Monday, December 19, 2011

övül durmusoglu and asli cetinkaya on 'responding to the new moon' @ m-est.org






Galerie Tanja Wagner is hosting the exhibition titled Yeni Aya Cevaben/ Responding to the New Moon/ Antworten auf den Neumonds: Prologue curated by Övül Durmuşoğlu.
Övül has recently moved to Berlin after having lived in Malmö, Vienna, New York and Stuttgart for her educational and project commitments.  The reason for her coming to Berlin was initially to organize and install the Berlin step of Another Country- Eine andere Welt in ifa Berlin, a collaborative project of the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa), Stuttgart and the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart  which she produced with a Rave Scholarship..
The exhibition Yeni Aya Cevaben/Responding to the New Moon/ Antworten auf den Neumonds: Prologue includes works by Hasan Aksaygın, Natalie Czech (in coll.with Ashkan Sepahvand and Mara Genschel), Nilbar Güreş, Runo Lagomarsino, Johannes Paul Raether, Anca Munteanu Rimnic and Pilvi Takala. During a short visit to the exhibition, performance, collaborative acts and a certain unlocking humor seemed to be some of the common threads running through the works. In order to help me relate to the curatorial framework and motivations, Övül has kindly sent her replies to a number of comments and questions.—Aslı Çetinkaya

responding to responding to the new moon, a curatorial conversation between anselm franke and adnan yildiz moderated by övül durmusoglu



Weekend Special #2: Responding to Responding to the New Moon
An open talk about our contemporary relationships with the old nature

Meeting at Galerie Tanja Wagner 19:00 followed by bar discussion at Kumpelnest 3000 19:30

The second step of Weekend Special program in the framework of  Yeni Aya Cevaben/Responding to the New Moon/ Antworten auf den Neumond: Prologue hosts a curatorial conversation between Anselm Franke (Taipei Biennial 2012) and Adnan Yildiz (Künstlerhaus Stuttgart) moderated by Övül Durmusoglu (Independent curator, Berlin/Istanbul) under the title “Responding to Responding to the New Moon”. As a response to Durmusoglu's invitation, Yildiz has invited Franke to respond to the exhibition conceptualizing the unexpected as a creative force. The conversation partners will analyze familiar curatorial attitudes in this respect, especially Franke's past and continuing projects, with a focus on the conflictual zone between the geological reality that surrounds human thinking and the ontological orders of experiencing the limits as a mortal entity with the belief of an eternal universe. How critical practices deal with the unexpected nature of creativity in this context will be the common conceptual ground during the conversation. 


Responding to Responding to the New Moon was a dense meditation mainly guided by Anselm Franke cutting across different references, reflecting his particular modernist way of thinking on modernity and its issues in the framing of contemporary art. During 2 hours of good conversation in the amazing bar of Kumpelnest, hosted by Reinhardt, we also learned what Anselm Franke and Adnan Yildiz have in common; both prefer Freud over Jung.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Yeni Aya Cevaben/Responding to the New Moon/Antworten auf den Neumond: Prologue, Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin 11/11/11



Yeni Aya Cevaben/Responding to the New Moon/Antworten auf den Neumond: Prologue

Hasan Aksaygin, Natalie Czech (in collaboration with Ashkan Sepahvand and Mara Genschell), Nilbar Güreş, Runo Lagomarsino, Johannes Paul Raether, Anca Munteanu Rimnic, Pilvi Takala

curated by Övül Durmusoglu

These days almost feel like an eclipse that is all about perception and changing our mind to meet the moment. A sort of new moon that marks an open invitation to find new terrains beyond repetitive mind circles. The student uprisings in England for free education rights, the major oil leak in Mexican Gulf, the resistance that grew around Stuttgart 21, the insisting demand of people against dictatorships in North Africa and Middle East, the nuclear disaster trigerred by tsunami in Japan and the occupation movement that spread around from Wall Street not to forget the people voicing up their complaints against the system's misgivings in Greece and Spain have all arrived in a raw , to call for a flexible attitude reacting to the unexpected, emphasizing how creative the unexpected may be.

Narrowing and sharpening our focus, the creativity of the unexpected can be connected to many exciting current artistic practices that respond to the new moon. Sources and methods vary but what stays in the center is the open ended relationship these artists develop with material, space and performance, never losing touch with emotions, sensations and personal experiences. Through suggesting or realizing radical performative methodologies of material and process, they propose different parallel narratives of now and then that come with freestyle juggling that allows for innovation, leaps of logic, learning from others and adapting to new information. They point into unknown fields of imagination and allow free movement among the variations of our time-space, our present.

In her timeless classic On Violence, Hannah Arendt starts her analysis with the uncontrollable nature of the event. She argues that the present can never be guessed by skillful political foreseers who, in the name of protecting integrity, try to frame it with doctrines shaped by the past. There is always something unforeseeable, unexpected in the nature of the event that challenges our pre-planned ways of thinking and makes any reading fixated by the past invalid. Arendt phrases this phenomenon as the creativity of the unexpected. In an artistic context, the creativity of the unexpected is one of the driving forces for the fluidity of contemporary art discourse searching for what is contemporary: A fluidity shaped by what happens at the moment, constructing unexpected juxtapositions and correlations of issues, materials and sensations.

