- Türkçe
- English
Apart from the two month long exhibition in neighbouring venues, the 15th Istanbul Biennial features a public programme that will encompass a variety of events and discussions pivoting on the concept of a good neighbour. Admissions to all events are free.
The Public Programme, coordinated by the artist Zeyno Pekünlü, features two symposiums entitled Chosen Families and Mutual Fate during the opening and closing weeks of the Biennial, and panel discussions, screenings, workshops and regular events where guests will be cooking, reading and playing music together, throughout the duration of the Biennial. Chosen Families trails the quest for different kinds of belongings beyond the family as an institution, while Mutual Fate focuses on urban ecology and strives for finding ways out of anthropocentrism.
Participants of the Public Programme include activist and professor Shahrzad Mojab, known for her research on the impact of war, displacement and violence on women’s learning and education; Professor Joseph Massad, known for his critique of liberal policies of multiculturalism; Professor of Political Economy, Massimo de Angelis, and the Greek architect and scholar with numerous of works on spatial practices, Stavros Stavrides.
Chosen Families
Opening symposium
16/09/2017, 14.00-18.00, Pera Museum Auditorium
Participants: Şükrü Argın, Joseph Massad, Shahrzad Mojab
In English and Turkish with simultaneous translation.
Chosen Families symposium, sets out from the question of ‘What happens when home ceases to be welcoming, when we leave home either voluntarily or involuntarily?’ and trails the quest for different kinds of belongings beyond family as an institution, the impact of experiences of conflict and resolution that emanates from such quests on the levels of society and sociability, as well as the role of affect in political activism. In doing so, the module pays attention to the ‘homification’ of common spaces and the role it plays in the formation of subjectivities and communities.
Joseph Massad on ‘The Price of Recognition: The One Islam and the Many’
‘My lecture argues that discourses of multiculturalism, diversity, and difference cement existing European white racial supremacy even as they claim to oppose it. The calls for multiculturalism and diversity aim to bring about the assimilation of other cultures into this fantasized European culture, which always remains a constant.
Whereas all other cultures are presented by the discourses of diversity as malleable, that they should be open to change, white European culture is presented as perfect, fixed, inflexible, and appears not to need to change except in accordance with its internal dynamics. The talk engages with the question of recognition as one that is essentially white European recognition of other cultures as worthy of recognition. I will address the discourse on Islam and Muslims in Western Europe and the USA as a case in point.’
Joseph Massad is Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York. He is author of four books and dozens of academic articles. His works have been translated to French, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, Turkish, Persian, Indonesian, inter alia. His latest books are Desiring Arabs (University of Chicago Press, 2007), which won the Lionel Trilling Book Award, and Islam in Liberalism (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
Shahrzad Mojab on ‘Home, Exile: An Unsettled Settlings’
This lecture draws on decades of research on women, war, dispossession and violence. It is partly auto-ethnographical as I will narrate my life stories of having lived through wars, displacement, exile, and settling to remain unsettled: Moving across borders, seeking refugee, beginning an exilic life, yet thinking through and reflecting on how these experiences have shaped my thinking. A process which often forces me to re-ask myself where is ‘home’? As a Marxist-feminist educator, this reflective approach to self and to society has led me to consider the conditions of violence of war, displacement, and their aftermath. I want to go beyond the trauma narrative and especially explore what our response should be to the current and ongoing war, displacement, and dispossession of millions of people around the world.
Shahrzad Mojab, is professor of Adult Education and Community Development and Women and Gender Studies at OISE/University of Toronto and the former Director of the Women and Gender Institute and internationally known for her work on the impact of war, displacement, and violence on women's learning and education; gender, state, migration, and diaspora. Her most recent research projects are Youth in Transition: War, Migration and Regenerative Possibilities; The Pedagogy and Policy of Refugee Youth Resettlement, and No Woman’s Land, which is a dance project to capture the experience of refugee women of sexual violence.
Şükrü Argın on ‘Rat Hole: Neighbours to Our Temporary Homes, in Ambivalence’
The previous century was primarily defined by class wars; it looks like the century we are in will be defined by border wars. We could of course argue that class wars are now manifest as border wars. In reality, borders are drawn not only between countries but also within countries, bifurcating and closing in on social classes, isolating them. Thus, it could be said that the rich and the poor who inhabit the same homeland/country are no longer neighbours. The categorical imperative of “Love thy neighbour as you do yourself” from above descends down conditionally and can only be realized as a conditional order: ‘Love thy Neighbour if and when they are like you.’ Maybe this was always the case, but today, this condition of ‘conditional neighbourliness’ is more prominent. The increasingly conspicuous borders between countries, regions, states, ‘state sites,’ ‘ghetto states,’ the deepening rifts, the heightening walls between classes and lifestyles are indicative of this situation.
Şükrü Argın graduated from the sociology department at Ege University. His articles have been published in journals including Birikim and Redaksiyon. He is the author of Gezi’nin Ufkundan: Liberal Demokrasinin Krizi, Kamusallık ve Sol [From the horizon of Gezi: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy, Publicness and the Left] (2014), Yaşlanan İnsanlık, Gençleşen Kapitalizm [Aging Humanity, Capitalism Growing Younger] (interview: Osman Akınhay, 2009), Nostalji ile Ütopya Arasında [Between Nostalgia and Utopia] (2003).
