All the little flowers.

All the little flowers. - The pronouncement, probably by Jean Paul, that memories are the only possessions which no-one can take from us, belongs in the storehouse of impotently sentimental consolations that the subject, resignedly withdrawing into inwardness, would like to believe the very fulfilment that he has given up. In setting up his own archives, the subject seizes his own stock of experience as property, so making it something wholly external to himself. Past inner life is turned into furniture just as, conversely, every Biedermeier piece was memory made wood. The interior where the soul accomodates its collection of memoirs and curios is derelict. Memories cannot be conserved in drawers and pigeon-holes; in them the past is indissolubly woven into the present. No one has them at his disposal in the free and voluntary way that is praised in Jean Paul's fulsome sentences. Precisely where they become controllable and objectified, where the subject believes himself entirely sure of them, memories fade like delicate wallpapers in bright sunlight. But where, protected by oblivion, they keep their strength, they are endangered like all that is alive. This is why Bergson's and Proust's conception, intended to combat reification, that the present, immediacy, is constituted only through the mediation of memory, has not only a redeeming but an infernal aspect. Just as no earlier experience is real that has not been loosed by involuntary remembrance from the deathly fixity of its isolated existence, so conversely, no memory is guaranteed, existent in itself, indifferent to the future of him who harbours it; nothing past is proof, through its translation into mere imagination, against the curse of the empirical present. The most blissful memory of a person can be revoked in its very substance by later experience. He who has loved and who betrays love does harm not only to the image of the past, but to the past itself. Irresistibly evident, an impatient movement while waking up, a distraught tone of voice, a faint hypocrisy in pleasure, obtrudes itself in the memory and turns the earlier closeness even then into the distance that it has since become. Despair has the accent of irrevocability not because things cannot improve, but because it draws the past too into its vortex. Therefore it is foolish and sentimental to try to keep the past untainted by the present's turbid flood. No other hope is left to the past than that, exposed defencelessly to disaster, it shall emerge from it as something different. But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.


Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia -1946

SALT is essential and incomplete

So last friday I took a break from my weeks long, medically induced concentration (writing my thesis -the existing pages of which, by the way, had been chucked into the trash the day before) and attended the long awaited opening of SALT.


Salt in Turkish does not taste like tears or the sea. Salt means pure, and I'd take it so far as to mean essence/essential. SALT is essential, and incomplete. It is a work in progress.. as it has been since it's proto existence as a tripartite investment into the arts and culture: Platform Garanti, Garanti Galeri and the Osmanlı Bank Archives. The contemporary art branch -Platform- that had come about right into the 2000sies and set the bar with its rigorous programming; quickly became an important node in the international contemporary art scene.

SALT uses a short mission statement instead of a logo..

April 8th marked the opening of their new space, and the introduction of a new identity that would bring together the forces of the aforementioned three components: contemporary art, design and archive.
Since they had gone underground in 2007 - awaiting the renovation of two spectacular old İstanbul buildings- Platform's library is housed in Garanti Han on İstiklal; where I had set camp for a while as I wrote several articles and began working on my thesis. The Platform library and archives encompass a variety of documents: press releases from the 1980's, gallery catalogues, invitations, business plans, Vasıf Kortun's correspondences with artists and professionals, magazine archives, an amazing collection of books on contemporary art as well as the library of the late Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin.

It is truly a treasure trove. As I wondered among the books one evening in early March, trying to clear my mind, I came accross a copy of Oruç Aruoba's yürüme (walking) signed to Sevgili Hüseyin. This was one, among the many marks of history that this institution had preserved and made available to anyone interested. I really can't wait until they open their second space in Bankalar Caddesi, Karaköy where this will hopefully be in reach of a much larger public.

--

The first show in the Beyoğlu building is a large scale exhibition of the works of, and a tribute to Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin (HBA), who -in Vasıf Kortun's words- had left behind an organised chaos when he passed away unexpectedly in early 2008. The opening was jam-packed, the place was practically overflowing and everyone seemed to be ecstatic that SALT was finally here. As I made my way through the hors d'oeuvres, the drinks and the swarming crowd and up the stairs into the exhibition space I was overcome with a strange feeling. It was a blend of joy and hüzün*. It's hard to explain, but as Gülsün Karamustafa beautifully put it, "this is a first for us". She was talking about their loss, a beloved member of their cohort, a friend, a colleague... she was also talking about the space and the show -that not only brought together and displayed his works, but had invited his friends and family to collaborate and commemorate. Behind the scenes, it had been a painstaking and thorough operation that required great dedication to bring together, preserve and display HBA's works, archives and thoughts. This kind of commitment was also a first, for all of us.

I tried to take in as much as I could at an opening. Can Altay's work Global Hangover, I thought was a heartfelt piece and embodied the spirit of HBA to the core. I had been listening to SALT's soundcloud audioguide the night before and thought of the lines I'd read that day in the library as Michael Morris spoke about their Heterotopia works..

"heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they secretly undermine language, shatter or tangle common names, destroy syntax in advance... and not only the syntax with which we construct sentences but also that less apparent syntax which causes words and things to hold together... heterotopias dessicate speech, stop words in their tracks, contest the very possibility of grammar at its source.." - Michel Foucault, The Order of Things

Hüseyin Bahri Alpeetkin, Black Hole, New World Hotel, Ulaan Baatar, installation at Rodeo, İstanbul, 2007

It seems to me that HBA somehow strived to incorporate more than what could be represented, in any form.. he had to live it. This is perhaps why the endless work to gather everything about his life and his work was, and still is important.
As I reached the very top floor, where there is a rooftop garden -Fritz Haeg's edible garden a circus band started playing happy tunes as they walked around the exhibition and moved down from floor to floor. (I realized later that this was part of Camilla Rocha's work in the exhibition) The sadness dispersed, and I marched right behind them all the way down... and out on to the street.

--

The following day I attended a talk by Prem Krishnamurthy from projectprojects, an innovative design studio that had helped in SALT's identity. (Later, as I went through an amazing roster of works on their website I found out that projectprojects had also had a hand in one of my favourite magazines Paper Monument.)

Once again I came to the same conclusion. SALT is essential and incomplete. And I sense this is what they've set out to be. Check out their initial font -called Kraliçe- which has a small part missing from all four letters that compose SALT. Every four months, the font of these four letters will be redesigned by another artist/designer.. and those four letters will be scattered among all of SALT's texts during that period of time. With constant change it will never quite become fixed or complete, but hopefully this will determine a pulse that will keep the institutions blood flowing at a good rythm..

I thought the best part of this idea of a constantly temporary font would be that in time, it would become a formal marker in an institution that is its own archive. Each different design would place the written document within the period of the use of that specific design and hence create a new, symbolic categorization. Instead of Fall '11, we could think of a visual font for historical reference. "So as you flip through the website [for example] you will be able to see the different times that things were made and other temporal relationships might start to emerge that otherwise might not be obvious." Cool eh?

--

Later in the day there was a screening of Oral histories in the walk in cinema where Halil Altındere, Ali Perret and Can Altay talked about their memories of HBA. A couple of things became apparent to those of us who hadn't known HBA personally: a, that he had a way with people and words and b, that art was his life and life was his art. Where had I heard this before? First day of art and design class with Erdağ Aksel, also an old friend of HBA. Then I thought how appropriate it was that SALT was opening with HBA...

As I walked back home later, I came across Otel Venedik...

DON'T WORRY WHAT HAPPENS HAPPENS MOSTLY WITHOUT YOU*

As İstanbul simmers towards it's next big jamboree in September 2011 with all sorts of events and openings being planned around the 12th Istanbul Biennial, there is exactly six months and at least one more week of Contemporary Art high seasoning in April to go..

The end of February saw several important shows opening; among them (in chronological order) Michael Wolf's I'm Watching You at Elipsis, Ayşe Erkmen at Rampa, James Richards at Rodeo, How I was burned, Oh the mountains curated by Colin Whitaker at Marquise Dance Hall, Tayfun Serttaş's M&M Tailor'S Dream at Apartman Projesi, Hüseyin Çağlayan at Galerist etc. etc. etc.

Two shows that I was looking forward to were on the same evening, along with a ticket for True Grit's gala later on. So the 19th was quite a night.
I started with Ayşe Erkmen's show at Rampa, for which I had already interviewed Mrs. Erkmen and written an article about - so I found myself explaining to my father what the works were about. Most of them were either old works, or old forms that the artist had previously used elsewhere. The artists habit of always working with the space; its possibilities and obstacles was perhaps something that wasn't employed to the greatest extent possible. Still, the newly conceived On Its Own was the most fascinating piece in the eponymous show: a blown up google image search of "Ayşe Erkmen" that covered the long walls of the narrow gallery. This giant self-portrait that had taken shape in a medium that has life of its own, was displayed alongside a framed a4 paper with type-writer signs on it that looked like a face; the work was called Self-Portrait and it was a work Erkmen had done in 2002.
I may be stretching it a bit too far, but I believe the fact that these two completely contrasting ways of self representations depend so fundamentally on things beyond the artist - that is, the mediums of either the interwebs or the type-writer - is representative of an idea that encapsulates Erkmen's practice. She works with the material, conditions and space that she is provided.. she has no qualms about using plastic balls, live and wild animals or ships for that matter. She allows for coincidences as well as accidents to shape her works and her self.
Serendipitous, I think, is the word that describes her work. (For further ranting on the subject please get a copy of ArtUnlimited's next issue.. :))

From there I rushed to Rodeo, where the openings -by unwritten law- start at 19.00. James Richards' show was typically Rodeo, simple, austere and mystic. Stacked against one of the four central columns of the gallery space was a pile of gold, or so it seemed from afar when I first entered the space. A closer look revealed that they were actually copies of the book The Mirror Within: A New Look at Sexuality by Anne Dickinson. Philistine that I am, I actually took one of them to check myself out in the reflective golden surface of it's cover with an adorned mirror frame outline. The artist had previously done a similar installation at London Swallow Street with another book by Anne Dickinson, A Woman in Your Own Right: Assertiveness and You, this time with a silver reflective cover. Self help books with mirror-like reflective surfaces stacked in a gallery seemed to me to bare a shrewd commentary; bringing together concepts like value, self-value, market-value around the characters artist, viewer, voyeur, narciccist all at once...

