A blog for selected texts of Basak Senova in various books, catalogues, and magazines. Some of the texts posted are copyright, and their holders are indicated.


30 March 2010

WHEN POETRY AND JUSTICE ARE PROCESSED AS SUBJECTS OF AN EXPERIMENT

published in Camera Austria, International. No.84, p.113-114
ISBN 3-900508-48-8
ISSN 1015-1915
(both in English and Turkish)
© Camera Austria, International, 2003



Now it seems as if there is no time and opportunity to digest whatever is being experienced and witnessed. We still need evidence and real life experiences to see, to grasp, to digest, to avoid and to fight against what is “really” going on, and for sure, we need to understand for whom it really means “real”. By scanning the last decade via the large-scale exhibitions and art activities in Europe –such as Documenta X and 11, Venice Biennials, and massive Balkan Shows-, it is possible to detect the lack and excess of the understanding of these realities. Not only the actors and the end-products, but also the whole circulation of the discourses around these large-scale shows bring us to a point where art operates as a sceptical mode of message conveyer for socio-political facts shaped by the neo-liberal economy. Yet, the crucial question for the contemporary art and its actors is what is being sacrificed while questioning global socio-political problems by deeming in geographical disparities, facing different realities and being parts of giant infrastructures. At this very moment of this question, with the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, Dan Cameron has come up with rather romantic, thoroughly poetic, yet armed proposals, which have been already inhabited in some of the significant approaches and practices of contemporary art. Most of the works of the biennial are processing global issues through individually driven means of rhetoric. This time the works are not necessarily ugly; although they operate on a functionally determined poetic plane, they are totally enriched by the aesthetics of this realm.

Under the beauty of this poetic texture, the biennial also appears as an experiment that tests modes of presenting art works and media in various spatial and social situations. The former customs warehouse at the port, Antrepo 4 provides a solely massive space for the Biennial. While the top floor enables diverse dialogues and interactions among works, the ground floor operates as a proposal for presenting “video works” with architectural interventions. The dim white void of the space challenges the audience to search for art-works in gigantic cylindrical forms. These two floors are connected both physically and metaphorically by a strapping “sculpture” installation of Monica Bonvicini.

The second venue is the historical buildings of Tophane-i Amire Cultural Center; with the relics and the sovereign memories of manufacturing cannon and barracks , the space gives a frictional dimension to the works. On the other hand, another venue Yerebatan Cistern (Sunken Palace Cistern) used to provide water to the Byzantine Palace. The humid, huge shining columns, the spell of rain water, slippery ground of stones, the greenish shallow water dwell the audience in a dark and wet zone of dreaminess and without a doubt, works such as of Fionna Tan duplicates this sedactive effect. Haghia Sophia Museum; The Church of Divine Wisdom is the most difficult and dominant historical venue which gives only a little room for the works it hosts. Yet the works such as Tony Feher’s fuses into the layers of this magnificent building. Garanti Platform: Contemporary Art Centre introduces the works of Shahzia Sikander which confronts the inhabitants of the city with a nonconforming yet mysterious visual language. The city is also mutually tested by the works produced for public space such as Minerva Cuevas, Bruna Esposito, Lucia Koch, Rogello Lopez Cuenca, Cildo Meireless, Oda Project, Doris Salcedo and Mike Nelson. To find the way for Mike Nelson’s setting at Büyük Valide Han is an adventure by itself. The hectic streets with cut-and-paste decors, crowded corners and overlapped historic references take you to the work, which is intertwined between the space and a spell-like poem.

Last but not least, there is another segment of this experiment with a significant work called “Container”, (2003) based on the interactive sound field that is dormant with the reverberation of the Hagia Sophia Museum. This work by Emre Erkal and Cevdet Erek begins with precise calculations and measurements in the Museum, and then the sound field of a container placed along the Bosphorus beside Antrepo 4 takes over and initiates a chain reaction.

The 8th International Biennial once again works as a mode of knowledge. This time it transmits tactile interactions, modest proposals and intently promising objectives for the global contemporary art scene. Parallel to this remark, Dan Cameron states that “one of the most important objectives of the 8th Istanbul Biennial is to create a lively and engaging public forum for responding to the ideas of artists whose work embodies a form of commitment to the goal of making art a vehicle for reconciling these two facets of life” which are poetry and justice.