Art after Crisis

Art After Crisis is a website by traveling writer Chris Keulemans. Ever since his first visit to wartime Sarajevo, he has been fascinated by the way artists reinvent their work, their city and their life after a period of war or dictatorship.
The next year, Keulemans will continue his trips through these cities. Sarajevo, Sofia, Algiers, Beirut, Prishtina, Tirana, Jakarta, Kabul, Buenos Aires, New York, Baghdad...
Along the way, all the material he collects will be on the site. Travel stories, audio interviews, video shots, the photographs of his girlfriend and co-traveler Riette Mellink. And of course, the new art of all these cities itself.
Each city tells its own story through the artists who live there. But it seems that art also follows universal patterns when reinventing the place it comes from: from the original euphoria through the emotional backlash to the emergence of truly new places and ideas. Check out the Beirut Metro Map, the Tirana pyramid, the erotic imagination of Jakarta, the Anne Frank of Sarajevo and all the others...

"The Puppet" by Ibrahim Al-Koni,

Ibrahim Al-Koni, scion of a Libyan Tuareg family, is regarded as the great writer of the Sahara. In his new novel "The Puppet" Al-Koni perceptively depicts the way in which the modern world intrudes into the Tuaregs' traditional society.
A fundamental examination of the phenomenon of emergent capitalism: Al-Koni's Die Puppe ("The Puppet", not yet available in English translation)
A presentation of the novel by Kersten Knipp

Albert Memmi

With his "Portrait of the Colonised" Tunisian-French sociologist and writer Albert Memmi laid forth a seminal work of decolonialism in the 1950s. This work was followed recently by "Portrait of the Decolonised", in which he draws a very sobering balance.

more on http://qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-478/_nr-811/i.html

English bibliography

The colonizer and the colonized. Introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre; afterword by Susan Gilson Miller; [translated by Howard Greenfeld]. Expanded ed. Boston: Beacon Press, c1991. ISBN 0807003018

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kTZDi7ZWoxoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:Albert+inauthor:Memmi&hl=el&sig=ACfU3U2SaeaNxIFOy3SucMfJ2Nx_X9DhKw#PPA15,M1

Decolonization and the decolonized. Translated by Robert Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, c2006. ISBN 0816647348

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6HxjavtQmq4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:Albert+inauthor:Memmi&hl=el&sig=ACfU3U0Hzj1iKbI2kosda0uQ6cSYr0WE1g#PPP7,M1
Dependence : a sketch for a portrait of the dependent. Translated by Philip A. Facey. Boston: Beacon Press, c1984. ISBN 0807043001

Dominated man; notes towards a portrait. New York: Orion Press [1968].
Jews and Arabs. Translated from the French by Eleanor Levieux. Chicago: J. P. O’Hara, c1975. ISBN 0879553278 ISBN 0879553286

The liberation of the Jew. Translated from the French by Judy Hyun. New York: Orion Press [1966].

The pillar of salt. Translated by Edouard Roditi. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. ISBN 0807083275
The pillar of salt. Chicago: J. P. O’Hara, [1975] c1955. ISBN 0879559071

Portrait of a Jew. Translated from the French by Elisabeth Abbott. New York: Orion Press [1962]

Racism. Translated and with an introd. by Steve Martinot. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, c2000. ISBN 0816631646

The scorpion, or, The imaginary confession. Translated from the French by Eleanor Levieux. New York: Grossman, 1971. 0670622710

Strangers. Translated from the French by Brian Rhys. New York: Orion Press [1960]

Rainbow Platform - An initiative under the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008

Your Europe - contribute to the diversity consultation.
From now until 16 May you can rewrite how Europe should tackle cultural diversity. Help shape the future by going online and responding to a paper produced by the 'Rainbow Platform' - Civil Society Platform for Intercultural Dialogue, an initiative of the ECF and Culture Action Europe (EFAH) - facilitated by LabforCulture.
You can comment on the recommendations in the paper and even add your own submissions! Just log on to the site http://rainbowplatform.labforculture.org> quickly register, read Rainbow Paper II and contribute your comments/changes. This paper brings many issues of intercultural dialogue to the fore. Should there be a system of monitoring and reporting on the practice of intercultural dialogue, and if so, who should do this? Is it right that the EU should 'mainstream' diversity policies in its various programmes? Can there be an agreed 'European standard' for supporting culture?
The set of recommendations is very much a work-in-progress. Your constructive feedback is absolutely vital. The results will be discussed at a plenary meeting of the Rainbow Platform in Brussels on June 4th 2008 - the same date on which the Platform becomes an officially recognised discussion partner with the EU institutions.