Mutual Fate
Closing symposium
11/11/2017, 14.00-18.00, Istanbul Modern Cinema Hall
Participants: Massimo de Angelis, Ayfer Bartu Candan, Stavros Stavrides
In English and Turkish with simultaneous translation.
Closing Symposium titled Mutual Fate investigates the disruption of the ecological balance; forests, rivers and olive groves that have been lost, and the shrinking habitats of other beings coexisting with the humankind. Mutual Fate concentrates on the issues common both to the urban and rural areas, alongside the transformation of spatial and social relations brought forth by financialisation. In a nutshell, it focuses on urban ecology and strives for finding ways out of anthropocentrism. Participants of the symposium include Prof. Massimo de Angelis, Prof. Stavros Stavrides and Prof. Ayfer Bartu Candan.
Massimo de Angelis
The commons are social systems based on the cooperation of people for the management of their common resources and the reproduction of their livelihoods and their ecology. In this lecture, we are exploring some examples and investigate some key challenges they face and how they are becoming increasingly important for social change.
Massimo De Angelis is Profesor of Political Economy at the University of East London. His latest book is Omnia Sunt Communia. On the Commons and the transformation to Postcapitalism (London: Zed, 2017).
“Sharing the City: Communities of Commoning and Emerging Common Spaces”
Stavros Stavrides
In practices of collective improvisation and collective inventiveness common spaces are created in which people not only express their needs but also develop forms of life in common. In everyday life struggles solidarity becomes a creative force. Common space is both an explicit scope of urban commoning and one of its most important shaping factors. This presentation will explore the ways the production of common spaces in contemporary metropolises shapes urban communities of sharing and struggle, communities of sharing through struggles oriented towards possible different urban futures. Examples from Europe and Latin America will be offered in an effort to study such practices which treat the city as a collective work in the making.
Stavros Stavrides, architect and activist, is professor of design and architectural theory at the School of Architecture, National Technical University of Athens where he teaches graduate courses on housing design (including social housing), as well as a postgraduate course on the meaning of metropolitan experience. He has published numerous articles on spatial theory. His most recent book is Common Space. The City as Commons (2016). His research is currently focused on emancipating spatial practices and on experiences and forms of urban commoning.
Ayfer Bartu Candan: The title and the abstract of the lecture will be announced later.
“Is It Possible to Imagine New Neighbourly Relations, for Better or for Worse, and a Different City?”
Ayfer Bartu Candan
In this talk, I will touch upon the neighbourly relations that we form or abstain from forming within the context of transformations that Istanbul is going through, the relationships that we form with the city and the nature, and borders we draw. The main question that I want to discuss is whether we could imagine different ways of redrawing these borders and co-inhabiting this city with neighbours; good, bad, old and new.
Ayfer Bartu Candan is lecturing at the Sociology department of Boğaziçi University. Her research interests are anthropological theory, urban studies and political ecology. She edited the book Yeni İstanbul Çalışmaları: Sınırlar, Mücadeleler, Açılımlar (New Istanbul Studies: Borders, Struggles, Openings) with Cenk Özbay.
Cross Sections
Discussion
Moderator: Başak Şenova
15/09/2017, 14.00-16.00,
In English.
Reservation: basaksenova@yahoo.co.uk
CrossSections project, which focuses on artistic research, discussion and production, will organize it’s second meeting in Istanbul. The aim of the meeting is to introduce and discuss the research strains and the three leading keywords - intervals, intensities and responses - with partners, collaborators and the audience. The meeting will take place on September 15, 2017 from 14: 00-16: 00 in Istanbul. Participation in this event is by invitation only. For further information please contact Başak Şenova: basaksenova@yahoo.co.uk
Curated by Başak Şenova, CrossSections project is organized in partnership of Kunsthalle Exnergasse, (WUK Werkstätten und Kulturhaus) in Vienna; iaspis - the Swedish Arts Grants Committee's International Programme for Visual and Applied Artists and Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, and The Nordic Art Association in Stockholm; Nya Småland in different locations in Sweden; HIAP - Helsinki International Artist Programme and University of the Arts Helsinki - Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki; and Press to Exit Project Space in Skopje.
The General’s Stork
Lecture performance
Participant: Heba Y. Amin
15/09/2017, 18.00-20.00, Pera Museum Auditorium
In English with simultaneous translation to Turkish.
In late 2013, Egypt made worldwide headlines when authorities detained a migratory stork traveling from Israel to Egypt because of an electronic device attached to its body. It was suspected of espionage. Almost one hundred years earlier, Lord Allenby, the British High Commissioner in Cairo, completed a major phase in biblical prophecy by launching ‘bird-like machines’ to capture Jerusalem from the Ottomans. The General’s Stork is a lecture performance that converges biblical prophecies, colonial narratives and the politics of surveillance to investigate the contemporary conditions of state paranoia that turned a migrating bird into an international spy.
Heba Y. Amin is an Egyptian visual artist, researcher and lecturer. She is currently teaching at Bard College Berlin, is a BGSMSC doctorate fellow at Freie Universität, and a recent resident artist at the Bethanien artist residency program in Berlin. Amin has received many grants, including the Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant, DAAD and the Rhizome Commissions grant. She is the co-founder of the Black Athena Collective, the curator of visual art for the MIZNA journal (US), and curator for the biennial residency program DEFAULT with Ramdom Association (IT). Furthermore, Amin is also one of the artists behind the subversive graffiti action on the set of the television series Homeland which received worldwide media attention.
