News
Turkish artists supportive of Gezi Park protests targets of provocations
(The article below is quoted from Today's Zaman, June 13, 2013)
Numerous Turkish artists who have supported protests against the government's plans to demolish Taksim's Gezi Park have been targets of false allegations and provocations from news organizations, social media and leading political figures.
Actor Memet Ali Alabora has been receiving threats from unknown sources for some time. In a letter distributed Tuesday, Actress Betül Arım, Alabora's mother, expressed her distress over her son's treatment.
On May 30, Alabora tweeted, “Dude, the issue is not only about Gezi Park, have not you understood yet? Come on.” In a June 10 press conference in İstanbul, Alabora said he was referring to police's violent attitude toward the demonstrators and people's inability to express themselves and their wishes, adding that he started to receive threats following the tweet on May 30.
In her letter, titled “Neden?” (Why?), Arım asked why people were pepper sprayed for wanting to save trees, saying that she had gone to Gezi Park to protect the trees and protest violence and suppression. “In the meantime, I did not believe [when] I heard that my son had been receiving threatening messages and again I asked [myself], why? For me, as a person who has love inside herself, the whole world is a family. These incidents mean some members of this family have not grown up with love. … I said, ‘We love the created for the Creator's sake.' I felt anxious, but I did not fear [anything], everything will be understood in time,” the actress continued.
Arım also addressed a news story covering a play directed and written by her son. The story, which Yeni Şafak daily ran June 10 on Page 1 under the headline “Bu ne tesadüf” (What a coincidence it is), claimed that in rehearsals for Alabora's play “Mi Minör,” the actor taught people how to protest and encouraged them to rebel against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) through social media. The piece also claimed the play is being supported by an American “digital agency,” referring to Turkey-based company that promoted the play on social media. Alabora said the owner and shareholders of the company are all Turkish.
‘Mi Minör' nothing but fantasy
Alabora has told reporters that “Mi Minör” tells the story of a dystopian country called “Pinama,” adding that the play was performed 23 times in three different İstanbul venues, always with official consent. She went on to call the story's accusations unbelievable and spurious.
“I read [the news], could not understand [or] believe. I said, ‘That is going too far.' But it happened, the piece was in front of me and my son was the target.” Arım said she was deeply sad over the news story and that the editor of the piece should have tried to empathize with Alabora and understand his real intent.
“The person who wrote the [news] story is female, but I am sure she is not a mother. If she were a mother, she would not have written such a story, which I could not believe in a dream. … It seems she wanted to throw enough dirt at the wall that some would stick, without knowing about Memet Ali. … If she had asked all the people who know him [about him], she would have understood that he will be cleared of these claims,” Arım wrote.
Arım went on to write about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's comments on Alabora's tweet. Without directly mentioning the actor's name, Erdoğan, who has organized pro-government “Milli İradeye Saygı” (Respect the National Will) rallies, said last week the AK Party was going to settle the score.
“One of my friends called and said ‘the prime minister has accused your son.' I said, ‘You must have misunderstood, is it possible? Does the prime minister of a country blame an artist, a young person, without ever meeting and learning about him? He is also a son of a mother. He will think of his mother first,” Arım said.
“I feel relaxed about each of these issues because I know my son. … How will people, who blamed my son, explain the issue to God, themselves, society and world? Is that not a big sin? I only want to ask everybody how a young tree grows. You do not need to be a mother to understand how a young tree grows, you can see that. However, only mothers know the sorrow and cries of a mother whose son's life is in danger. My heart hurts,” Arım's letter concluded.
Lists negatively affect artists' public image
Memet Ali Alabora is not the only artist to suffer after the Gezi Park protests, it seems. In a column titled “‘Black list' hazır” (The ‘black list' is ready) published on June 12, Journalist Cengiz Semercioğlu, who writes for Hürriyet daily's Kelebek supplement, claimed that artists who attended the Gezi Park protests and supported the demonstrations will be banned from performing concerts in festivals and staging plays in municipalities controlled by the AK Party.
On June 9 in Ankara, Erdoğan said some groups of protestors had received whatever they wanted in the 10 years of AK Party rule, adding that things would be different in the future. Semercioğlu interpreted these comments as a veiled reference to blacklists being prepared for artists, who he predicts will have a tough summer season.