Since October 2006 the Rainbow Platform (Civil Society Platform for Intercultural Dialogue) has brought together over 200 organisations from many sectors to share intercultural dialogue practices and discuss links to policy. The results were made public in January 2008 ( Rainbow Paper I ) and have been built upon since: Rainbow Paper II is now ready for on-line consultation.

The Platform was initiated by EFAH and ECF and is supported by a grouping of European foundations: an attempt to strike links between the thinking on cultural diversity in the arts and culture with that of organisations in the fields of life-long-learning, youth, social affairs, anti-racism, minority rights and inter-religious dialogue. The Platform engages with the political process under the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008 and beyond.

For details go to
ECF:Advocacy Actions
EFAH:Civil Society Platform for Intercultural Dialogue

Encounters with Civilization: From Alexander the Great to Mother Teresa By GEZIM ALPION

BOOK REVIEW
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=30&id=228850&usrsess=1
Spotlight: Strangers with human faces?

The reader has a vast repertoire of narrative styles to engage with... A review by Bonita Aleaz

Encounters with Civilization: From Alexander the Great to Mother Teresa (A collection of essays on Albania, Egypt, the United Kingdom and India written between 1993 and 2006)

By GEZIM ALPION
EDITED BY GASTON ROBERGE
Meteor Books in association with St. Xavier's College, 2008
Price: $19.95

