1. General Information
> Co-Organizer: Nomad in Istanbul, Turkey
> Date: November 14st ~ December 30th 2007
> Venue: Café VW, yri cafe, Cafe factory
> Curator's talk: October 22nd 2007 @ Total Museum of Contemporary Art
> Support: Seoul Foundation of Art and Culture, middle corea
2. Introduction
Detecting Digital Culture in Turkey
Turkey is still spontaneously confronting diverse socio-political realities, demographically unbalanced economic hardships, and replacements of collective amnesia patterns with implanted sequences and narrations of history enclosed by televisual lenses. We are also unquestionably experiencing social transformations explicit of the new ontological conditions brought forth by global conditions based on rapid technological developments. This picture points to a new generation of Turkish artists, who propose new channels for the global interaction of economy and information. They consider inquiries about these social transformations as their new territories of research, to be approached with different mentalities, strategies, perspectives and modes of production. In this respect, this screening is an attempt to define the local digital culture, which is the domain of these artists and their projects through three specific projects: NOMAD-TV.network (2004-present); the implementation of the Canadian Festival HTMlles (2006) in Istanbul along with the active local women artists who produce in digital culture; and Upgrade!Istanbul (2005-present).
Basak Senova, curator of Nomad
3. Selected art works
Turkish Light Arts
2002
ExtraStruggle aka Memed Erdener transfers his graphical visual language to alternative modes of visual production. Thereby, he produces imageries as an amalgamation of national and popular signs, codes and symbols with black humour. The work displays similarities, oppositions and the common interests of ideological discourses that appear as harsh conflicts in Turkey.
Fast-Iman
2003
"Fast-Iman" questions the relevance of religious messages for contemporary life. In another level, it also documents the consequences of neo-liberal economy to our way of living. The video documents a marketing strategy that a mosque in Istanbul develops by running lines from the Quaran on a digital display screen above the entry of a mosque.
The hairdresser
2004
The video of Basak Kaptan and Maria Frycz draws the viewer in a realm where a story is told through a set of still photographs, yet accompanied with a soundtrack in which the time flows in some strangeway, while giving the sense of being there. Have we been there, really?
I/O Interface Overbloated
2005
We are living a transition period. Conventional media has mutated into something which strives to fit in the massive amount of digital data into its limited analogue space. “I/O Interface Overbloated” exposes the bottleneck condition in which new digital data try to flow through the television screen. The struggle between the narrated news and visual data feed creates bizarre conditions and undefined zones for the viewer/data receiver. The conventional TV screen is encapsulated by the new data forcing to find a way to flow.
Nigar
2006
This video work contains a casual talk with 94 years old woman, who had migrated from Bulgaria to Turkey when she was young. Her personal collection of photographs inhabits disparate hints of her life while she is sharing her fragmented personal memories. “Nigar” refrains from any immersive storytelling as Muratoglu perceptibly had no intention to build any intimacy with the subject. Yet, the sincere memories build fascinating links to unofficial and untold history of the 20th century.
Lost Postcard
2004-2005
Selda Asal and Ceren Oykut take the city as the center of their research and productions. The narration of Lost Postcard forms a fragmented landscape of Istanbul. Selda Asal, who works mostly with video to explore ways of documenting visual memory vignettes, collaborates with Ceren Oykut for this project. Oykut’s drawings also take daily life experiences in the city - mostly “Istanbul” - as the setting of her works. Her drawings create plastic realities through mundane details of life in the company of visual rhetoric. These drawings take part in multidisciplinary projects concentrating on Istanbul’s sounds and cult.