If I Don’t Have a Neighbour, What Is My Home / My Neighbourhood!
Panel and the launch of Neighbourhoods Dictionary
Participants: Association of Neighbourhoods
19/09/2017, Istanbul Modern Cinema
Panel: 15.00-17.30
Launch: 17.30-19.00
In Turkish.
As cities are re-built through urban transformation and renewal processes, the notion of ‘home’ changes, destroying the inter-neighbourhood social, cultural, and economic relationships that we would call ‘neighbourhood culture’ as traditional neighbourhood textures disappear. As a social relationship, being a neighbour is a notion we attribute a lot of positive qualities to, now redefined, tested by the spatial transformation and relocation policies.
Those who live under the threat of urban transformation and renewal organize themselves through associations and cooperatives to defend their homes, their neighbours, their neighbourhoods—in other words, the daily life that they know and that they are used to. They are trying to make their voices heard, trying to become a part of the plans and projects that will determine their future. The common statement of 80 neighbourhoods that are gathered under the roof of Neighbourhoods Association: ‘Don’t touch my home, my neighbour, my neighbourhood!’
Neighbourhoods Dictionary: Neighbourhoods that have been seeking their rights legally against urban transformation projects have an extensive vocabulary of words that relate to their situations. Requiring a knack for the disciplines of law, architecture, planning, political sciences, philosophy, this series of concepts are needed to give meaning to the history of the neighbourhoods, their realities and their experiences, serving as a guide to understand the neighbourhoods and the struggles of inhabitants of these neighbourhoods who are fighting against the urban transformation process in Turkey. This extensive and complicated terminology that the neighbourhoods learned under the pressure of transformation and precarity could also be interpreted as a form of semantic violence.
Borderless and Brazen*
Conversation
Participants: Gülşen Aktaş, Aykan Safoğlu
20/09/2017, 18.30-20.30, Pera Museum Auditorium
In Turkish.
Gülşen and I met randomly at a film screening in Berlin in 2012. The coffee we drank in the foyer marked the beginning of a friendship and life-long collaboration between a gay cis-man of White Turk identity born in the West of Turkey, and a Kurdish cis-woman born in Dersim, who dedicated her life to activism and women’s work in Germany. As Gülşen and I got to know each other better, beyond different generations and socializations, populist politics all over the world has taken giant steps to destroy any possibility of democracy on this planet. This is why Gülşen and I held on to each other and continue to do so, to cherish our chosen family, commons and our ancestries. This conversation is an occasion to share the feminist elements of Gülşen’s life that reflected onto my mirror and seeped into my art practice. We’d be happy if what emerged from of our friendship would eventually reflect back onto you.
*Borderless and Brazen is a poem by Afro-German poet May Ayim.
Gülşen Aktaş (b. in Dersim) graduated from high school in Urfa and became a primary school teacher in the province of Diyarbakir. At the age of 21, she followed her mother to Germany. In Berlin and Frankfurt, she studied political science and worked in one of the first women's shelters in Berlin, and on various immigrant and women's projects. Since 2007, she is the director Huzur, a Berlin leisure center for senior citizens that offers consultation and cultural tours in Berlin. For her political engagement, Aktaş received an Order of Merit from the city of Berlin in 2011, where she still continues to live and work.
Aykan Safoğlu (b. 1984, İstanbul) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at Universität der Künste, Berlin, and Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, and was resident at SAHA studio, Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In his art practice, he forges relationships - friendships, even - across cultural, geographic, linguistic, as well as temporal boundaries. Working across film photography and performance, he makes open-ended enquiries into cultural belonging, creativity and kinship. He has recently participated in group exhibitions such as Father Figures are Hard to Find, nGbK, Berlin (2016); THE BILL: For Collective Unconscious, Artspace, Auckland (2016); Home Works 7, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2015), and has screened at various international film festivals.
Right to Being a Neighbour
Conversation
Participant: Rita Ender
05/10/2017, 18.00-20.00, Istanbul Modern Cinema
In Turkish.
People have the right to good neighbours, just as they have the right to start a family, to move freely, to own property. The law regulates neighborliness in its own cold language and has set down the rules for being a ‘good neighbour’ in legal codes. Consequently, people have legal rights and responsibilities to their neighbours, as neighbours. In this country, those who do not fulfill these obligations are sometimes warned from a window, ‘Look, that's it, I've had enough of this. I'll see you in court!’ Sometimes, words aren't enough and people resort to taking a broom and desperately banging on the ceiling, the walls, the floor, wherever the noise is coming from. Sometimes, the building manager is asked to intervene, sometimes the police get called, sometimes these cases end up in court. What then can court records tell us about being a good neighbour?