The last paragraph of the foreword by Gaston Roberge perhaps foregrounds and becomes the running theme of the book under review. Gezim Alpion is a foreigner 'encountering' diverse life styles, ideologies and processes. He is positioned in Britain but typifies the deep-seated pathos of the foreigner, experienced universally down the ages. He remains the perpetual onlooker, desirous of inclusion, but is subject to 'social closure'. However, the work does not end on a pessimistic note, rather it foregrounds the essentiality of definitive faith in the human person, and it is this that ultimately underlines continuity of civilizations. Encounters with Civilizations from Alexander the Great to Mother Teresa spans centuries and cultures, but despite the apparent impossibility of encapsulating within a slim volume the extreme diversity of cultures chronologically quite distinct from each other, there is a running theme that provides the link. It is a work on Albanians as the 'other' in different locales encountering different cultures, and Gezim is the distant Albanian onlooker recounting the varieties of 'social closure' encountered /negotiated or even pulverized by his compatriots in different time periods. The locales visited are Albania, Egypt, Britain, and India and the styles of narration adopted are equally varied. They range from the dialogue style of drama, imaginary conversations with a ghost, to the mournful cry narrated by a native on seeing his land being vilified in the name of progress. The reader has a vast repertoire of narrative styles to engage with. Two important behavioural traits appear throughout the book and the author has taken considerable pains to weave the manifestations of these traits in each of the locales presented in the book. These are 'foreigner complex' and 'social closure'. The saga of Muhammad Ali is not very well known. Generally referred to as the founder of modern Egypt, Ali was an Albanian and had been registered with the Sultan of Turkey's army. He was deputed to Egypt, then under the Turkish Sultanate to restore the authority of the Porte to a chaotic Egypt. The country had been reeling under waves of alien rule since centuries, the Polemic Pharaohs who originated from Greece, the subsequent Roman suzerainty; the Mamluk overlordship; the Ottoman, the French and finally British rule. So there were ample historical records to almost institutionalize Egypt's 'foreigner complex'. It was Mohammed Ali who set in motion the reverse process, initiating the military, economic and cultural rebirth of the country. The Albanian veneration for cultural antiquity was used to re-impose the concept of worth for one's own culture and national pride. Foreigner complex is actually a double-edged behavioural trait. It may develop both within the foreign ruler towards the subject 'other', or among the subjects towards the alien ruler. Ruth Phillips Martinez believes that an average human being's inner reaction to 'foreigners' is the same as that of canines, both bare their teeth at each other. This is primitive instinct borne of distrust and animosity. Foreigners in different lands to a large extent carry their "national" gods with them. To what extent blind adherence of the same is resorted to by the foreign ruler or to what extent such influences are sought to be curbed, depends on the motivation of the ruler. On the other hand, the perception of inferiority, in lifestyles and speech may inbreed rebelliousness among the subject people, which eventually can have different outlets, revivals of ancient cultural traits being one form. The north-eastern tribal communities of India effected a backlash against monolithic christianizing processes and near total denigration of their past. There has been a tremendous surge towards rewriting their history through indigenous lenses today; this is coupled with even state sponsored 'revivals' of ritualistic cultural practices. The Kosovars of Albania on the other hand are unfortunate indeed in not having experienced the largesse of a ruler such as Muhammad Ali. They remain under foreign occupation denuded totally of any hopes for total autonomy or even of peace. The treatment meted to Albania by the European occupation is in keeping with, as Gezim explains in a different section altogether, the imagery of the 'backward' and 'strangest' state in Europe, in the British media. Racial prejudice towards the Balkans is not new but goes back to the period of Octavius Caesar, who crowned himself King of Egypt in 32 BC, since then the West has relentlessly pursued the looting and plundering of 'inferior' cultures and civilizations. In order to retain its political and subsequent economic dominance over the eastern parts of Europe, the continuous maligning of the 'infidel' became a routine exercise. Gezim notes with some emotion, the maligning enters fiction, particularly children's fiction. JK Rowling the creator of the famous Harry Potter series, in at least three of her novels posits Albania as the hapless area, housing the evil 'darklord' Voldemort; Agatha Christie, and Herge, the creator of the Tintin series have equally typified the Balkans as harbouring evil, mystery, ignorance, set apart from the civilized sophistication achieved by the West. There have also been instances where the Balkans have appeared in writings of authors who have never visited the area, setting the trend for what is referred to by K.E.Fleming as "fictional Balkan woods". A content analysis of British newspapers published between 2001 and 2006 shows a spate of articles showing Albania's skewed presence, all of them at a time when " Albania had experienced political stability, law and order… (was) maintained across the country, and many Albanians (had) seen an increase in their savings and a significant improvement in their living standards."(p109) The implication here is that there is a deliberateness manifested in, and through the media to retain the imagery of Eastern Europe's confused chaotic state vis-a-vis the progress and sophistication of Western Europe. Social closure is the other significant issue dealt with, in the book. Even though British Home Office statistics reveal that asylum seekers constitute 2-3 per cent of the population, recent polls have shown a vastly inflated figure: such people constitute 23 per cent of the country's population. It can be argued according to the author that the tabloid press is largely responsible for the reported and unreported racial tensions in recent years. The almost paranoid reaction to such reporting can well be imagined, since the tabloid readers often read " anything else". A report in The Guardian perhaps best sums up the extent of 'social closure ' in vogue in Britain against immigrant skilled/ unskilled labour: "More than half of university staff is employed on short-term contracts. Those requiring work permits have no right to stay in the country once the contract expires…It is hard to imagine a more effective way of keeping your workforce passive and afraid". (The Guardian, 23/7/2003). Gezim does not disclose personal experiences of immigrant university professors, perhaps it is an extremely delicate issue. However, his slim volume contains a remarkable play that he authored. If only the dead could listen has been staged across Europe to packed audiences. This perhaps brings out most significantly the piteous state of the outsider, when confronting another similarly positioned on foreign soil. The Indian component in the book has portions on Mother Teresa, the Albanian in Indian soil. Most of it refers to passages from his earlier work Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? with some additional information provided by the editor. The book has important messages for those wishing to seek their futures on foreign soil, though Indians' wishing to relocate in their pursuit of the elusive 'better futures' do not officially categorize as asylum seekers, yet, they become equally subject to behavioural traits such as foreigner complex and social closure in the areas supposed to furbish such futures. (The reviewer teaches in the Department of Political Science, Calcutta University)