'Responding to the New Moon' is the first step of a series of projects that will process a trigerring concept question 'new materiality' to research current artistic approaches towards formulating their new vocabularies in experience. It will mark the gallery initially as an exhibition space and a research field and will extend it via a supporting program in different locations.

www.tanjawagner.com



Bugünlerde ana ilişkin algımızı değiştiren tutulmalar tecrübe ediyoruz. Birbirini tekrar eden fikir döngülerinin ötesinde yeni alanlar bulmamıza açık davetiye çıkaran bir nevi yeni ay olarak da adlandırabiliriz bu durumu. İngiltere'de öğrencilerin serbest eğitim hakkı için başlattığı ayaklanmalar, Meksika Körfezi'nde önlemi alınamayan büyük petrol sızıntısı, Stuttgart 21 etrafında birleşen ve büyüyen direniş, Kuzey Afrika ve Ortadoğu'da varolan diktatoryel rejimleri değiştirmek isteyen halkların ısrarı, Japonya'da tsunaminin tetiklediği nükleer felaket, Wall Street'te başlayıp hızla yayılan ilhak eylemleri, Yunanistan ve İspanya'da sistemin verdiği zararlara karşı sesini yükseltenleri de unutmayalım, birbirinin ardısıra bizi beklenmedik olana karşı daha esnek davranmaya çağırarak gerçekleşmeye devam ediyorlar. Beklenmedik olanın ne kadar yaratıcı olabileceğini vurgulayarak.

Odağımızı daha da netleştirirsek, beklenmedik olanın yaratıcılığını içinde bulunduğumuz yeni aya cevaben gelişen birçok yeni heyecan verici sanat pratiğine bağlayabiliriz. Kaynaklar ve yöntemler değişse de merkezde kalan bu sanatçıların malzeme, mekan ve performansla, duygu, hissiyat ve kişisel deneyimlerden kopmadan kurduğu açık ilişki. Şöyle de denilebilir; sözü geçen yeni pratikler malzeme ve sürece ilişkin radikal performatif metodolojiler icra ederek veya bunlara işaret ederken; yeniliğe, mantık sıçramalarına, başkalarından öğrenmeye ve yeni bilgilere uyumlanmaya olanak veren serbest stil hokkabazlıklar yaparak bugüne ve ötesine ilişkin farklı paralel anlatılar öneriyorlar. Hayalgücünün bilinmeyen alanlarına işaret ederek bulunduğumuz zaman-mekanın çeşitlemelerinin arasında serbestçe hareket etmemize olanak sağlıyorlar.

Hannah Arendt klasiği Şiddet Üzerine' de analizine olayın kontrol edilemez doğasını vurgulayarak başlar. Bugünün bütünlüğü korumak adına geçmiş öğretilere dayandırdıkları tahminler üreten birtakım politik öngörücüler tarafından okunamayacağını belirtir. Olayın doğasında varolan öngörülemezlik ve beklenmediklik her zaman önceden planlanmış düşünme biçimlerini geçersiz kılar. Arendt bu olguyu beklenmedik olanın yaratıcılığı olarak dillendirir. Sanatsal bir bağlamda beklenmedik olanın yaratıcılığı, güncel olanı arayan güncel sanat söylemine akışkanlığını veren itici güçlerden biri olarak adlandırılabilir: Anda olanla şekillenen; meseleler, malzemeler ve hissiyatlar arasında beklenmedik yanyanalıklar ve ilişkiler kuran bir akışkanlık.

'Yeni Aya Cevaben' yeni maddecilik kavram sorusunu bir tetikleyici olarak ortaya atarak bugünkü sanat yaklaşımlarının kendi deneyimleri üzerinden kendi söz dağarcıklarını bizzat geliştirip geliştiremeyeceğini araştırmayı hedefleyen projelerden ilki. Sergi galeriyi öncelikle bir sergi mekanı ve araştırma alanı olarak işaretleyecek. Farklı mekanlarda gerçekleştireceği etkinlik programıyla da bu araştırma alanını genişletecek.



Thursday, November 3, 2011

'Sanatsal Diyalog'da Ikinci Sayfa Acildi / 03.11.2011 Radikal Kultur Sanat

Almanya’da tutarlılıkla sürdürdüğü farklı söylem çizgisiyle kendine özel bir yer edinmiş Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, 2011 yılıyla birlikte sanatsal yönetimi için tercihini Türkiye’nin önemli genç kuşak küratörlerinden Adnan Yıldız’dan yana yaparak gündemimize girdi. Açılış sergisi ‘Echt?’te yer alan Ahmet Öğüt’ten sonra, ‘Sanatsal Diyalog’ serisinin ilk kısmında Şener Özmen ve Nevin Aladağ’a birlikte solo sergi alanı açan kurum, bugünlerde serinin ikinci kısmını bu yıl Rampa Galeri’de açtığı solo sergisiyle adından söz ettiren Nilbar Güreş ve İngiliz sanatçı David Blandy’yle gerçekleştiriyor.

 ‘Sanatsal Diyalog 2’de ise Nilbar Güreş’in ‘Self-Defloration’ı (Kendi Kızlığını Kendi Bozmak) ve David Blandy’nin ‘Child of Atom’u sanatçıların üretim anlayışlarını ve süreçlerini, yeni işlerini de ön plana çıkararak mekâna yerleşen sergiler olarak dikkat çekiyor. ‘Self-Defloration’, Güreş’in bugüne kadar Avrupa’daki en kapsamlı solo sergisi. Adı sanatçının üretiminde önemli bir dönüşüme işaret eden ‘Self Defloration’ işinden geliyor. Sergi, 2006’dan 2011’e sanatçının işleri üzerinden kendine ilişkin kurduğu toplumsal cinsiyet formatlarının nasıl farklı şekillerde kurulabileceğini araştıran çok katmanlı anlatıyı eksen alıyor. ‘Undressing’ (2006) ve ‘Bilinmeyen Sporlar, Eviçi Egzersizleri’ (2009) videolarına kamusallaştırıldığı için yıkılmak üzere olan bir mahallede kadınların farklı bir arada yaşama ütopyaları sahneledikleri ‘Çırçır’ serisi (2010) ve taze çizim kolajlar eşlik ediyor. Güreş’in önemli kişisel referansları ve temel malzemesi olan kumaşı kullandığı ilk işlerinin de yer aldığı sergi, hem çizim kolajlarda, fotoğraflarda ve videolarda farklı noktalarda karşımıza çıkan jestleri ve temaları daha süreçsel olarak yeniden görmemizi sağlıyor hem de malzemeyi ele alış biçiminin nasıl evrildiğine dikkat çekiyor.