Rita Ender was born in Istanbul in 1984. She graduated from the Saint Joseph French High School in Istanbul in 2003 and from Marmara University's Law School in 2008. She has worked as a lawyer since January 2010. She has Masters degrees from Galatasaray University and Panthéon-Assas University (Paris II), and has worked in the field of minority rights. Ender, who has written for a variety of newspapers and magazines since 2001, has published three books: Mümkündür Mucizeler [Miracles Do Happen] (Gözlem Publishing), Kolay Gelsin: Meslekler ve Mekânlar [May the Work be Easy: Professions and Places] (İletişim Publishing), İsmiyle Yaşamak [Living with This Name] (İletişim Publishing). She also made documentary film, Las Ultimas Palavras.
Collective Çukurcuma
Reading group and House of Wisdom exhibition
21/09/2017 | 28/09/2017 | 05/10/2017 | 12/10/2017 | 19/10/2017 | 26/10/2017 | 02/11/2017 | 09/11/2017
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
In Turkish or English.
Weekly programmes will be published on the website.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group will organize weekly reading discussion sessions and events around the theme of “How do we come together?/How do we fall apart?” in response to the title of the 15th Istanbul Biennial: a good neighbor. Also featuring artists, academics, and curators as invited speakers, these sessions will take place in House of Wisdom, an exhibition/library at the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building by Collective Çukurcuma, which first opened at Dzialdov and Stadt-Bibliothek Else-Ury, Berlin in April 2017 with contributions from 38 artists and researchers. Inspired by Bayt-al Hikma [House of Wisdom], the exhibition invites the audience to rethink the political nature of books and libraries.
Reading group sessions will take place on Thursdays between 7 and 9 pm over the course the biennial. Open to all; please register by sending an email to collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com due to limited capacity. The exhibition House of Wisdom can be visited on every Tuesday to Friday between 10 am - 6 pm on the ground floor of the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building.
Collective Çukurcuma is a non-profit art initiative based in Istanbul, Turkey. It was founded by Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı in 2015 and joined by Serhat Cacekli in 2017. The collective mainly focuses on collaborative thinking and creating processes through its reading group meetings (co-organized by Gökcan Demirkazık) and cross-national collaboration projects, and raises questions about the power of books and libraries through its curatorial projects and editorial work.
Gökcan Demirkazık is an Istanbul-based curator and writer.
Collective Çukurcuma
Reading group and House of Wisdom exhibition
21/09/2017 | 28/09/2017 | 05/10/2017 | 12/10/2017 | 19/10/2017 | 26/10/2017 | 02/11/2017 | 09/11/2017
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
In Turkish or English.
Weekly programmes will be published on the website.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group will organize weekly reading discussion sessions and events around the theme of “How do we come together?/How do we fall apart?” in response to the title of the 15th Istanbul Biennial: a good neighbor. Also featuring artists, academics, and curators as invited speakers, these sessions will take place in House of Wisdom, an exhibition/library at the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building by Collective Çukurcuma, which first opened at Dzialdov and Stadt-Bibliothek Else-Ury, Berlin in April 2017 with contributions from 38 artists and researchers. Inspired by Bayt-al Hikma [House of Wisdom], the exhibition invites the audience to rethink the political nature of books and libraries.
Reading group sessions will take place on Thursdays between 7 and 9 pm over the course the biennial. Open to all; please register by sending an email to collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com due to limited capacity. The exhibition House of Wisdom can be visited on every Tuesday to Friday between 10 am - 6 pm on the ground floor of the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building.
Collective Çukurcuma is a non-profit art initiative based in Istanbul, Turkey. It was founded by Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı in 2015 and joined by Serhat Cacekli in 2017. The collective mainly focuses on collaborative thinking and creating processes through its reading group meetings (co-organized by Gökcan Demirkazık) and cross-national collaboration projects, and raises questions about the power of books and libraries through its curatorial projects and editorial work.
Gökcan Demirkazık is an Istanbul-based curator and writer.
Collective Çukurcuma
Reading group and House of Wisdom exhibition
21/09/2017 | 28/09/2017 | 05/10/2017 | 12/10/2017 | 19/10/2017 | 26/10/2017 | 02/11/2017 | 09/11/2017
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
In Turkish or English.
Weekly programmes will be published on the website.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group will organize weekly reading discussion sessions and events around the theme of “How do we come together?/How do we fall apart?” in response to the title of the 15th Istanbul Biennial: a good neighbor. Also featuring artists, academics, and curators as invited speakers, these sessions will take place in House of Wisdom, an exhibition/library at the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building by Collective Çukurcuma, which first opened at Dzialdov and Stadt-Bibliothek Else-Ury, Berlin in April 2017 with contributions from 38 artists and researchers. Inspired by Bayt-al Hikma [House of Wisdom], the exhibition invites the audience to rethink the political nature of books and libraries.
Reading group sessions will take place on Thursdays between 7 and 9 pm over the course the biennial. Open to all; please register by sending an email to collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com due to limited capacity. The exhibition House of Wisdom can be visited on every Tuesday to Friday between 10 am - 6 pm on the ground floor of the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building.
Collective Çukurcuma is a non-profit art initiative based in Istanbul, Turkey. It was founded by Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı in 2015 and joined by Serhat Cacekli in 2017. The collective mainly focuses on collaborative thinking and creating processes through its reading group meetings (co-organized by Gökcan Demirkazık) and cross-national collaboration projects, and raises questions about the power of books and libraries through its curatorial projects and editorial work.
Gökcan Demirkazık is an Istanbul-based curator and writer.
