Wcbd_ 26.9.07: Istanbul Biennale Report

Wcbd_ 26.9.07: Istanbul Biennale Report

Atatürk Cultural Centre, Xu Zhen's work "8848-1.86", an installation piece on left

W1
Last Saturday I went to see the 10th Istanbul Biennial. The Biennial
shows around 100artists work under the theme: "Not only possible, but
only necessary: "Optimism in the age of Global war."

W2 The
Biennial takes place in different locations spread all over Istanbul. I
visited the three main exhibitions; Atatürk Cultural Centre, Antrepo
and Dreamhouse.

W3 Atatürk Cultural Centre is a dark 70's style building with endless stairs and corridors,steel ceilings and abandoned seating lounges. Rather few art works are exhibited in the building, amongst the artists, Vahran Aghasyan, photos of a flooded city. The most interesting work is Xu Zhen's work
"8848-1.86", an installation piece that documents the artist chopping
of the last1.86 meter ice cap of Mount Everest.

I liked some of the work, nevertheless I felt the building was to dominant for
an exhibition like this, it stole the artist the show.

Antrepo 3.
took place in an industrial complex next to Istanbul Modern (Museum),
it was a coloured and loud mix of large-scale installations,
sculptures, Wall-works and Videos. Here the works I liked most: AES + F
,Fikret Atay, Rem Koolhaas/AMO, Taiyo Kimura,
Extramücadele/Extrastruggle

AES + F (left), Taiyo Kimura (right)

Rem Koolhaas/AMO

W4 I went to see the Istanbul Biennale for
two reasons; firstly, I thought interesting art must come out of the
east-west culture cutting point, secondly, I had read a rather negative
critique in a Swiss newspaper and wanted to see the show myself.

The
article " Sich elegant verdauen lassen" (Getting digested elegantly")
by Samuel Herzog, published 12September in the NZZ (Neue Zürcher
Zeitung), called the "a chaos of impressions". The author felt that,
although the exhibition had a theme i.e. "Optimism in the age of global
war", artist failed to deal with themes related to the title properly.
He felt the exhibited works resembled a chaotic cluster of works trying
to overwhelm the visitor with popular culture representations and
communicating commercial like messages, rather than engaging the viewer
into dialogues related to the theme. In addition the author wondered
whether Biennial were in genarl a rather shallow experience.

Struggle:

I do not fully agree with Samuel Herzog's Article for several reasons.

The article only analyzed the Biennale in a global context, there was no sign of engagement with local culture.

The author engaged as little with the exhibition as the works in the exhibition engaged with the theme.

Negative critiques like this, keep people from visiting the Biennial and get their own impressions.

I
liked the loudness of the exhibition, the show resembled an
overwhelming battlefield, the single works had a very clear message and
were optimistic in their ambition to stand out. There was no subtleness
in the dealing with the "global war issue", maybe the show represented
global war itself. The message I got was, "we make art" rather than "
we make art that deals with our problems"

I spoke to students
from Istanbul about the conflict between eastern and western culture
and their ambition to bring tradition and modernity together. They
said, there was no solution, the east was ruled by the old not by the
young, the young make noise, noise that addresses global issues rather
than their own. Artists seek global attention rather than local
attention.

Questions:

Does a Biennial represent local culture?
Why do critics not engage with local culture or the artists in the exhibition?
What is the benefit of critique that represents a representation of a representation?
How do we deal with a conflict if we are not even interested in taking a closer look?
Is "to externalize" part of eastern culture? If so, was the Biennial not a success in representing that culture?

Video by Fikret Atay