Serginin sürprizi
Yerleştirmesine emek harcanmış bu serginin özellikle Nilbar Güreş hayranları için sürpriziyse ilk kez gösterilen ‘Kurt ve Kuzu’ (2011). Güreş, daha önceki işlerinde oyunculuğu bir jest olarak kurgularken bu kez daha derin bir içgüdüyü takip ederek oyunun kendisine yönelmiş. Gece vakti bir ormanda yüzüne kurt maskesi takmış bir erkek çocuk, kuzu maskesi takmış bir kız çocuğunu kovalayarak oynarken iki çocuk da bu arketip oyunu oynamaktan mesut kıkırdayarak hayvan seslerini tekrar ediyor. Bu oyun Güreş tarafından bir film setinin arkaplanındaymışız ya da bir rüyanın içindeymişiz gibi yeniden soyutlanarak hayal dünyamıza servis ediliyor.

Bu noktada Güreş’in kendi dünyasından gelen gözlem referanslarıyla şekillenen anlatı stratejileri, David Blandy’nin çizgi romanlardan Tarantino, Wenders ve Lynch referanslarına kendi büyüme hikâyesini yeniden anlatılaştırırken takip ettiği popüler imgelemden dönüşen izlekle ilginç bir karşılaşma da yaşıyor. Her iki sanatçı da bu karşılaşmadan kendi üretimleri için nasıl sorular üretecek? Kısa vadeli cevaplar vermeye acele etmemek gerek. Zira Künstlerhaus Stuttgart için ‘Sanatsal Diyalog’ gibi bir formatı ortaya atan Yıldız, bu karşılaşma alanlarını bizzat tasarlayarak pratiğine ilişkin daha uzun soluklu, sürece kıymet veren sorularla ilgilendiğini gösteriyor. Sergi, 13 Kasım’a kadar görülebilir.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

8115 numbered house in orlando soweto


cape town july 2011






truth or dare: the dangers of reducing everything to the text by vivian rehberg published at frieze august 11

image
James Frey, 1992
Throughout the late 20th century, the migration and consolidation of post-structuralist theory into cultural production dealt a decisive blow to notions of authenticity and universal truth, challenging the authoritative voices that upheld such ideals and the empirical realities they claimed to represent. This was a long time coming. In his 1873 essay ‘On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense’, Friedrich Nietzsche had already described truth as nothing more than ‘illusions which we have forgotten are illusions’. Truth, he asserted, is ‘a moveable host of metaphors, metonymies and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical and binding.’ In the late 20th century, aesthetic appropriations and historical recontextualizations, identity politics and institutional critique all worked to slacken those bonds, while responding to specific, historically grounded, cultural and political urgencies. Their initial impulses and frameworks were as diverse as their legacies, but one thing they arguably shared was a drive to chip steadily away at ‘regimes of truth’, defined by Michel Foucault as the mechanisms of power that produce, regulate and sustain discourse within a particular society.
This revelation of a multiplicity of truths (now considered relative) and the critique of their representations (now perceived as constructs) have inspired several generations of artists, thinkers and writers to question truth, but did not unfold without a backlash and a share of scandals. These occurred mainly outside of the art world, where the phrase ‘blurring of boundaries between fact and fiction’ gets my vote for the most hackneyed of the early 21st century. In 1996, the ‘Sokal hoax’ reverberated in the hallowed halls of academia when respected American professor Alan Sokal published his article ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity’ in the cultural studies journal Social Text, only to subsequently reveal that the entire thing was a fabrication. Sokal wrote his article in order demonstrate the absurd lengths to which one could take Postmodern critiques of scientific knowledge, and the dangers that lie therein. The hoax suggested that distinctions between true and false collapse when everything is reduced to a text or to discourse, and raised ethical issues around authorial and institutional integrity and credibility, Sokal claimed, in order to shift focus to the more important social and political questions surrounding scientific discoveries.
In the literary realm, a spate of faux-memoirs, including those written by Margaret B. Jones, James Frey and Herman Rosenblat about, respectively, their experiences as a foster child and gang member in South Los Angeles, an alcoholic and drug addict, and a Holocaust survivor, have more recently spurred controversy. Like Sokal, these authors presented their accounts as unembellished, though based on moving true-to-life experience rather than academic evidence, and they successfully duped their American publishers and the public of readers, at least for a time. Once their deceptions were exposed (Random House, which had previously refused Frey’s manuscript when it was submitted as fiction, offered readers a refund; the film adaptation of Rosenblat’s story was scrapped), the media that had been previously taken in by the drama of the lives depicted, without checking the facts, granted equal credence to the authors’ displays of contrition. It’s easy to adopt a moralistic or cynical attitude about the motivations behind a deception that so occupies an individual’s life, and the authors’ justifications for their lies can be difficult to take at face value. (Personally, I’m more fascinated by the amount of energy and time one would need to mobilize to maintain the façade.) These defences range from a benevolent desire to adopt the position of the witness and speak for others, in order to inspire hope, to that of the lie as an effect of trauma or addiction.
One of the outcomes of these scandals has been the market consecration of the literary genre of the semi-fictional memoir, or autobiographical fiction, both of which have always existed. Recognizing this makes it easier for everyone: questions of trust are suspended, verification is no longer necessary, publishers, marketers and critics risk less embarrassment if they are fooled. If truth is reduced to an autobiographical construction, how does one actually measure it? Does the author really even need to be the author? Should we evaluate this genre according to its creative merits, such as its capacity to render factual information vivid through the use of literary tropes and experiments with narrative? Does the veracity of a story matter more when a personal narrative is explicitly linked to historical events, such as the Holocaust, or war, or revolution, than when it concerns the life of one person, a family and friends?
While we can pretty much agree that it doesn’t matter whether Lady Gaga and Slavoj Žižek are best friends or not, we are somehow much more offended that the Syrian blogger ‘Gay Girl in Damascus’ turned out to be a married American man named Tom MacMaster. While the latter claims he was only trying to reveal what it would be like to be a lesbian in Syria (because he would know what that’s like, right?), the maintenance of his female character ‘Amina’ spun out of control when revolts began to surge earlier this year in Damascus. Confronted with real, live, geo-political conflict and the imperative to report the facts, MacMaster had to invent an exit strategy, which involved his alter-ego being abducted by the armed forces. His imposture quickly unravelled to the dismay of those who had followed and corresponded with a person they thought was Amina.
Common sense used to dictate that if you could not trust the source you could not trust the information. Have those tables turned? I wonder how our cultural predisposition to believe in these semi-fictions or wholesale inventions – let’s call them misrepresentations – might affect our capacity, for example, to believe in the factual trustworthiness of the politically sensitive documents leaked anonymously via WikiLeaks? In 2005, Stephen Colbert, the American comic who poses as a conservative broadcaster of a popular television programme called The Colbert Report (and as arch-rival of Jon Stewart, who presides over his own left-leaning spoof news programme, The Daily Show), produced a regular segment, ‘The Word’, which he devoted to the neologism ‘truthiness’. Colbert began by mocking dictionaries and encyclopaedias as ‘elitist’ and as ‘all fact and no heart’, but his main targets were US politicians whose double-speak and capacity for invention emblematizes the real divide between ‘those who think with their head and those who feel with their heart’.
Regimes of ‘truthiness’, which are invested in maintaining power via ignorance, seem to have fully encroached on ‘regimes of truth’. Perhaps the creative interest over the past decade in archival practices, documentary and realistic modes of representation, and the revitalization of historical narratives is a symptom of that. This state of affairs may inspire a crisis of belief that results in greater differentiation between fact and fiction, or not. In the aesthetic realm, self-reflexive explorations of identities, styles, genres, history and memory are absolutely authorized and encouraged, as is the shuttling play between subjective (feeling) and objective (thinking) points of view. So, when it comes to the renewal of critiques of misrepresentation, for the next 20 years I’ll be holding out for the artists to keep us vigilant.
Vivian Sky Rehberg
is a contributing editor of frieze based in Paris, France.