POST FUNDING EASTERN EUROPE CENTER FOR CONTEXT AND COMMUNICATION

http://www.ccc-k.net/
The Center for Communication and Context Kyiv (CCCK) and its investigation Post Funding Eastern Europe emerged in response to the Center for Contemporary Art Kyiv and its exemplary economic and political position. Since August 2006 CCCK has in publications, discussions, exhibitions and articles aimed to encourage to debate the values and roles possibly assigned to contemporary art in relation to the ideological background of its financial stake-holders in Ukraine.
In its prospective extension CCCK aims to instigate a further re-reading of East European and Central Asian Soros Centers for Contemporary Art (SCCAs), which were established through Soros funding during the 1990s and had to re-position themselves since the final cease of Soros funding for the Art Centers during the 2000s.
With the emergence of Soros Art Centers in the 1990s local art-scenes experienced a sudden increase of resources, enabling the freshly founded Centers to give out grants, realize productions, to foster local art-scenes and to organize large-scale exhibitions. Whereas Soros Centers proved added values in relatively stable and developed cultural scenes of countries as Slovenia or Poland, especially in countries at the outskirts of the Soros program such as Ukraine, Belarus, Kazachstan or Russia the final cease of funding forced those centers to close down or to persist without substantial funding.

Public Preparation

http://www.publicpreparation.org/
Public Preparation is an international platform for knowledge-production and network-based communication. First and foremost, it is a space for self-education focusing on current practices of critical thinking and production in the field of contemporary art. The practice of Public Preparation is mainly based on creating situations for experience, reflection and discussion in various formats. The project is a method for recognising, discussing and establishing intellectual and professional connections. In that sense, it is a collective exercise in order to get ready for the upcoming future – a continuous preparation process that can never be complete but is always ready to take action.
The main agenda of Public Preparation is to concentrate on the questions linked to the concept of artist as a citizen. If we think of the society as a democratic communal project, then everybody who participates in this project is responsible for it – when noticing that something is wrong, one needs to speak up immediately. Contemporary art is a crucial part of the public realm and artists have the power and responsibility to be actively engaged in the process of imagining and changing the social reality. The current phase of Public Preparation activities is dealing critically with the growing tendencies of nationalism in contemporary Europe, aiming to envision alternative ways to think about global community.
Public Preparation started in February 2007 as a sequence of informal encounters which at the same time constituted the publicly visible preparation process of the Biennale of Young Artists (Oct 2007, Tallinn) as well as the course of preparing and educating the public for the Biennale. After the Biennale of Young Artists is over, Public Preparation continues as an independent collaborative project between Rael Artel and Airi Triisberg.

www.geobodies.org/

Ursula Biemann is an artist, theorist and curator who has in recent years produced a considerable body of work on migration, mobility, technology and gender. In a series of internationally exhibited video projects, as well as in several books "Geography and the Politics of Mobility" (2003), "Stuff It - The Video Essay in the Digital Age“ (2003), „The Maghreb Connection“ (2005) she has focused on the gendered dimension of migrant labour from smuggling on the Spanish-Moroccan border to migrant sex workers in the global context. Her experimental video essays connect a theoretical macro level with the micro perspective on political and cultural practices on the ground.
Insisting that location is spatially produced rather than pre-determined by governance, she made space and mobility her prime category of analysis in the curatorial project "Geography and the Politics of Mobility" (2003) at the Generali Foundation in Vienna, „The Maghreb Conncection“ on migratory systems in North Africa, Cairo/Geneva (2006) or the recent art research projects “Black Sea Files” on the Caspian oil politics at Kunstwerke Berlin (2005) and „Sahara Chronicle“ on trans-saharan mobility. Biemann's practice has long included discussions with academics and other practitioners, she has worked with anthropologists, cultural theorists, NGO members, architects, as well as scholars of sonic culture. Her video essays reach a wide and diverse audience through festival screenings, art exhibitions, activist conferences, networks and educational settings.
http://www.geobodies.org/