Another list targeting artists was shared on June 16 on a twitter account named “Wake Up Attack.” Actors, singers and TV series crews were on the list. Implying that the Gezi Park protests were an organized plot and not a spontaneous outburst of discontent, the list was released under the title “işte gezi parkı tiyatrosunun ‘değerli oyuncuları'” (here the ‘valuable actors' of Gezi Park theater). Among the 112 artists on the list are Halit Ergenç, Memet Ali Alabora, Bergüzar Korel, Okan Bayülgen, Levent Üzümcü and Sertab Erener. Continuing the theatrical metaphor, under the list the post says the figures named are part of a “play” performed in an attempt to push Turkey into chaos and are not role models for society.
AGORAPHOBIA
"Agoraphobia", the prologue exhibition of the 13th Istanbul Biennial, will take place at TANAS, Berlin between 25 May and 27 July 2013. The exhibition aims to unfold the core question of public domain, central to the conceptual framework of the biennial, by questioning the politics of space in relation to freedom of expression.
Depending on the context, the ancient Greek term `agora´ refers either to an assembly of people or the place of assembly.[1] However, if we are to consider it as a metaphor for public domain, it embodies both connotations simultaneously. Thus, assembly in the context of the exhibition does not merely refer to any gathering of people for any purpose, but is rather specifically related to the act of social engagement and political debate around important issues concerning citizens. When articulating the concept of free man in ancient Greece, Hannah Arendt delineates the relationship between freedom and space:
The life of a free man needed the presence of others. Freedom itself needed therefore a place where people could come together—the agora, the market—place, or the polis, the political space proper.[2]
Here, Agoraphobia emblematically (fear of crowd or fear of open space) refers to the fear of freedom of expression and collective public action. The exhibition will thus explore the politics of space as an inevitable vector of freedom and urban public spaces as the spatial component of democratic apparatus.
Recently, the growing discontent with existing regimes and frustrations about their governance and ideologies has been manifested in urban public spaces – streets, squares and parks. Public space is converted into a stage for the expression of conflict and unrest and reclaiming the squares and streets echoes the demand for social and spatio-economic justice. We can ask whether urban public spaces aid or abate critical masses that fuel debate and collective public action, or provide a platform to exercise civic rights. In the current climate, is it possible to imagine social change through open resistance demonstrated on the streets?
With the participation of Jimmie Durham, Freee (Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan), LaToya Ruby Frazier, Amal Kenawy, Lux Lindner, José Antonio Vega Macotela, Cinthia Marcelle, Şener Özmen, Proyecto Secundario Liliana Maresca (Liliana Maresca Secondary School Project), Christoph Schäfer and Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Agoraphobia will focus on the intricate layers of the concepts of freedom, censorship/auto-censorship and repression, while bringing out diverse artistic strategies and formulas that can steer the imagination towards resistance and change."
Fulya Erdemci, Bige Örer and Kevser Güler
[1] Paul Carter, Repressed Spaces, The Poetics of Agoraphobia (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), p. 16.
[2] Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York, NY: Penguin Classics, 2006), p. 21. First published 1963 by Viking Press.
The DIALOGUE programme will be continued every Saturday at 2 p.m. Guests of these conversational tours are Fulya Erdemci and Bige Örer (in English),
Christoph Schäfer, Heike Catherina Mertens, Alicja Kwade and René Block, Ellen Blumenstein, Friedhelm Hütte, Udo Kittelmann, David Elliott (in English) and Joanna Warsza (in English).
Sharjah Biennial 11:
‘Re:emerge, Towards a New Cultural Cartography’
Curator: Yuko Hasegawa
Exhibition Dates: 13 March–13 May 2013
Press Conference: Tuesday 12 March / 10:00
Sharjah Biennial 11, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
In Re:emerge, Towards a New Cultural Cartography, curator Yuko Hasegawa proposes a Biennial that reassess the Westerncentrism of knowledge in modern times and reconsiders the relationship between the Arab world, Asia, the Far East, through North Africa and Latin America.