Monday, June 6, 2011

http://damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com blogger amina is missing

Amina

Dear friends of Amina,

I am Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari’s cousin and have the following information to share.

Earlier today, at approximately 6:00 pm Damascus time, Amina was walking in the area of the Abbasid bus station, near Fares al Khouri Street. She had gone to meet a person involved with the Local Coordinating Committee and was accompanied by a friend.

Amina told the friend that she would go ahead and they were separated.Amina had, apparently, identified the person she was to meet. However, while her companion was still close by, Amina was seized by three men in their early 20’s. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father.

One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad. The witness did not get the tag number. She promptly went and found Amina’s father.

The men are assumed to be members of one of the security services or the Baath Party militia. Amina’s present location is unknown and it is unclear if she is in a jail or being held elsewhere in Damascus.

I have just spoken with her father who is trying to locate her. He has asked me to share this information with her contacts in the hope that someone may know her whereabouts and so that she might be shortly released.

If she is now in custody, he is not worried about being in hiding and says he will do anything he can to free her. If anyone knows anything as to her whereabouts, please contact Abdallah al Omari at his home or please email me, Rania Ismail, at onepathtogod at gmail dot com.

We are hoping she is simply in jail and nothing worse has happened to her.Amina had previously sent me several texts to post should something happen to her and we will wait until we have definite word before doing so.

Salamat,

Rania O. Ismail

Monday, May 23, 2011

zümrüdü anka/ simurg/ phoenix

The ancient Greek historian Herodotus gave the following account of the phoenix in the fifth century BC while describing the animals of Egypt:

Another sacred bird is the one called the phoenix. Now, I have not actually seen a phoenix, except in a painting, because they are quite infrequent visitors to the country; in fact, I was told in Heliopolis that they appear only at 500-year intervals. They say that it is the death of a phoenix's father which prompts its visit to Egypt. Anyway, if the painting was reliable, I can tell you something about the phoenix's size and qualities, namely that its feathers are partly gold but mostly red, and that in appearance and size it is most like an eagle. There is a particular feat they say the phoenix performs; I do not believe it myself, but they say that the bird sets out from its homeland in Arabia on a journey to the sanctuary of the sun, bringing its father sealed in myrrh, and buries its father there.

The Roman poet Ovid wrote the following about the phoenix:

Most beings spring from other individuals; but there is a certain kind which reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phoenix. It does not live on fruit or flowers, but on frankincense and odoriferous gums. When it has lived five hundred years, it builds itself a nest in the branches of an oak, or on the top of a palm tree. In this it collects cinnamon, and spikenard, and myrrh, and of these materials builds a pile on which it deposits itself, and dying, breathes out its last breath amidst odors. From the body of the parent bird, a young Phoenix issues forth, destined to live as long a life as its predecessor. When this has grown up and gained sufficient strength, it lifts its nest from the tree (its own cradle and its parent's sepulchre), and carries it to the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, and deposits it in the temple of the Sun.

French author Voltaire thus described the phoenix:

It was of the size of an eagle, but its eyes were as mild and tender as those of the eagle are fierce and threatening. Its beak was the color of a rose, and seemed to resemble, in some measure, the beautiful mouth of Formosante. Its neck resembled all the colors of the rainbow, but more brilliant and lively. A thousand shades of gold glistened on its plumage. Its feet seemed a mixture of purple and silver; and the tail of those beautiful birds which were afterwards fixed to the car of Juno, did not come near the beauty of its tail.