"Passing Drama", by Angela Melitopoulos

"Passing Drama", by Angela Melitopoulos, 1999,
Experimental documentary on refugee history of refugees from Asia Minor (1923) who fled to Greece and became work slaves in Hitler's Germany in WWII. The film translates the sound-picture of my family's migration history that was passed by voice from one generation to the next
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=5023106219120789424&hl=de
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pAqy4U0xjg
Short text
Passing Drama a videoessay directed by Angela Melitopoulos 66 min, PAL, Digibeta, 1999, (German and Greek language, subtitled in English) contact: nc-melitoan@netcologne.de
„PassingDrama“ is based on different recollections told by refugees. This videoessay is the woven sound picture of the migration of Angela Melitopoulos’family. Drama is the name of a small city in Northern Greece. The city is inhabited by refugees who are survivors of deportations from Asia Minor to Greece in 1923. In World War II their children escaped the Bulgarian occupation and became workeslave in Hitler’s Germany. Interviews with those refugees connected to Melitopoulos father’s recite of his departure from Greece to Vienna are tracing a diagonal path through Europe crossing four different national states. The homeland of these refugees was changing continuously. Their storytelling relates to the local condition of integration. To choose recites from people who have experienced an exodus nearly forgotten in European history meant to consider ways of making the process of forgetting a part in the process of notation (montage). Telling a story, which has been transmitted, retold, re-memorised from one generation to the next meant to make a film on the subject of refugee narration itself. Fragments of recorded interviews formed the voice level in that the story appears as a texture made out of different densities of concret or superfluous „thought-flows“. In their narration the refugees connected their own words with generated word-constructions of others. The recalled words of others intensified through the melody of their voices.

Award of the German Filmcritics for experimental video 2000 Award of the Council of Europe, VideoArt Festival Locarno Award of Internationale Mediafestival Medi@terra Athens
http://www.videophilosophy.de/
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0107/melitopoulos/en/#_ftn3
http://www.eipcp.net/bio/melitopoulos
http://www.videophilosophy.de/tc-geographies.net/workshops/istambul_03.html
http://www.projektmigration.de/
http://www.transitmigration.org/
http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/v2v/Timescapes_Angela_Melitopolous
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr1201/rcfr13b.htm
http://www.republicart.net/disc/representations/melitopoulos01_en.pdf
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/001760.php
http://freebitflows.t0.or.at/f/participants/angelamelitopoulos
http://www.fdk-berlin.de/en/arsenal-experimental/news-display/article/486/273.html?cHash=12ba233e05
Full Play is a Multimedia Installation performance that took place at the Villette Numerique, which means “Digital Village” at the Parc de la Villette located in Paris, France on September 24th thru September 29th, 2002. http://actioncamfilms.com/fullplay/fullplay.htm

Book Review Ilan Pappé: "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine":

NotJust Collateral Damage

The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé takes a new look at the expulsionof the Palestinians in 1948. According to Pappé, the Palestinians'exodus was not an unfortunate side-effect of the war, but an act ofethnic cleansing planned long in advance. Martina Sabra reports on the book

http://qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-476/_nr-921/i.html

FLAG METAMORPHOSIS

http://www.flag-metamorphoses.net/
http://www.thyes.com/political-symbols.html
at Novi Sad, 11th international video festival videomedeja, The Museum of Vojvodina,
http://www.videomedeja.org/screening

ERDEN KOSOVA

Erden Kosova is a critic and curator based in Istanbul. He contributes to two independent Istanbul-based magazines, Siyahi (post-anarchist politics) and art-ist (contemporary art). His ongoing PhD research at the Goldsmiths College London focuses on the critique of nationalist ideology by the contemporary art practice from the Balkans and the Near East.