Collective Çukurcuma
Reading group and House of Wisdom exhibition
21/09/2017 | 28/09/2017 | 05/10/2017 | 12/10/2017 | 19/10/2017 | 26/10/2017 | 02/11/2017 | 09/11/2017
18.00-20.00
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
In Turkish or English.*
Weekly programmes will be published on the website.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group will organize weekly reading discussion sessions and events around the theme of “How do we come together?/How do we fall apart?” in response to the title of the 15th Istanbul Biennial: a good neighbor. Also featuring artists, academics, and curators as invited speakers, these sessions will take place in House of Wisdom, an exhibition/library at the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building by Collective Çukurcuma, which first opened at Dzialdov and Stadt-Bibliothek Else-Ury, Berlin in April 2017 with contributions from 38 artists and researchers. Inspired by Bayt-al Hikma [House of Wisdom], the exhibition invites the audience to rethink the political nature of books and libraries.
Reading group sessions will take place on Thursdays between 7 and 9 pm over the course the biennial. Open to all; please register by sending an email to collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com due to limited capacity. The exhibition House of Wisdom can be visited on every Tuesday to Friday between 10 am - 6 pm on the ground floor of the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building.
Collective Çukurcuma is a non-profit art initiative based in Istanbul, Turkey. It was founded by Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı in 2015 and joined by Serhat Cacekli in 2017. The collective mainly focuses on collaborative thinking and creating processes through its reading group meetings (co-organized by Gökcan Demirkazık) and cross-national collaboration projects, and raises questions about the power of books and libraries through its curatorial projects and editorial work.
Gökcan Demirkazık is an Istanbul-based curator and writer.
Daily Programme
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group is meeting this week to discuss texts about the artistic and scientific relevance of art books, artists’ books and exhibition catalogues as well as the multifaceted meanings implied by their existence in the context of (contemporary art) exhibitions. Moderated by Francesca Valentini, independent researcher and Curator of Public Programs at FLAT Art Book Fair Turin (IT), and featuring Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, artist participating in House of Wisdom exhibition, this meeting will take place at House of Wisdom, located on the ground floor of İKSV’s Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building at 6-8 PM on Thursday, 19 October.
The texts will be sent to the registered participants. We suggest you to read the texts before coming to the meeting.
*The texts are available in English, and the conversation will be in English only.
1) Clive Phillpot, “Twentysix Gasoline Stations that Shook the World: the Rise and Fall of Cheap Booklet as Art,” Art Libraries Journal, 18, no. 1 (1993): 4-13; reprinted in Phillpot, Booktrek (Zürich: JRP | Ringier, 2013).
2) Constance Moréteau, "Reading Spaces: Outside of any Typology," in Open Books: Volumes A-E (London: Hato Press, 2015), 15-34.
3) Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel and Olivier Marcel, "Exhibition Catalogues in the Globalization of Art. A Source for Social and Spatial Art History," Artl@s Bulletin 4, no. 2 (2016): Article 8.
4) The Land Across the Blind, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan
Suggested reading: The story by Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, 103-115; “Imagining an Island’’ by Aslı Seven, 147-156.
5)” Write Injuries on Sand and Kindness in Marble”, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan
Suggested reading: The conversation between Hera Büyüktaşçıyan & Haig Aivazian
Collective Çukurcuma
Reading group and House of Wisdom exhibition
21/09/2017 | 28/09/2017 | 05/10/2017 | 12/10/2017 | 19/10/2017 | 26/10/2017 | 02/11/2017 | 09/11/2017
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
In Turkish or English.
Weekly programmes will be published on the website.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group will organize weekly reading discussion sessions and events around the theme of “How do we come together?/How do we fall apart?” in response to the title of the 15th Istanbul Biennial: a good neighbor. Also featuring artists, academics, and curators as invited speakers, these sessions will take place in House of Wisdom, an exhibition/library at the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building by Collective Çukurcuma, which first opened at Dzialdov and Stadt-Bibliothek Else-Ury, Berlin in April 2017 with contributions from 38 artists and researchers. Inspired by Bayt-al Hikma [House of Wisdom], the exhibition invites the audience to rethink the political nature of books and libraries.
Reading group sessions will take place on Thursdays between 7 and 9 pm over the course the biennial. Open to all; please register by sending an email to collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com due to limited capacity. The exhibition House of Wisdom can be visited on every Tuesday to Friday between 10 am - 6 pm on the ground floor of the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building.
Collective Çukurcuma is a non-profit art initiative based in Istanbul, Turkey. It was founded by Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı in 2015 and joined by Serhat Cacekli in 2017. The collective mainly focuses on collaborative thinking and creating processes through its reading group meetings (co-organized by Gökcan Demirkazık) and cross-national collaboration projects, and raises questions about the power of books and libraries through its curatorial projects and editorial work.
Gökcan Demirkazık is an Istanbul-based curator and writer.
Collective Çukurcuma
Reading group and House of Wisdom exhibition
21/09/2017 | 28/09/2017 | 05/10/2017 | 12/10/2017 | 19/10/2017 | 26/10/2017 | 02/11/2017 | 09/11/2017
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
In Turkish or English.