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Rivayet olunur ki, kuşların hükümdarı olan Simurg ( Zümrüd-ü Anka ya da batıda bilinen adıyla Phoenix ),Bilgi Ağacı'nın dallarında yaşar ve her şeyi bilirmiş.Bu kuşun özelliği gözyaşlarının şifalı olması ve yanarak kül olmak suretiyle ölmesi, sonra kendi küllerinden yeniden dirilmesidir.....

Kuşlar Simurg'a inanır ve onun kendilerini kurtaracağını düşünürmüş. Kuşlar dünyasında her şey ters gittikçe onlar da Simurg'u bekler dururlarmış. Ne var ki, Simurg ortada görünmedikçe kuşkulanır olmuşlar ve sonunda umudu kesmişler.
Derken bir gün uzak bir ülkede bir kuş sürüsüSimurg'un kanadından bir tüy bulmuş. Simurg'un var olduğunu anlayan dünyadaki tüm kuşlar toplanmışlar ve hep birlikte Simurg'un huzuruna gidip yardım istemeye karar vermişler.

Ancak Simurg'un yuvası, etekleri bulutların üzerinde olan Kaf Dağı'nın tepesindeymiş. Oraya varmak için ise yedi dipsiz vadiyi aşmak gerekirmiş, hepsi birbirinden çetin yedi vadi... İstek, aşk, marifet, istisna, tevhid, hayret ve yokluk vadileri...

Kuşlar, hep birlikte göğe doğru uçmaya başlamışlar. İsteği ve sebatı az olanlar, dünyevi şeylere takılanlar yolda birer birer dökülmüşler. Yorulanlar ve düşenler olmuş...

"Aşk denizi"nden geçmişler önce...". "Ayrılık vadisi"nden uçmuşlar...". "Hırs ovası"nı aşıp, "kıskançlık gölü"ne sapmışlar... Kuşların kimi "Aşk denizi"ne dalmış, kimi "Ayrılık vadisi"nde kopmuş sürüden... Kimi hırslanıp düşmüş ovaya, kimi kıskanıp batmış göle...

Önce Bülbül geri dönmüş, güle olan aşkını hatırlayıp;
Papağan o güzelim tüylerini bahane etmiş (oysa tüyleri yüzünden kafese kapatılırmış);
Kartal, yükseklerdeki krallığını bırakamamış;
Baykuş yıkıntılarını özlemiş;
Balıkçıl kuşu bataklığını.

Yedi vadi üzerinden uçtukça sayıları gittikçe azalmış. Ve nihayet beş vadiden geçtikten sonra gelen Altıncı Vadi "şaşkınlık" ve sonuncusu Yedinci Vadi "yokoluş"ta bütün kuşlar umutlarını yitirmiş... Kaf Dağı'na vardıklarında geriye otuz kuş kalmış.

Sonunda sırrı, sözcükler çözmüş: Farsça "si", "otuz" demektir... murg" ise "kuş"...
Simurg'un yuvasını bulunca ögrenmişler ki; "Simurg - otuz kuş" demekmiş.Onların hepsi Simurg'muş. Her biri de Simurg'muş. 30 kuş, anlar ki, aradıkları sultan, kendileridir ve gerçek yolculuk, kendine yapılan yolculuktur.


towards unknown fields of imagination: nilbar güres for universes in universe




http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2011/nilbar_gures

TOWARDS UNKNOWN FIELDS OF IMAGINATION: Nilbar Güres
After many years, the Turkish contemporary art scene has been developing another strong woman artists generation, as evident from the exhibitions opened in young galleries during recent years showing more and more women artists. The issue of visibility is still relevant not only in Turkey but in many centers of international contemporary art scene. And this was again made clear in WHW curated 11th Istanbul Biennial where maybe for the first time such a large number of local women artists participated, among them Istanbul and Vienna based Nilbar Güres. Actually Istanbul's first serious encounter with her work was a group exhibition at Outlet Istanbul called 'Emergency Exit' in 2008. Following, her Unknown Sports (2009) series presentation in staged photographs and mixed media collages during the Biennial proved the local presentations she had before constituted only a small part of her big promise: The wise, humorous and taboo breaching way she translates what she has experienced and witnessed in her body as a woman and in her life around women into an oeuvre that has a strong base in the will to struggle and survive. Her individually queer tone of imagining and scripting alternative scenarios for the daily that makes open ended identifications possible. Her potential to expose and transform vulnerabilities experienced under the societal norms into nodes of strength.

Nilbar Güreş' first solo presentation in Turkey opened at Rampa Istanbul last April. The well designed and informative exhibition covers not only her recent production ÇırÇır (2010) commissioned and first shown by Berlin Biennial, the first time appearing TrabZONE (2010) and the freshly finished collage Yüz (2011) but also two earlier and fundamental works she produced in 2006; Undressing performance video and Self-Defloration collage.The invitation card; a camp wedding invitation selected by the artist which displays two androgynous figures as bride and groom inside a pink glittery heart can obviously be counted as part of the exhibition. It is an exemplary gesture of the gallery to support Nilbar Güres' flourishing production with a solo exhibition at this point. On the whole this solo statement is a great opportunity to see where the artist's strongly sensitive practice towards pressure and violence inserted by patriarchal, authoritarian and heteronormative societal codes to subordinate what is different has arrived from and is going towards. Güres' main issues always interconnect among each other taking different forms of performance, photography, drawing, collage and video. Each character appearing as part of her open ended narratives acts as herself. Each series works with a strong desire to deterritorialize and re-code the spaces and locations they took place, the artist believes in unexpected performances of the body may alter its surroundings.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

some lyrics for kay walkowiak's work - refer back to the wigs @ sweet anticipation



Class Acts

Class acts in sleek spaces
Follow your inner savage detectives, baby
Stay truthful to your heart of darkness
For the thrill of it all

Class acts in undiscovered rooms
They want to enjoy where they are, girl
Don’t you take it too serious
I never meant to turn you on

Class acts in liminal zones
There lies the curator’s egg, darlin
Try to remember the future
And make it worth while you can

Class acts and copycats
We are in a Dada state of grâce, babe
Shall we seek where all the good tunes have gone?
Maybe it is them who set us free.