Istanbul coverage blog:

http://www.labforculture.org/en/community/blogs/10739

Original interview:

http://www.labforculture.org/en/community/blogitem/17350

NM: How do you see the current tensions within Turkish society, between nationalism and religion, affect the arts in terms of what is produced, how it is produced and how and where it is exhibited?

EK: The tension that has been recently troubling the country in the last couple of years seems to have polarised the society drastically, and it is true that the main protagonists of the emerged polarisation are the army as the defendant of a secularist nationalism and the governing party AKP, which has its roots from Islamic movement but transformed into a pragmatic, neo-liberal and conservative project claiming the whole of right wing of the centre. Yet, it is hard to infer a clean-cut binarism between nationalism and religion. The disparate versions of nationalism in Turkey always retained a certain interpretation of Islam and the Islamists always adhered to a nationalist differentiation from the rest of the Islamic world. What rather emerged from this tension are two opposing sets of political forces that brought old enemies into alliance. The first bloc can be named properly as �nationalist�: the militaristic machinery which claims to be the motor of implantation of (dogmatically) modernistic values; the central-left which recently abandoned all the links to social-democratic principles; the Kemalist intellectuals whose so-called leftist-nationalism slips very easily from anti-imperialism into projects of alter-imperialism; two segmented versions of ultra-nationalism (one of them more religious); ex-Maoists who became the non-religious preachers of Kemalism, some small communist parties, the EU-haters and so on� The opposing bloc can be defined as a willingness to have a more globalist/planetary perspective and a resistance to the opposing block�s call for an absolute identitarian closure in favour of national belonging: the AKP which is being supported by the so-far culturally marginalised segments of the conservative parts of the country and the rising Anatolian bourgeoisie and claims the legacy of the Ottoman ecumenism; the established pro-EU bourgeoisie, liberal, social-democrat and socialist intelligentsia who have been trying to challenge the authoritarian structure of the Republic, the non-separatist segments of the Kurdish society, non-Muslim communities and so on� The looming threat of a military coup d�etat, the increasing aggressive tone in the discursive campaign for nationalism, massive demonstrations held in the big cities, lynching attempts on some communist, Kurd or human rights activists, assassination of Hrant Dink, tension around Kurdish and Armenian issues, disappointments from the EU-integration process� The boiling of the pot came finally into halt by the massive landslide election victory of the governing party, which then seemed to deem the absolute defeat of the nationalist bloc. Yet, the original source of the tension, the Kurdish �problem� which triggered all the nationalist paranoia of being further dissected has remained intact in respect with the political atmosphere in the invaded Iraq. When the separatists Kurdish guerrilla of PKK, resumed armed struggle and inflicted several losses to the Turkish army the nationalist pathos returned with a hegemonic power after including the AKP into the nationalist rhetoric.The dominating tone within the contemporary art practice in Turkey has been decidedly anti-nationalist, anti-statist and anti-militarist. In the absence of an appropriate contact with the public (until recently there were hardly any art spaces to exhibit contemporary work), the bitter tone of this crusty criticism harmed no one. Yet, the opening of independent and mainstream institutions in Istanbul made contemporary art more visible and this attracted some confrontation. A non-profit and progressive art space got raided by the ultra-nationalists after exhibiting a documentary research on the 1955 pogrom against the non-Muslim communities. Halil Alt�ndere, the curator of the FreeKick exhibition was tried with the infamous accusation of offending the �Turkishness�. Some artists have been directly accused by the Kemalist figures within the art scene of being traitors. Hou Hanru, the curator of the 10th Istanbul Biennale, has recently been publicly condemned by the dean of a prominent fine art academy with the accusation of denigrating the Kemalist ideology in his catalogue text. And just a couple of days ago, a forthcoming exhibition entitled as �God Fear� to be held in an independent art space has been targeted by an ultra-religious daily newspaper. Hence, the politically transgressive art practice has now its opponents.But, more serious than this conflict, is the fact that the public image of the contemporary art scene has worsened considerably with the last couple of years. After the opening of several large-scale art institutions and the establishment of a certain culture attached to it (sterilisation, commercialisation, trivialisation of the art practice) , the contemporary art scene as such is being conceived as the uppermost example of cultural corruption and decadence. This remarkably fierce sense of resentment will cause more trouble for the contemporary art scene. I would say, the critical segment within the scene should prove its integrity by divorcing itself from the ongoing normalisation and recuperation.

