The 14th Istanbul Biennial. |
SALTWATER: A THEORY OF THOUGHT FORMS
The
14th Istanbul Biennial SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, drafted by Carolyn
Christov-Bakargiev, will open to the public from 5 September to 1 November 2015
in over 30 venues on the European and Asian sides of the Bosphorus, from the
Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, from Beyoğlu to Büyükada, from Rumelifeneri to
the old city and from Şişli to Kadıköy.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. |
“With
and through art, we commit ourselves to the possibility of joy and vitality, leaping
from form to flourishing life. SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms looks for
where to draw the line, to draw upon, and to draw out, through organic and
non-linear forms that connect research in art with other knowledges. It does so
offshore, on the flat surfaces with our fingertips, but also in the depths,
underwater, before the enfolded encoding unfolds. A number of drawings,
paintings, installations, films, objects, books, collaborations, and
research-based events will be viewable as thought forms – waves or oscillating
patterns of repeating and differing lines that structure and enfold all forms
of transference of energy – from brain waves to shockwaves after an explosion,
from sound waves and waves of water to electromagnetic waves of different lengths
and frequencies, including radio waves and light.” (Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev,
April 4, 2015).
The
14th Istanbul Biennial takes at least three days to visit fully. Works by over
80 participants from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin
America and North America, are displayed in over thirty venues on the European
and Asian sides of the Bosphorus. SALTWATER takes place in museums as well as
temporary spaces of habitation on land and on sea such as boats, hotels, former
banks, garages, gardens, schools, shops and private homes.
General Biennial Map. |
Carolyn
Christov-Bakargiev states, “Salt water is one of the most ubiquitous materials
in the world. Sodium in our bodies makes our neurological system, and thus our
vital systems, work; it literally keeps us alive. At the same time, salt water
is the most corrosive material threat to the digital age: if you drop your
smart phone in fresh water, you can dry it and it will probably work again. If
it falls into salt water, chemical molecular changes in the materials of your
phone will break it. When you visit the 14th Istanbul Biennial, you will spend
quite a bit of time on salt water. There is a slowing down of the experience of
art due to the travel between venues, especially on ferries. That is very
healthy: salt water helps to heal respiration problems and many other
illnesses, as well as calming the nerves.
This
sprawling exhibition spans from Rumelifeneri on the Black Sea, where Jason and
the Argonauts passed searching for the Golden Fleece, through the winding and
narrow Bosphorus, a seismic fault line which opened as a water channel some
8500 years ago, and down to the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara towards
the Mediterranean, where ancient Byzantine emperors exiled their enemies and
where Leon Trotsky lived for four years from 1929 to 1933. It presents over
1500 artworks, some very tiny, including over fifty commissions by artists as
well as other visible and invisible manifestations such as materials from the
history of oceanography, environmental studies, marine archaeology, Art
Nouveau, neuroscience, physics, mathematics and theosophy. Works range
historically from an 1870 painting of waves by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, who
received a Nobel prize in 1906 for discovering the neuron, to the ground-breaking
abstract Thought Forms of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater (1901-1905), up
to a new installation by Aslı Çavuşoğlu which reflects on an ancient and lost
Armenian technique for extracting red dye from an insect, and a new
multichannel installation by William Kentridge inspired by Trostky’s passage
through Turkey.”
SALT Galata. |
The
14th Istanbul Biennial is drafted by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Interlocutors
and alliances include Anna Boghiguian, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Cevdet Erek, Pierre
Huyghe, Emre Hüner, William Kentridge, Marcos Lutyens, Chus Martínez, Füsun
Onur, Emin Özsoy, Griselda Pollock, Michael Rakowitz, Vilayanur S.
Ramachandran, Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran, and Elvan Zabunyan.
Novelist
Orhan Pamuk is the Honorary Chairman of the International Council of Friends
and Patrons of the 14th Istanbul Biennial.
The
Istanbul Biennial advisory board members include Adriano Pedrosa, Başak Şenova,
İnci Eviner, Iwona Blazwick, and Ute Meta Bauer.
The House Hotel. |
The
14th Istanbul Biennial is organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and
Arts (İKSV) and made possible thanks to the sponsorship of Koç Holding.