Paused

Now the show is over
And I am tired
Then I see you coming
Meaning  complete with motion
You whisper in my ear
Long forgotten childhood fantasies
Where the world is once clear, once obscure yet expandable
What are we doing under this table
And you hush me

(Refrain)
Ooooo
Here is something in your palm
Ooooo
There it is gone where did you hide it ?
Daaaaa
You wanna keep me there
Daaaaa
Here it appears, must be magic

I open my eyes in a different place
In the cherished darkness of an unknown language
He found us hiding
Then we start running
Disappearing into the flood of people in the market
You suddenly shouted « stop » to that black taxi
I don’t know where we are going
And you hush me

(Refrain)
Ooooo
Here is something in your palm
Ooooo
There it is gone where did you hide it ?
Daaaaa
You wanna keep me there
Daaaaa
Here it appears, must be magic







May the Circle Remain Unbroken

Change your heart
Look around you
Who do you wanna be now ?
Where do you wanna go ?
Until when the spirits of dead philosophers will guide you ?
It’s the easiest to accept the authority of tradition
Challenge yourself
Take the challenge

Dig down baby dig down dig down
To the roots
To see of our lived experience of this world

Hold it, yeah, keep it do not let it fall
There it is, how it feels, just above my head
Can someone please teach me how to remember my dreams?
Let us imagine in the dark and of its spaces
Tickle me humour me make me dream
It’s the easiest to accept the authority of tradition
Challenge yourself
Take the challenge

Dig down baby dig down
To the roots of experience
To feel how deep is the sphere of imagination

new text for susanne kriemann's book 'reading'


http://www.sternberg-press.com/index.php?pageId=1315&l=en&bookId=210&sort=year&PHPSESSID=cecdf51182c42cdac79f39943e809d5a
Hans Dickel and Lisa Puyplat (Eds.)Reading Susanne Kriemann

Texts by Hans Dickel, Övül Durmuşoğlu, Matts Leiderstam & Susanne Kriemann, Vanessa Joan Müller, Lisa Puyplat, Dieter Roelstraete, Monika Szewczyk, Mirjam Varadinis, Axel John Wieder

The essence of Susanne Kriemann’s intermedial and intertextual work is expressed in her photographic installations and corresponding artist books whose formats reflect their particular contents that revolve around historically definable objects. Kriemann’s exhibitions in particular reveal the process-oriented nature of her works, where the elements are constantly rearranged and undergo conceptual transformation. Throughout this process the book takes on a decisive role in her work, with its structure, its history, its contents and its form.

The book is comprised of texts on Susanne Kriemann’s practice and its relation to the concept of Reading in a wider sense: reading photographs, archives, and texts and transforming these into new compositions with photography, urban space, and historiography. Nine authors have approached intertextuality’s various manifestations and meanings and in doing so, confront the notion of reading (of text, image, object, context). The authors trace the permeation of the intermedial in Susanne Kriemann’s work in various ways. Quotes from writers, scientists and journalists dispersed throughout the book touch on themes present in the Susanne Kriemann’s work, both deepening as well as linking it to the current discourse of art in general.

Design by NODE Berlin Oslo


April 2011, English/German
12.5 x 20.5 cm, 216 pages, hardcover
ISBN 978-1-934105-49-8
$24.95 | €19.00


History --in the making


“…the archive […] determines that all these things said do not accumulate endlessly in an amorphous mass, nor are they inscribed in an unbroken linearity, nor do they disappear at the mercy of chance external accidents; but they are grouped together in distinct figures, composed together in accordance with multiple relations, maintained or blurred in accordance with specific regularities.”
- Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 1972, London: Tavistock, and New York: Pantheon, 128.

History is hysterical: it is constituted only if we consider it, only if we look at it – and in order to look at it, we must be excluded from it.”
- Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, 1981, New York: Hill and Wang, 65.

Nothing Is.” - Sun Ra

I.

We were able to experience cinematic spectacle in the cinemas that hadn’t yet been tucked inside shopping malls. I remember taking in the catchy iconography of the science fiction comedy Back to the Future (1985) starring Michael J. Fox in a popular cinema in Ankara where I grew up. A crazy professor named Doc Brown transforms a DeLorean DMC-12 into a time machine. The main protagonist Marty McFly finds himself instantaneously transported from 1985 to 1955 shortly after being introduced to the time machine by his friend. Marty spends his time in 1955 to better his family history – ultimately, in order to better his present. No wonder it was a favorite of the US president at the time, Ronald Reagan: the film’s message is typical of 1980s Hollywood, espousing a good, happy American family and the preservation of social values based on that good family.

Back then, following the adventures of Marty McFly and Doc Brown (the box office success was expanded into a trilogy), I was mesmerized by the film’s exciting drama of intervention in the flux of time and its notion of changing the course of things. In the first film, Doc Brown mentions the existence of parallel universes. With the archive of images and newspaper clippings at his laboratory, he shows how Marty is disappearing since he involuntarily intervened in his parents’ meeting each other. Marty must take action to secure his own existence in the present. As the film evolves, we see photographic material changing in a state of appearances and disappearances according to the results of the actions committed by the protagonists.