Hasegawa was inspired by the courtyard in Islamic architecture, in particular the historical courtyards of Sharjah, where elements of both public and private life intertwine, and where the objective political world and the introspective subjective space intersect and cross over.
The courtyard is also seen as a plane of experience and experimentation—an arena for learning and critical thinking of a discursive and embodied kind. It marks a generative space for the production of new awareness and knowledge. Within the network of intensifying international and globalising links, the courtyard as an experiential and experimental space comes to mirror something of Sharjah as a vital zone of creativity, transmission, and transformation.
For Sharjah Biennial 11, Hasegawa has selected more than 100 artists, architects, filmmakers, musicians and performers whose artworks and practices resonate with strands of the curatorial theme: the complexity and diversity of cultures and societies; spatial and political relations; notions of new forms of contact, dialogue, and exchange; and production through art and architectural practices of new ways of knowing, thinking, and feeling. With more than 35 new commissions, SB11 will unfold in sites across the city and will mark the inauguration of SAF’s five new art spaces.
The SB11 Opening Week Programme will begin with the opening on March 13, 2013, followed by the evening Biennial Awards ceremony. A full schedule of events March 13 – 17 will include performances, films, lectures, and the annual March Meeting, a symposium featuring thematic sessions and moderated panel discussions that will reflect on and contexualise the concept of SB11.
For more information please visit the homepage of
Word! Word? Word!
Issa Samb and the Undecipherable Form
Curated by Koyo Kouoh
4 May–23 June 2013
Opening: Friday 3 May, 19:00
Press Preview: Friday 3 May, 12:00
Public Hours: Wed, Fri, Sat and Sun: 12:00–16:00, Thu: 12:00-18:00
The Office for Contemporary Art Norway is presenting ‘WORD! WORD? WORD! Issa Samb and the Undecipherable Form’, the first solo exhibition in Europe by the seminal Senegalese artist Issa Samb. The exhibition brings together a selection of emblematic works made by Samb over the past 25 years, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, assemblages and installations, as well as objects, artworks made by others and diverse materials he has amassed in his studio in Dakar’s rue Jules Ferry. They will be accompanied by performative actions presented during the opening days – all these elements coming together to reflect Samb's vast galaxy of interconnected universes, in which everyday signs are transformed into altars to personal obsessions.
In 1974, along with filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety and a group of artists, writers, musicians, actors and filmmakers, Samb founded the Laboratoire Agit’Art. Its multi-disciplinary actions were directed against the formalism of the École de Dakar, an object-bound movement developed at the National Art School of Dakar and shaped by Léopold Sédar Senghor’s philosophy of négritude. Aiming to depart from this conception into experimentation and agitation, ephemerality rather than permanence, and political and social ideas rather than aesthetic notions, the Laboratoire Agit’Art developed a distinct ‘aesthetic of the social’. Audience participation was paramount to the group’s work, as was the privileging of communicative acts over the physical object. Neither utopian nor self-referential, it grounded its actions in the immediate sociopolitical situation. Today many of the early members have passed away, but the group’s spirit persists, materialised in all of Samb’s work.
From the time of the creation of the Laboratoire Agit’Art, Issa Samb has produced a graspable, yet cryptic and evanescent body of work. It is a body of work that, despite its avant-garde nature, is firmly rooted in African traditions of artistic multiplicity and simultaneity of forms and actions, where the spoken word and performative actions are highly regarded. And in keeping with Samb’s readings of Marxist philosophy and aesthetics, many of his sculptural assemblages take the paradigm of revolutionary movements as their subject matter, suggesting the possibility that the energy of the visual arts can be harnessed in support of the struggles of the weak and disadvantaged.
‘WORD! WORD? WORD!’, curated by Koyo Kouoh, brings to Europe a selection of works focusing on Samb’s multifaceted individual production, in a performative installation that references Samb’s home studio in Dakar, referred to as 'La Cour' or 'The Yard'. The display will create a fluid system of exchange between the objects, the artist and the audience.