Weekly programmes will be published on the website.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group will organize weekly reading discussion sessions and events around the theme of “How do we come together?/How do we fall apart?” in response to the title of the 15th Istanbul Biennial: a good neighbor. Also featuring artists, academics, and curators as invited speakers, these sessions will take place in House of Wisdom, an exhibition/library at the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building by Collective Çukurcuma, which first opened at Dzialdov and Stadt-Bibliothek Else-Ury, Berlin in April 2017 with contributions from 38 artists and researchers. Inspired by Bayt-al Hikma [House of Wisdom], the exhibition invites the audience to rethink the political nature of books and libraries.
Reading group sessions will take place on Thursdays between 7 and 9 pm over the course the biennial. Open to all; please register by sending an email to collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com due to limited capacity. The exhibition House of Wisdom can be visited on every Tuesday to Friday between 10 am - 6 pm on the ground floor of the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building.
Collective Çukurcuma is a non-profit art initiative based in Istanbul, Turkey. It was founded by Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı in 2015 and joined by Serhat Cacekli in 2017. The collective mainly focuses on collaborative thinking and creating processes through its reading group meetings (co-organized by Gökcan Demirkazık) and cross-national collaboration projects, and raises questions about the power of books and libraries through its curatorial projects and editorial work.
Gökcan Demirkazık is an Istanbul-based curator and writer.
Session Programme
Book Launch and Performances: Horst & Maria
16.00-17.00: Performance “The Curated Day”
17.00-18.00: Book Launch & Conversation: “Horst & Maria: Die perfekten Bewohner / The Perfect Residents / Mükemmel Sakinler”
Horst & Maria are two fictional characters, created by Christian Jankowski and 27 other artists based in Germany, as part of an artist in residency program in Istanbul. The duo always wears blonde wigs and matching outfits. Only their names and haircuts indicate a difference in gender. During their six-month stay at the Tarabya Cultural Academy in Istanbul, Horst & Maria have sequentially been "inhabited" by all 28 artists. Together they recorded their individual experiences through a series of photographs and a shared diary.
The 568-page book published by Walther König represents Horst & Maria’s time in Turkey across three different languages - German, Turkish and English. The publication of the book will be celebrated by a series of Horst & Maria performances.
Horst & Maria are: Jan-Nicola Angermann / Ferhat Ayne / Min Bark / Sophia Bergemann / Natalija Borovec / Ezgi Böttger / Nora Dennenberg / Theo Dietz / Anna Gohmert / Lucia Gödicke / Andrea Éva Győri / Anette C. Halm / Shaotong He / Gabriel Hensche / Sören Hiob / Benjamin Hönsch / Christian Jankowski / Bangjoo Kim / Jen Kratochvil / Kasper Leisner / Tünde Mezses / Kyunhye Min / Blerta Osmani / Jan-Hendrik Pelz / Charlie Stein / Johannes Hugo Stoll / Angela Vanini / Alicia Hernández Westpfahl
They will be represented by: Min Bark, Theo Dietz, Christian Jankowski and Jan-Hendrik Pelz
The event will be in English, Turkish an German.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group V
19.15-21.15: “What can the concept of ‘neighbour’ contribute to queer theory? - II”
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group is meeting this week for the continuing discussion on “What can the concept of ‘neighbor’ contribute to queer theory?” session that took place on October 12, moderated by Mine Kaplangı with selected texts suggested by Evren Savcı (which can be found on Collective Çukurcuma’s website).
With the suggested texts from the first sessions’ participants and moderated by Evren Savcı, Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at San Francisco State University, this next reading meeting as the second round of the “What can the concept of ‘neighbour’ contribute to queer theory?” discussion, will take place at 19.15-21.15 on Thursday, 2 November.
Open to all; please register by sending an e-mail to collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com due to limited capacity. The texts will be sent to the registered participants. We suggest you to read the texts before coming to the meeting.
*The texts are available in English, and the conversation will be in Turkish only.
- ‘Introduction’ (pages 1-20) from Animacies by Mel Chen
- ‘Righting Wrongs’ by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
- ʻQueer Feelingsʼ from The Cultural Politics of Emotion by Sara Ahmed (pages 2-25)
- ‘A Thousand Tiny Sexes: Feminism and Rhizomatics’ article by Elizabeth Grosz
Collective Çukurcuma
Reading group and House of Wisdom exhibition
21/09/2017 | 28/09/2017 | 05/10/2017 | 12/10/2017 | 19/10/2017 | 26/10/2017 | 02/11/2017 | 09/11/2017
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
In Turkish or English.
Weekly programmes will be published on the website.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group will organize weekly reading discussion sessions and events around the theme of “How do we come together?/How do we fall apart?” in response to the title of the 15th Istanbul Biennial: a good neighbor. Also featuring artists, academics, and curators as invited speakers, these sessions will take place in House of Wisdom, an exhibition/library at the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building by Collective Çukurcuma, which first opened at Dzialdov and Stadt-Bibliothek Else-Ury, Berlin in April 2017 with contributions from 38 artists and researchers. Inspired by Bayt-al Hikma [House of Wisdom], the exhibition invites the audience to rethink the political nature of books and libraries.
Reading group sessions will take place on Thursdays between 7 and 9 pm over the course the biennial. Open to all; please register by sending an email to collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com due to limited capacity. The exhibition House of Wisdom can be visited on every Tuesday to Friday between 10 am - 6 pm on the ground floor of the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building.