NM: You have been working a lot round discourses of nationalism and national identity. How would you categorise an event such as a biennial, which at first glance seems a trans-national non-space for contemporary art (the unsolvable regionalism<>internationalism debate), while at the same time the geo-graphic spread of its artists has never been more important (cfr. the sheer abundance of ISO country code abbreviations in catalogues). What does nationalism/nationality/national identity mean within this set-up? Are biennials incomplete life-size atlases of the art world?

EK: I share the dizziness of witnessing the rising spectacle dimension in the large-scale exhibition. I came to the field of contemporary art from the field of radical politics and therefore I have this never-ending discomfort with the scale of these things and I cannot cease to adhere to the yearning for the production of a transversal interaction between critical projects and practices from the differing parts of the globe. I have a certain attachment to Istanbul and an interest in the wider region, which possesses similar experiences and cultural character to my own. So, I can say I don�t mind to remain in a parochial position which at the same time can relate to other geographies� sensibilities. The planetary framing and the national motivations invested in the biennial format is too big for me. I am not clever enough to conceive the content offered within this scale. Although I personally lack proper social skills, I cannot abandon the comfort of a modest and human-scale relation to cultural products and artists. I find it hard for any critical voice to deliver its political message through the biennial format. A number of people who cannot escape to commit to this format are aware of this problem and they are trying to decrease the number of attending artists gradually and to intensify their and the artists� engagement with the location of the biennials with residence programmes and sustained research schemes.NM: You have critiqued elsewhere the so-called �miracle of Istanbul�; that is, Istanbul's city branding, which heralds the beauty of the city and its bridging between East and West, but does not really deal with the city�s problems. How do you judge previous, but in particular this current biennial, within that respect?EK: This criticism was about the general ideology of the Biennial and not the local practice. The biennials between 1997 and 2003 have applied to a certain sense aestheticism and psychologism and made use of concepts like beauty, pathos, poesis and so on. Yet, the last two Biennials have been a return from the sentimentalisation politics of Istanbul. You can debate about the quality of these two exhibitions, you might compare them; but there is an obvious willingness to engage with the contemporary urban problematics of the city. It is also strange to observe that aestheticism and psychologism has recently been adopted by the local scene, mainly promoted by the emerging art institutions and commercial galleries ,whereas the Biennial pursued a turn towards politicisation. About the current biennial� Although it has been rightly criticised because of the curator�s problematic use of political terminology (optimism, global war, world factory and so on), I think it managed to address the heated local and actual agenda of the country. The IM� section unfortunately failed to benefit from the rich social surrounding � a more direct engagement with the building and the neighbourhood could have strengthened Hanru�s scenario.

NM: How would you describe artistic production outside Istanbul? Diyarbakir for example?EK:Istanbul will remain the big giant who sucks all the energy around it. This is the nature of the city, it has been the capital of three successive empires for more than a millennia. The republican modernism and �the project of Ankara� could not challenge this. With the full integration into neo-liberal economics Istanbul became even more thirsty for innovative energy. So whatever comes up in the country, it is called into the �Polis�. Izmir and Diyarbakir are two cities which managed to produce a discursive togetherness among the local artists. Izmir had a more aesthetic, conceptualist and epistemological approach ,whereas Diyarbakir was unsurprisingly more identitarian and humorous. K2, the independent art space in Izmir has performed until now quite remarkably � yet, they have a problem in producing their audience. This might decelerate the motivations of the young artist-organisers. Diyarbak�r was genuinely a miracle. Young people, who saw contemporary art as a vehicle of loudly expressing their traumas, isolation and criticism, created a scene from nothing, with the most minimal resources. Yet, I don�t know how they are going to transcend the initial phase of this discursive togetherness. The social problems of the repression remains unchanged and you cannot speak about the same thing with the same media forever. The scene needs a vitalisation and juvenescence. We will see whether the younger generation will have the same ambition about contemporary art as their predecessors. Everything is so bound to the general political atmosphere in the region.