The exhibition is organised in collaboration with Raw Material Company in Dakar, where it will travel in late 2013. A monographic publication on the work of Issa Samb will be published in conjunction with the opening in Dakar. This exhibition project follows Samb's participation in OCA's International Studio Programme in 2012, and a series of lectures that since October 2012 OCA has dedicated to the négritude movement and its influence on art, culture and politics in Africa, with speakers Salah Hassan, Manthia Diawara and Souleymane Bachir Diagne.
This exhibition and wider programme is made possible by 03 funds* from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
About the Artist
Issa Samb was born in 1945 in Senegal and lives in Dakar. In 1974 he founded, together with a group of artists, writers, film-makers, performance artists and musicians, the Laboratoire Agit’Art, whose aim was to transform the nature of artistic practice from a formalist, object-bound sensibility to practices based on experimentation and agitation, process rather than product, ephemerality rather than permanence. With a focus on the contingent character of actions, the Laboratoire was informed by a critique of institutional power. Samb also co-founded the Gallery TENQ – Village des Arts in Dakar. He is the author of numerous plays, poems and essays. A retrospective of his work was held at the National Art Gallery, Dakar in 2010. His work has been included in exhibitions such as dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany (2012), the Biennale de l’Art Africain Contemporain, Dak’Art, Dakar (2008) and ‘Seven Stories of Modern Art in Africa’, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (1995).
*About O3–Funds
The event is supported by O3–funds as underwritten by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for enhancing collaboration in the contemporary art field with professional artists in countries designated by the MFA. The purpose of the O3–funds as allocated to OCA is to further develop cooperation and professional networking between OCA and the constituency of artists, independent cultural producers, and organisations that are located in designated countries. This includes but is not limited to 'professional research visits by cultural producers, artists, and curators', 'short-term residencies for cultural producers and artists', 'seminars, conferences, art projects, workshops that focus on the further development of professional exchange and networking between and among countries', and 'project development on an international scale'.
A collaboration between the Istanbul Biennial and the Istanbul Film Festival:
The 13th Istanbul Biennial Film Programme
Am I Not a Citizen? Barbarism, Civic Awakening and the City
30 March - 14 April 2013
The 13th Istanbul Biennial’s film programme ‘Am I Not a Citizen? Barbarism, Civic Awakening, and the City’ is a collaboration between the Istanbul Biennial and the Istanbul Film Festival. As part of the 32nd Istanbul Film Festival, the programme serves as a prelude to the biennial exhibition, and aims to incite reflections on the overarching theme of the biennial; the public domain as a political public forum.
The programme, organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) under the curatorship of Fulya Erdemci, Yael Messer, Gilad Reich and assistant curatorship of Ece Üçoluk, will take place at the Pera Museum during the 32nd Istanbul Film Festival.
The 13th Istanbul Biennial Film Programme brings together documentaries, feature films, and video art works tackling themes of citizenship, public domain, democracy and art. It features canonical films, as well as recent documentaries, and focuses on the poetics of politics through video works.
Am I Not a Citizen? Barbarism, Civic Awakening and the City features 17 films and video art works with diverse cinematic practices that question the limits of civilization in our day and age. It focuses on the destabilizing force of this current system and diverse responses through which notions of barbarism, activism, and civic participation are redefined.
Artists, directors and filmmakers offer viewers a platform to contemplate the public domain as a site of cultural, social and political engagement and insurrection. They propose new alternatives, collective imagination, self-organisation, and co-production. Among the films in Am I Not a Citizen? are proposals for different economic models, sketches for building a utopia, and exercises in civic imagination.
The 13th Istanbul Biennial Film Programme will also include a panel discussion on how cinema explores and articulates the complex notions of barbarism, activism, and civic participation and the role of filmmakers in proposing alternatives to existent spaces and current realities. The panel discussion Am I Not a Citizen? Barbarism, Civic Awakening, and the City will be held on Monday, 8 April at 16.00 at Pera Museum. Dmitry Vilensky of Chto Delat, the collective who directed The Tower: A Songspiel , Paul Poet, director of Foreigners Out! Schlingensiefs Container, and Berke Baş, director and Istanbul Film Festival Documentary Advisory Board Member will participate in the panel moderated by Fulya Erdemci and Yael Messer.
For more information please visit:
http://film.iksv.org/en
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