Collective Çukurcuma is a non-profit art initiative based in Istanbul, Turkey. It was founded by Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı in 2015 and joined by Serhat Cacekli in 2017. The collective mainly focuses on collaborative thinking and creating processes through its reading group meetings (co-organized by Gökcan Demirkazık) and cross-national collaboration projects, and raises questions about the power of books and libraries through its curatorial projects and editorial work.
Gökcan Demirkazık is an Istanbul-based curator and writer.
The Metropolis of Animals: Neighbours, Companions or Leftovers?
Conversation
Participant: Sezai Ozan Zeybek
03/10/2017, 18.30-20.30, Pera Museum Auditorium
In Turkish.
Places are heterogeneous: A multiplicity of beings co-habit the place: humans, dogs, trees, worms, mushrooms... We are thrown-together and we will be, at different times and speeds, again dispersed. Our social setting is a bubble that draws together forms of life and materials, yet destined to burst out as we move on. This talk explores the shifting relations in Istanbul between dogs and their humans from 19th Century onwards; looks at a number of episodes where they have become intimate companions, ignored neighbours, or discarded redundancies. All along, my goal will be to redefine the term ‘social’ by drawing attention to nonhuman entities in the city. In that spirit, I will survey the spatial arrangements and the ecological relations imminent to the city yielding different neighbourhoods that we share or compete over with other beings.
Dr. Sezai Ozan Zeybek is a geographer. In the light of postcolonial literature, he studies ‘trivial’ places, ‘insignificant’ people and ‘dead’ times. He follows up the stories of stray dogs, babies, or men who kill time in coffee shops day after day. All along, he scrutinises space-time conceptions of, mainly, capitalism. Recently, he has started to work on issues around ecology with a focus on industrial meat production. Additionally, he is interested in formations of militarism and different constructions of manhood. He has a blog in Turkish where he posts non-academic, seemingly "out-of-agenda" articles:
Collective Çukurcuma
Reading group and House of Wisdom exhibition
21/09/2017 | 28/09/2017 | 05/10/2017 | 12/10/2017 | 19/10/2017 | 26/10/2017 | 02/11/2017 | 09/11/2017
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
In Turkish or English.
Weekly programmes will be published on the website.
Collective Çukurcuma Reading Group will organize weekly reading discussion sessions and events around the theme of “How do we come together?/How do we fall apart?” in response to the title of the 15th Istanbul Biennial: a good neighbor. Also featuring artists, academics, and curators as invited speakers, these sessions will take place in House of Wisdom, an exhibition/library at the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building by Collective Çukurcuma, which first opened at Dzialdov and Stadt-Bibliothek Else-Ury, Berlin in April 2017 with contributions from 38 artists and researchers. Inspired by Bayt-al Hikma [House of Wisdom], the exhibition invites the audience to rethink the political nature of books and libraries.
Reading group sessions will take place on Thursdays between 7 and 9 pm over the course the biennial. Open to all; please register by sending an email to collectivecukurcuma@gmail.com due to limited capacity. The exhibition House of Wisdom can be visited on every Tuesday to Friday between 10 am - 6 pm on the ground floor of the İKSV Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building.
Collective Çukurcuma is a non-profit art initiative based in Istanbul, Turkey. It was founded by Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı in 2015 and joined by Serhat Cacekli in 2017. The collective mainly focuses on collaborative thinking and creating processes through its reading group meetings (co-organized by Gökcan Demirkazık) and cross-national collaboration projects, and raises questions about the power of books and libraries through its curatorial projects and editorial work.
Gökcan Demirkazık is an Istanbul-based curator and writer.
The Real Superheroes
Animation and character design workshop for kids
14/10/2017 | 15/10/2017 | 21/10/2017 | 22/10/2017, 13.00-17.00
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
Educators: Manar Zind Alhadid (visual artist), Aras Ali (film maker), Farah Barisly (visual artist), Ammar Khattab (illustrator), Ayham Mallish (photographer)
Hamisch (Syrian Cultural House in Istanbul) in collaboration with Goethe Institute Istanbul and with the support of Yuva Association Flying Library Project
Turkish and Arabic with consecutive translation.
What if refuge was a place of Superheroes? Can you imagine one living in a shelter? In this workshop every kid will learn how to draw his own special Superhero. The characters would be redrawn and printed in a scale of 1:1 to the child. The result would be shown as an art installation exhibition, the printed characters would be placed in model refugee tents. Showing the sense of not fitting in place. The workshop will be filmed as a short documentary.
The Real Superheroes
Animation and character design workshop for kids
14/10/2017 | 15/10/2017 | 21/10/2017 | 22/10/2017, 13.00-17.00
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
Educators: Manar Zind Alhadid (visual artist), Aras Ali (film maker), Farah Barisly (visual artist), Ammar Khattab (illustrator), Ayham Mallish (photographer)
Hamisch (Syrian Cultural House in Istanbul) in collaboration with Goethe Institute Istanbul and with the support of Yuva Association Flying Library Project
Turkish and Arabic with consecutive translation.