Viewing these films today, one might begin to question such neo-liberal efforts to maintain the time continuum and the keen interest in preserving a society with its lineage of certain morals in the past, present and future, back and forth. But let us read between the lines. How do we fit reality into a constructed projection of the future? Back to the Future is about a history in the making, a future being performed. The film suggests that we question our attachment to archives: accumulating, cataloguing, representing the traces, the past. Doesn’t this remind us of a similar phenomenon from the censorship mechanisms of Stalinist times; how a figure might suddenly disappear from a photographic document according to the decisions of high ranking officials, thanks to a simple action of montage?

II.
I came across a remarkable cross-referential text by Peter Friedl, in which he examines the essential relationship between the documentary image and what is called history.1 To do this, he compares the image material of the “Twitter Revolution” against the Iranian presidential elections in 2009 with that against the Paris Commune in 1871. Questioning photography’s role as the eye of history from an insightful and humorous perspective, Friedl demonstrates how the creation and dissemination of a certain image creates its own agenda and performs the moment creating a history, rather than the history it is supposed to document and stand for.

As we might recall, the world started hearing about the protests against the Iranian elections after the dissemination of Neda Agha-Soltani’s filmed death through e-mails, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Friedl directs our attention to the moment when a hysterical mass media found a photo of a woman with a similar name, Neda Soltani, on Facebook (probably thanks to the Google search engine) and how it was impossible to stop the found image of a still-living person from being used as the symbol of martyrdom in the name of democracy – even after the authentic photographs were provided. Fragments used over and over again without external validation demonstrate the uncontrollable desire for image consumption to prove reality. The performed agenda becomes another sort of aura in the contemporary sense that is shaped by the filters of dissemination – not how it is said but how it is heard. Again, it is a history in the making that images perform.

“Photography’s melancholy is based on the fact that it shows something that once was and has meanwhile elapsed. By the power of its existence, it confirms that what one sees was actually there; to this extent, it is the epitome of standstill and enchantment,” writes Friedl and asks, “What else is capable of stopping time?”2 Friedl shatters assumptions surrounding documentation, subjectivity and reality when he reflects upon the existing image documentation of the Commune in 1871, such as the fact that the Commune did not have its own photographers per se, or that photographers like Eugène Appert profited from the photo montages he compiled to discredit the Commune. Similar moves and mentalities worked in terms of documenting a scene, spreading the information, creating the agenda and gripping the masses. The issue of what kind of images were decided to be produced, by whom and under what circumstances turn out to be the equivalents of our present condition consumed by a hysteria of fragments.

III.
In his book Militant Modernism (2009), prolific writer Owen Hatherley takes the 1960s architectural vernacular of his hometown Southampton as a starting point and in the course of four interconnected chapters on brutalism in Britain, Soviet cinema theory and Bertolt Brecht, challenges our well-known rants about Modernism as being alienated, unsexed and totalitarian and points us instead towards a reading of Modernism as a counter-culture and important aspect of Leftist thought. In his chapter on the Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt [English: alienation effect], he notes its origin in the theater’s need to debate with cinema and radio with their ability to reach greater audience; that it is “nothing but a retranslation of the methods of montage – so crucial in radio and film – from a technological process to a human one. It is enough to point out that the principle of Epic Theatre, like that of montage, is based on interruption.”3

This comment on the alienation effect took me back to theories of montage: alienation and engagement processed through editing. It was Sergei Eisenstein who posited that montage was the essence of cinema, re-positioning it as a symbolically loaded action of engagement. He proposed a new editing form, the "montage of attractions" – in which arbitrarily chosen images, independent from the action, would be presented not in chronological sequence but in whatever way would create the maximum psychological impact. For Eisenstein, editing involved the audience more than the passive reception of information from static and lengthy shots and could drive the audience into a frenzy through the dynamism of the rhythm of images.

“DON’T STARE SO ROMANTICALLY” challenged an early play of Bertolt Brecht, demanding critical engagement of its audience. The power of montage comes from the superimposed element that disrupts the context into which it is inserted. Taken a step further, montage can be read as a gesture that engages through performing the context. In Susanne Kriemann’s publications, montage resurfaces as an artistic method, presenting archived materials and allowing an open end to the relationship between historical objects and their various interpretations. One such “open” example is her artist book 12 650 000, in which her combination of archival images with her own photographs allows for a critical view of the object and sets the rhythm of its narration. The book, which was printed in a limited edition of 100 + 10, opens with historical photographs documenting the construction of the 12,650,000 kilogram-heavy Schwerbelastungskörpers [English: heavy load body] in Berlin-Tempelhof, which was built to test the resilience of the ground for the gargantuan “Germania” project that Adolf Hitler and Albert Speer planned for the capital city, and which stands intact to this day. Kriemann cinematographically repeats one archival image showing the completed object 380 times on each page. At the end of the book, one of her own photographs depicts the object obscured by scaffolding during its renovation in 2007.

Such gestures clearly fracture linearity, questioning the multiple relationships that arise from the images grouped together. They motivate readers to think in terms of fragments, pushing them to imagine possible re-connections between those fragments. Their rhythm of appearance, as well, should not be ignored, but rather intrigue the reader further. Do such gestures fill in the gaps intentionally left open by the archiving state of mind? Or do they create an exclusive layer of a narrative “in-the-making” that proposes another sort of relation altogether with time and its documents? In both cases, an encounter with 12 650 000 invites the curious to participate and perform the references and fragments proposed by the artist. No thing is complete.



Övül Durmuşoğlu

1 Peter Friedl, “History in the Making,” e-flux journal #18, September 2010.
2 ibid.
3 Owen Hatherley, Militant Modernism, London: Zero Books, 2008, 101.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

closing talk of bettina lockemann's undocumented at loris berlin












Bettina Lockemann:
undocumented
Opening: Friday, 18 February 2011, 7 p.m.Exhibition: 19 February - 19 March 2011Artist Talk with curator Övül Durmuşoğlu (Istanbul/Berlin):
Thursday, 17 March 2011, 7 p.m. (in English)
Opening Hours: Wed - Fri 2 p.m. - 7 p.m. | Sat 12 p.m. - 5 p.m.