NM: How do you look back at Leaps of Faith [1], 2,5 years after its realisation. Do you feel that somehow you were able to transcend discourses (and gazes) of territorial division and nationalism and offer a different lens. Would you tackle the project the same way today?

EK: If I could turn back and had a more control of things I would emphasize the modesty of the project from the start. At some point we stressed the fact that it was the first international contemporary art exhibition of its scale on the island, so that an unnecessarily high expectation was invested into the project by the local scenes, which at the end caused some tensions. But generally I am personally very satisfied by this adventurous experience. We had extremely limited resources: no support from any local official institution (which would actually collapse the psychological legitimacy of the project); no infrastructure other than an empty flat, two laptops and mobile phones. And in these conditions, I think the curatorial and production team gave its best. There was criticism from the start that actually could be addressed to any site-specific art project: that we should have afforded more to have a stronger contact with the local scenes and that our project was opportunistically exploiting the traumatic scenery in the divided city. We could have managed to get more contact with the Greek Cypriot side (which was a quite difficult thing, since they were suspicious about the nature of this artistic project initiated by a Turkish Cypriot, which was unusual) and to motivate the Turkish Cypriot students to be included in parallel events and panels if we had more time and energy. But in terms of art works I don�t think there was any hint of arrogance and patronisation of the external gaze. Of course some participations failed to deliver to offer an insightful interpretation. And local artists came up with more touching projects. I think it was a valuable experience in bringing people together in this frame. I think it made a small contribution to enhancing interaction between multiple sides and to establish a platform critical to the multiple versions of nationalism and ethnocracy. If the education programme of the Manifesta 6,was held without any obstacles this dialogue would have progressed further. I wish I could have the personal resources to continue to work with the artists I met.

NM: You have mentioned elsewhere that radical critique and guerrilla art have become absorbed by the large art institutions in Istanbul, hence depoliticising them. Yet at the same time you have also expressed that moments of crisis open up possibilities (as was the case for the momentum after Hrant Dink�s assassination and group 19 January). How do you position yourself as a curator, critic and activist within these dynamics�and what is to be done?

EK: The assassination of Dink was the deepest shock for the intelligentsia. People felt like the most precious and fragile among the community was brutally snatched off. The initial anger motivated small initiatives to emerge. Group 19 January, which consists from people from the art scene, was one of them. But we don�t talk about it publicly. The only thing I can say is that the initial sense of solidarity and ambition is unfortunately lost. We are going to see what we can do in the future with the current group. New energies have emerged and they need to cohere into each other, discursively and humanely. As I mentioned before, there is an urgent need to differ from the recently landed huge mainstream art machinery and strengthen the emerging independent platforms and affinity groups.I am not sure whether I can pass as a curator or an activist� But, what I have tried to do so far is to reinforce and facilitate the links between politically engaged art and radical politics. There are too many things to be done: texts to be read and written, interviews to be done, discussions to be held, connections to establish, exhibitions and events to organise, for all those who retain the creed in possible interaction between cultural practice, social change and personal differentiation. I personally have to leave the laziness, inertia and melancholic mood, get some formalities done, contribute to forthcoming collective projects and work, work, work�--

[1] Leaps of Faith, curated by Erden Kosova and Katherina Gregos, 13.05.05-29.05.05 (Nicosia) was an international exhibition and multi-disciplinary arts project marking the first time in 30 years that a part of the UN controlled Green Line (buffer zone) dividing the island is opened up for use in an international event. The project aimed to animate and activate public spaces, buildings and sites in the divided city of Nicosia and the war-ravaged Green Line, partitioning the capital of Cyprus, through an international public arts event.

http://neme.org/main/118/leaps-of-faith