What if refuge was a place of Superheroes? Can you imagine one living in a shelter? In this workshop every kid will learn how to draw his own special Superhero. The characters would be redrawn and printed in a scale of 1:1 to the child. The result would be shown as an art installation exhibition, the printed characters would be placed in model refugee tents. Showing the sense of not fitting in place. The workshop will be filmed as a short documentary.
The Real Superheroes
Animation and character design workshop for kids
14/10/2017 | 15/10/2017 | 21/10/2017 | 22/10/2017, 13.00-17.00
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
Educators: Manar Zind Alhadid (visual artist), Aras Ali (film maker), Farah Barisly (visual artist), Ammar Khattab (illustrator), Ayham Mallish (photographer)
Hamisch (Syrian Cultural House in Istanbul) in collaboration with Goethe Institute Istanbul and with the support of Yuva Association Flying Library Project
Turkish and Arabic with consecutive translation.
What if refuge was a place of Superheroes? Can you imagine one living in a shelter? In this workshop every kid will learn how to draw his own special Superhero. The characters would be redrawn and printed in a scale of 1:1 to the child. The result would be shown as an art installation exhibition, the printed characters would be placed in model refugee tents. Showing the sense of not fitting in place. The workshop will be filmed as a short documentary.
The Real Superheroes
Animation and character design workshop for kids
14/10/2017 | 15/10/2017 | 21/10/2017 | 22/10/2017, 13.00-17.00
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
Educators: Manar Zind Alhadid (visual artist), Aras Ali (film maker), Farah Barisly (visual artist), Ammar Khattab (illustrator), Ayham Mallish (photographer)
Hamisch (Syrian Cultural House in Istanbul) in collaboration with Goethe Institute Istanbul and with the support of Yuva Association Flying Library Project
Turkish and Arabic with consecutive translation.
What if refuge was a place of Superheroes? Can you imagine one living in a shelter? In this workshop every kid will learn how to draw his own special Superhero. The characters would be redrawn and printed in a scale of 1:1 to the child. The result would be shown as an art installation exhibition, the printed characters would be placed in model refugee tents. Showing the sense of not fitting in place. The workshop will be filmed as a short documentary.
Neighbouring Recipes
Moderated by Ezgi Tuncer
Food workshop and panel
13/10/2017, 15.00-19.00, Studio-X Istanbul
15.00-16.00
Panel: Food, Identity, Borders
Uğur Tanyeli, Tayfun Gürkaş
16.00-17.00
Neighbouring Recipes Cooking Performance
Kerem Küçükkınacı, Mohammed Orwani
17.30-18.30
Panel: Food, City, Actors
Aslıhan Demirtaş, Aycan Tüylüoğlu, Meltem Türköz
Please click here for registration.
Food is commonly dressed by a specified identity and assigned to a place since, as a cultural material it is one of the most useful tools providing generation and sustainability of political identity. Furthermore, it is appropriated by states as indicators of patriotic discourses sublimating and emphasizing nations. However, neither local nor national, existentially nomadic, food has no homeland. It is particularly reproduced in every single location by different cultural habits, techniques and materials. Therefore, as a counter-conduct against borders, chefs from different cultural geographies will come together in a kitchen place to reproduce common dishes of transitive cultures. This performance aims to highlight communalities and mobility of food culture instead of divisions, conflicts and war.
Add Your Voice to Mine: Istanbul’s Musicians
Music workshop
22/10/2017, 16.00-20.00, Salon İKSV
Organised by Evrim Hikmet Öğüt
In Turkish and Arabic with consecutive translation to English.
Istanbul is a huge city in which we all live, isolated in its different corners, squeezed into a narrow present. Could we, as musicians from Istanbul, overcome this spatial and temporal state of being squeezed through meeting each other, standing in solidarity, giving voice to our voices? Could we transform our similar and dissimilar experiences into a new, creative product?
Add Your Voice to Mine is a workshop that is open for musicians in Istanbul. This workshop aims to enable a solidarity network between migrant musicians and the established musicians of the city, perhaps leading to musical collaborations, temporary/permanent projects and permanent friendships. Our conversation about meetings, experiences, needs will lead to a jam session where we will make music together, improvised.
Artist Talk: Fred Wilson
14/09/2017, 17.00-19.00, Pera Museum Auditorium
In English
Simultaneous translation available
What makes a just neighbourhood?
Conversation with Jeanne van Heeswijk
04/11/2017, 16.00-18.00
Nejat Eczacıbaşı Building, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, entrance gallery
In English.
The neighbourhood is a scale where we are able to understand and create new social, political and economic relationships, through making visible and tangible what is needed in the community. What do our communities need, and what does each of us give back? In the midst of our rapidly changing city, what makes a just neighbourhood and what can we do to be a just neighbour?
Jeanne van Heeswijk is an artist who facilitates the creation of dynamic and diversified public spaces in order to “radicalize the local”. Her long-scale community-embedded projects question art’s autonomy by combining performative actions, discussions, and other forms of organizing and pedagogy in order to enable communities to take control of their own futures. Her work has been featured in numerous books and publications worldwide, as well as internationally renowned biennials such as those of Liverpool, Shanghai, and Venice. She was the 2014-2015 Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism at Bard College and she has received the 2012 Curry Stone Prize for Social Design Pioneers, and in 2011, the Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. She lives and works in Rotterdam and Philadelphia.