Admission to the 14th Istanbul Biennial is free of charge in all venues except
the Museum of Innocence. The Istanbul Biennial receives further patronage from
a number of other supporters, international funders, and funding bodies. These
include, amongst others to be announced,
DAI Dilijan Art Initiative - IDeA Foundation, SAHA - Supporting
Contemporary Art from Turkey, Australia Council for the Arts, Mathaf: Arab
Museum of Modern Art (Qatar Museums), Acción Cultural Española (AC/E),
Mondriaan Fund, Canada Council, British Council, The Henry Moore Foundation,
Culture.pl, Italian Institute of Culture in Istanbul, Institut français, Office
for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Arts Council Norway, Fondazione Sandretto re
Rebaudengo, Schering Stiftung, Fiorucci Art Trust, Schwarz Foundation, Dena
Foundation for Contemporary Art, Outset Contemporary Art Fund, Kadist Art
Foundation.
Kasa Galeri. |
HOW TO NAVIGATE THE SALTWATER
The
14th Istanbul Biennial takes at least three days to visit fully.
There
are venues where the visitors will encounter a group exhibition, such as
Istanbul Modern, ARTER, the Italian High School, and the Galata Greek Primary
School, but most locations host the work of a single artist or artist
collective. Biennial visitors may take various paths and some of the possible
itineraries might be the following.
Depo. |
Day One:
Beyoğlu on foot or by public transport
Visitors
can start from Bankalar Street, visit the former headquarters of the Ottoman
Bank which was designed by French Levantine architect Alexandre Vallauri at the
end of the 19th century, and has been functioning as SALT Galata after its renovation in 2011; and then the newly opened
Vault Karaköy the House Hotel, which
was the historical Sümerbank headquarters built in 1863 by Istanbul-born
Italian architect Antoine Tedeschi in Neo-Renaissance style.
Museum of Innocent. |
As
you continue to walk down towards the water, you will find on the left the Kasa Galeri in Minerva Han, which is a
landmark historical building that was built in 1913 by architect Vasileios
Kouremenos, and today owned by Sabancı University; and as you walk along on
Kemeraltı Street, you can visit the Galata
Greek Primary School with its neo-classic architectural style formerly
serving for the education of Greek children in Istanbul.
The
next stop could be Istanbul Modern,
a former cargo warehouse built by the eminent architect Sedad Hakkı Eldem in
the scope of an urban renewal project between 1957 and 1958. Transformed into
the foremost museum of contemporary art in Turkey in 2003 and opened in 2004,
Istanbul Modern hosts a group exhibition as well as some of the historical
positions of the biennial. The non-profit exhibition space DEPO is another biennial venue, a four storey building used as a
tobacco warehouse until the 1950s.
ARTER. |
Several
biennial venues are located on Boğazkesen Street in the Tophane district, such
as a garage and a store. These also include a small red building originally
constructed in 1897, three years after the earthquake of 1894, which was
acquired by novelist Orhan Pamuk in 1999 and transformed into the Museum of Innocence.
Pera Museum. |
The
next stop on this walk could be Özel
İtalyan Lisesi (the Italian High School) which was established in 1861 and
moved to its current location on Tom Tom Kaptan Street in 1919. Here visitors
will find new works by five artists on the ground floor, in the gymnasium and
in the attic. The French Orphanage,
known as the Palace of St. Eugène built in 1869, is one of three fictional
venues of the biennial that has no legal public access, to be imagined only.
In
nearby Galatasaray, a hotel room in a building originally commissioned and
built by the Zenovitch family in the 1890s, which was transformed into the House Hotel Galatasaray in 2010, is
used as a biennial venue. Across from the hotel, on Bostanbaşı Street, a house
hosts work of an artist and another nearby building from 1901, Cezayir, hosts
the public programme throughout the biennial, as well as one artist’s project.
ADAHAN Hotel. |
As
the visitors walk up to İstiklal Avenue towards the tunnel, they will see Casa Garibaldi, which belongs to the
Società Operaia - an association founded by Italian workers in 1863 and named
after Giuseppe Garibaldi who lived in Constantinople for a number of years in
the 19th century. Casa Garibaldi is currently being restored, and functions as
a fictional venue of the biennial with no public access.
Adahan Hotel and Cistern. |
The ARTER building,
constructed by architect Petraki Meymaridis in the 1910s on İstiklal Avenue as
Meymaret Han, was converted to a non-profit art space by the Vehbi Koç Foundation in 2010 and hosts
the biennial throughout its three floors. FLO,
once the Anatolian Passage built at the end of the 19th century and now a shoe
store, is converted into a venue for an artist’s work on its fourth floor.