We are very pleased to invite you to Bettina Lockemann’s third solo exhibition at the Loris Gallery.

Undocumented migrants – frequently labelled »illegals« – are an invisible element of German society. Although they clean our flats, take care of our ailing parents or grandparents and have become in many respects indispensable, they have neither residence permits nor work permits; for this reason they make every effort to remain hidden and live unnoticed.

In her new work, Bettina Lockemann deals with these forms of living. It focuses on people’s daily instability and their struggle to remain invisible and take nothing for granted. In the course of this daily routine, crossing the street when the traffic light is red can pose a threat. On the other hand, waiting patiently in a deserted street for the light to go green is likewise suspicious.

Bettina Lockemann explores the rules and paths of this invisibility. Centre stage is the relationship between »illegals« and the city. The danger of being discovered lurks everywhere. The image of the urban environment is altered. Constantly scanned for signals and risks, it loses its sense of being home – which it is to many »legals«. But the city also provides an element of security. Undocumented migrants are not immediately obvious among the many other foreigners. It is here that »illegals« hope most to find support, this is where they can make use of networks.

Cologne is the object of Bettina Lockemann’s investigation. Immigrants are invisible here; the city becomes a homeless place in Lockemann’s images. The area around the main railway station, for example: the international bus terminal constitutes a point of arrival for migrants. At the same time the station itself is a danger zone, since ad hoc police checks are common occurrences, making it necessary to avoid the area whenever possible; the mere presence of security personnel produces flight reflexes.

This aspect likewise represents a loss for city and society: the photographed places remain unspecific, unstable. The current exhibition at the Loris Gallery documents an intermediate stage of »work in progress«.


Loris GbR
Gallery for Contemporary Art
Gartenstr. 114
D 10115 Berlin
Germany

phone +49 30 27 59 55 79mail@lorisberlin.de
Opening Hours:
Wed-Fri 2 p.m. - 7 p.m. | Sat 12 p.m. - 5 p.m. and by appointment

Nathan Peter "Before Old Glory" // 12.03.-16.04.2011 @ soy capitan

accompanied by untitled (after paul auster)

1.
It is 10:45, legible over the 11th platform of the train station. Waiting under the time table, a person looks closely at the photo in his hands. He looks with pure attention, focused on one point. He looks in the eyes of the person in the photo. How can he know the only thing that doesn’t change on a human face are the eyes. He looks awkward and embarrassed, like the trainers who work with magnificent animals, finding th
emselves at a moment of reckoning summed up in those deep and difficult eyes. Will he recognize who he’s waiting for after all these years by looking into his eyes? Maybe he has never met him before. A moment of getting together. It may also be the beginning of a detective’s interrogation.

He looks at the photo desperately; those deep and difficult eyes have been frozen for all time. There is an unyielding mystery, a long-forgotten clue from the past that belongs to the person arriving on this train.

2.
Although he is not aware of my presence, I got into the habit of taking a picture of this street at exactly 10:45 everyday. This one is fresh from my minilab. That trash bin has become the guardian of that corner. Here it is in this photograph as well; not surprising me anymore. I feel the gaze of a pair of eyes under its lid. It caught my attention one week ago; he always closes the lid on the same side so that some fresh air may get in. He tries to hide away in vain. There must be a human hand placing the lid compulsively the same way everyday. He must be following something very important since he has been there all this time, patiently. Now that he is there, I also started to look at the exact part of the building that must be visible from that measured gap. My gut feeling says this cannot be solely coincidence.

3.
There, a woman sits across her; I can read her face on the other. She may be crying at this moment. But why?

Obviously she will leave the table very soon. Without a further word or goodbye.

Good guess. Her eyes are moist; discernible in the second photo. Here the other one is standing now. She stares indifferently, looking a bit arrogant and mysterious.

Returning back to New York streets may heal her. The bistro she was working at was just a breathing moment. She will let the city take her over in spite of everything. Tired of the fight. She looks a bit lost yet transformed.

Here is another pic. She turns towards the backside of the street. New York was always stalking her.

The last pic. She is not there anymore.

4.
Taking a picture of time; don’t ask where I got the idea from. You don’t need to be master of the universe to picture time. Just spare five minutes of your day and reclaim that point you have always known; and shoot. Everyday. You will be surprised to see how time takes up its space in the frame.

It’s been 4 years since I started this business. For you I chose 30th November. 10:45.

Crossroads. Brickstone buildings. Small shops; here a second hand record store, there a bakery, the rest is desolate for the moment. I am Serge by the way, I have a 24/7 cornershop at my back.

It is 10:45. An elderly woman leaves the building with the second hand shop, holding a bag, lost in thoughts.

Across, a young woman passing the street is lost in the song she is listening to on her headphones. They don’t acknowledge each other.

One year gone, the elderly woman always passing at the same time is not there anymore. The record store is still there, but a newspaper kiosk appears. The same young woman shops at the kiosk. Winter seems to have arrived earlier, the trees lining the street readied for the approaching cold.

It is 10:45 again. The store opening at 10:00 is still closed. A teenager is trying to squirm into the store. Who knows which precious record he is after before anybody else today. It is still autumn. Some dudes are collecting leaves. The same young woman crosses the same street rolling a big trolley. People may not recognize her in their daily indifference but I see how her eyes shine from the point I am standing.

In fact, we are no more moved by a past we are busy inventing, than by a present we are busy denying.

OD

sweet anticipation @ salzburger kunstverein exhibition official documentation




documentation by andrew phelps




uzun zaman sonra/ so we are back