New Istanbul Dream
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Istanbul artist in residence by the Federal Chancellery of Austria – Kamen Stoyanov – started to work during his stay ( September – November 2016) on an experimental movie that deals with the construction of the third airport in Istanbul under the title New Istanbul Dream.
Turkey is constructing its third international airport (the world’s largest), tentatively named Istanbul New Airport—a future ultra modern facility capable of handling substantial airline traffic surges through the ancient city, scheduled to open in February 2018. Atatürk Airport will be closed down once the new airport is operational.
This airport under construction is one of Turkey’s most controversial projects in recent times for a number of reasons, from problems with the area’s soil to the airport’s potential environmental impact, as it is located in the Northern Forest Area, which experts say is of huge importance for Istanbul’s ecological sustainability.
Other aspects of concern relate to alleged links between project contractors and President Erdogan. In late 2013, amid a corruption scandal, wiretapped conversations appeared to suggest that Mr Erdogan had put pressure on businessmen behind the IGA (Istanbul Grand Airport company) consortium to acquire a media group formerly run by his son-in-law.
New Istanbul Dream investigates the counstruction side and process of the third Istanbul Airport situated north west of Istanbul, on the black sea. The film shows the changing of the environment through the construction works. It has also an additional performative layer binding the whole movie. This layer opens a space of an imaginary and activist movement and searches literary and metaphorically for a way out. The sound includes records from the construction side and the surrounding, a whole record from an answering of the questionary of the IGA (Istanbul Grand Airport company) by an citizen of the village of Akpinar and records of people from the villages around the airport talking about their dreams and wishes.
Short documentary-experimental movie, ca. 30 min. 2016-2017
Kamen Stoyanov the Bulgarian artist living in Vienna often deals with the questions of identity, migration, historical definition, social and cultural communication in his works by gathering first-hand experiences of the social, artistic and cultural relations of the given country. He uses the urban public places and the architectural environment as exhibition spaces, themes of film and photography and contrasts them with the current or inherited cultural relations, habits. The real participants of cultural life and he himself pose in his provocative and ironic works.