Leaned sideways against the wall right behind the column were two SONY television screens, apparently dreaming of a Toshiba. The looped video shows a range of cheesy sunsets over the sea, the kind you'd see at the end of a Brazilian soap opera or the sort.. which as the press release eloquently put it: The idea of piracy on film, or of imagery in general, meets the romantic notion of pirates sailing in the horizon of the footage. 
Right next to it a poster that reads: DON'T WORRY WHAT HAPPENS HAPPENS MOSTLY WITHOUT YOU
Those who snuck a peek into the office space could have seen some previous works of the artist: portrait blankets called Untitled Merchandise (Lovers and Dealers) that portray the lovers and dealers of the artist Keith Haring. The photographs of Tony Shafrazi, Leo Castelli, Gilbert Vazquez are cropped to only partly show the artist, making the portraits marked by the presence of one that binds the six.

for more images, visit the Rodeo website here
Later in the evening I went to see True Grit, in which only the 14 year old girl impressed me beyond words. #Hailee Steinfeld

The hectic week also saw the opening of a new space [a society to support contemporary art-ists] by x-ist's Kerimcan Güleryüz called Empire with a show by photographer Jasper de Beijer. Though not appealing to my taste by the least, I can see why Güleryüz would take on de Beijer.. The 38 year old has a rebelious tendency in his aesthetic, works with new media.. the works had a pseudo-journalistic, documentary style but were apparently staged in a studio which would give it a certain twist had it not been just another comment to make.. The thing is, anything that would have been interesting about all this seemed to have wilted among the bright lighting, chic white walls and fancy hors d'oeuvres and the lack of a text to explain to us, the befuddled viewers, what on earth was going on here in this new space with two guards at the door.
Having had an inside scoop prior to the opening, I was expecting an underground-style studio ambience, some kind of alternative space to harbor quirky people and wacky ideas.. the last thing i was expecting was 'fancy'. So I made my way uneasily through the works, which at the time, not having read any text about it, were getting on my nerves with their color-scheme and inconsistent subject matter with lots of references to a primitivist fetish and an apparent longing for a mud-bath. In brutal honesty, I was disappointed. I do hope that future endevours of the space will make more sense to me, and mean more than just another space, another show, another opening to attend to for the art community...

Now we wait for april, which will probably be a blast of an end to the season with Nilbar Güreş opening at Rampa and Tactics of Invisibility at Arter among other things to look forward to.. In the meantime I'll be writing my thesis and not mucking about as I have been lately..

That's all folks. Well, not really but this is as much as I'll cover :)


ps.1 Speaking of Arter though, I must add that they've been organizing wonderful artist talks by the artists that were included in the Second Exhibition. So far I have been able to listen to İz Öztat, Halil Altındere, Ali Kazma, Ayşe Erkmen, and Banu Cennetoğlu. I hope that they will continue such programs and perhaps extend their subject matter beyond the show taking place in the space.

ps.2 Oh and one last thing, a new international column on Contemporary art in Turkey, Turkish and Other Delights by Elizabeth Wolfson should be interesting to follow. She's a Fulbright fellow spending a year teaching in Burdur..

*James Richards @Rodeo

edit (05.03.2011): Previously Kerimcan Güleryüz's name was misspelled as Kerim Can Güleryüz and the Empire Project was defined as a foundation, which it is not, it's a society. Also, whereas x-ist has a tendency to take on younger artists, Empire does not have an age limit. These have been corrected as of 05.03.2011 upon Kerimcan Güleryüz's kind request. I apologize for any inconvenience and greatly appreciate the pointing out of any factual mistakes in my writing. :)

Dear Diary..

I enjoy reading diaries; perhaps because they reflect a more honest dishonesty - a struggle between admitting things to oneself in writing, trying to solve the mysteries of life and the mind and concealing one's true feelings.. a sort of self therapy and utter denial which writing establishes very well even in total privacy. Or, more likely, because I just like stalking people, getting into their heads, trying to live in their shoes for a bit as I turn the pages.. 

Lately I've been reading parts of Eugene Delacroix's Journal and Susan Sontag's journal called Reborn, which was edited by his son post-mortem. Of course another wonderful thing about journals is that you can basicly just open any page... 

 

so,

Dear Diary, words fail me today, as they do often lately.

so I've found solace in others' words.

I'm old fashioned

"Nobody of any real culture... ever talks nowadays about the beauty of a sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned."
Oscar Wilde quoted in Susan Sontag's An Argument on Beauty

Chet Baker - I'm Old Fashioned
*this time all the photographs are mine.