There
are two more biennial venues in the Pera district of Beyoğlu: the Pera Museum, founded in 2005 and
located in the former Bristol Hotel designed in 1893 by architect Achille
Manoussos, which was later renovated preserving its historical façade, hosts
the biennial on its third floor. Finally, a room in the Adahan Hotel, a
building commissioned by Camondo family and built in the 19th century and
restored in 2007, and the Adahan Cistern, which dates back centuries are also
venues.
Büyükada, 18 August 2014. Photo © Francis Alÿs. |
Day 2: Kabataş-Kadıköy-Büyükada-Kabataş
circle by ferry boat or hydrofoil (İDO
seabus)
Visitors
can take a ferry boat or hydrofoil from Kabataş dock to Kadıköy and Büyükada, one of the Princes’ Islands
on the Asian side of the city.
A
small, street-level artist studio in Yeldeğirmeni will be the 14th Istanbul
Biennial’s venue in Kadıköy.
On
Büyükada, Kaptan Paşa Seabus that has been used for the purpose of
transportation since 1997, will welcome biennial visitors at the docks as one
of its venues, as well as Büyükada Public Library, which will function as a
greeting point. Five rooms and the courtyard of the Hotel Splendid Palas, built
between 1908-1911 in an Art Nouveau style by Kaludi Laskaris, will also host
the biennial exhibition and part of its public programmes.
The
other venues on Büyükada are the Rizzo Palace, built in the 19th century and
used as a residential house until 1961 and which was acquired by Balıklı Greek
Hospital Foundation to serve as a social housing pension until 2010; Mizzi
Mansion, built in the second half of the 19th century and renovated by
prominent Italian architect Raimondo D’Aronco after the earthquake; Çankaya 57,
a twin house built by an Armenian tradesman for his daughters in 1907~1908 where
Leon Trotsky is said to have lived
briefly when he was exile on the island, and which was more recently
used as a location for a Turkish soap opera; and the Trotsky House or Yanaros
Mansion, built in 1850s by Nikola Demades, where Trotsky lived between 1932 and
1933.
Rumeli Feneri. |
Day 3: Şişli, the Old City and the
Northern Bosphorus
by ferry boat, public transport or taxi
The
14th Istanbul Biennial is using two venues in Şişli district: the new
headquarters of Hrant Dink Foundation and Agos, former Hığutyun Armenian
Primary School from 1903 up to 2004, as well as Hrant Dink Foundation and Agos
– Centre for Parrhesia, at the former location of the foundation and of the
newspaper Agos, an Armenian weekly published in Istanbul in both Turkish and
Armenian languages. The chief editor of Agos and a pivotal figure in the human
rights and reconciliation movements in Turkey, Hrant Dink, was assassinated in
January 2007 outside this building.
Visitors
can take the bus 55T from Taksim to get to the Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammam in the
Old City of Istanbul, formerly called Constantinople. One of the oldest
buildings of the Islamic period in the city, Küçük Mustafa Paşa Hammam was
built in 1477 during the reign of Fatih Sultan Mehmet and 24 years after the
conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans. Covering an area of 1900 square
metres, it ceased being used as a bathhouse in the 1990s. Located between
Sultanahmet and the Byzantine walls, it is a short walk from the south coast of
the Golden Horn. The women’s and men’s areas of the hammam, accessible from
separate entrances on Şerefiye and Küçük Mustafa Paşa Streets, will be used for
exhibiting two artists’ works.
The
two other venues of the 14th Istanbul Biennial are located in the Northern
Bosphorus and can be reached by bus 150 from Hacıosman Metro Station or by
ferry to Sarıyer and bus 150. Located in Sarıyer intercity district,
Rumelifeneri, a coastal village near the north-western end of the Bosphorus
Strait where you can see the construction of Istanbul’s third bridge, will host
an artist’s work on the lighthouse. On the Asian side, where the remains of a
rusted, cold-war radar antenna lie, Riva Beach, is one of the biennial’s venues
with no public access.
The
itineraries suggested above can be reconfigured in many ways, depending on the
availability and interests of visitors. Information on guided tours will be
available at 14b.iksv.org
Finally,
a provisional biennial venue will be Kastellorizo, a Greek island two
kilometres away from the Turkish coast. The weeklong project in collaboration
with the Fiorucci Art Trust titled “The violent No! of the sun burns the
forehead of hills. Sand fleas arrive from salt lake and most of the theatres
close” will take place there from 7 to 13 September 2015.
FOR FURTHER INFO
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