Urban Voices 2020: A RESTROOM CULTURALITYIsidora2020: A RESTROOM CULTURALITY 2020 © Isidora Fićović and Daichi Misawa Installed in New Belgrade, April 2020 A restroom for visitors to reflect upon a cultural boundlessness, or culturality, of restrooms in the past, present and future, which comprises Gestural Rhythm of Dot recording a time dimension of a process of movements in painting, and a musical sound of circulator that may reflect the sound of present culturality in a place of installment. Material: toilet paper, painting or drawing materials (water color), environmental sound, real-time computer processing. When technological impact on society takes its role, might be a time for artists to play their role. Art, to us, does not seem to be something that only tolerates a specific ‘beauty.’ Things that are ‘ugly’ might be actually where humanity is. To be specific, restrooms such as Japanese one—whoa, it’s a space of traditional hospitality, having within touch sensors for flash, toilet seat heats, incredible softness of toilet paper, even a sound of nature—are considered here to be a site for carrying out another artistic investigation. Concept of the artwork generally relates to an idea of presenting a design of restroom as a demonstration of restroom culturality. Based on said concept, the artwork comprises: 1) ‘Gestural Rhythm of Dot’ recording a time dimension of a process of movements in painting, of yellow color symbolizing suns’ movement and of blue color rivers’; and 2) a musical sound of circulator that is synthesized with environmental sound reflecting the sound of present culturality in the place of installation. As a result, the artwork presents another view on restroom design, and also we hope it gives us a chance to reflect upon or test the notion, movement and music concerning restroom in the past, present and future, a moment of relief contemplating the boundlessness of the resting place. 2020 © Isidora Fićović and Daichi Misawa... Read more...talk with #anarchyzen ile söyleşiSabine Küper #anarchyzen is the label of a Turkish Street-artist. During the pandemic days the emptiness of the streets unveils a rich fundus of artworks from Graffiti to complex paintings. They provide a dialogue with the city and its ongoing topics. #anarchyzen is partly using objects in the environment and transforms them creatively. Söyleşi #anarchyzen Talk Cümlere sıkışıp kalmayan bir oluşun yolcusu olarak sanat insanları değiştirici etkileyici bir güce sahip ve insanları birleştiren bi yanı var tıpkı birbirimize çıkan sokaklar gibi… Art is a passenger not limited to words; it has an impressive power that changes people and unites people; just like the streets, which unite us, because we are all walking on their path … Yeldeğirmeni ve istanbulun çeşitli yerlerinde sokak işlerim oldu… gezgin bir yaşantım olduğu için gittiğim bir çok yere bıraktığım izler oluyor… I did street works in Yeldeğirmeni and various parts of Istanbul … there are traces that I left in many places I went, because I am traveling and strolling constantly… Bazen fikir mekanı seçiyor bazen mekan fikri tetikliyor… vapurlar trenler sokak duvarları reklam panoları logar kapakları doğal gaz ve elektrik kutuları baz istasyonları kameralar uyarı afişleri merdivenler okulların cevresi çöp kutuları trafik levhaları ve lambaları vb. her şey ve heryer sanat ile dönüştürmek adına özgür ifade alanım olabiliyor… Sometimes the idea chooses the space, sometimes the space triggers the idea … ferries, trains, street walls, billboards, logar covers, natural gas and electrical boxes, base stations, cameras, warning banners, stairs, garbage boxes close to schools, traffic signs and lamps etc. Any place can be an area of free expression wit artistic tools…... Read more...3D Masks as a New ArmourJulie PetersOvercome the Void of a Plague – The Art of 3D Production In times of material shortage for public goods, artists are often the ones who make the difference, using their creativity, their materials and their solidarity. arthere is an art space in Istanbul, Kadiköy, run by artists who have formed a strong art community. The art centre gathers artists from the Middle East, Turkey and around the world with a management team from Syria, France, and Turkey. Initially founded by and for Syrian artists with difficulties accessing workspace after leaving their country to settle in Istanbul, arthere is a space for artistic creation, away from war and political rivalries. Hosting all sorts of events such as film screenings, installations, performances, workshops and exhibitions, arthere always looks for news ways of promoting creativity and expression, while serving a good cause. That is how Omar Berakdar, initiator and member of arthere, decided to get the machines working. It’s been one week now that the “printing farm” (that’s how he calls the five 3D printers that arthere owns) is working without respite to produce two types of protective equipment against Coronavirus: The first one, a normal triangular plastic mask where a replaceable tissue or filter fit in. Fixed with rubber bands, it is useful for daily situations and easy to clean with an alcoholic disinfectant spray. This mask can be used for medical purposes and successfully replaces the normal ones which should be thrown away every 6 to 8 hours. The second one is a plastic structure supporting a shield for people working in close contact with infected people: in hospitals, supermarkets etc. Those are the “easy ones” that arthere produces the most. They prepare 10 to 20 of them and send them all together to hospitals. They are already in use at hospitals in Bursa and in Gaziantep. The initiative was set up by a community of 3D printer owners (3BoyutluDestek) that drawn more and more attention lately due to the general shortage in available masks for medical staff. The shield’s designs are available online, practical and easy to assemble. When there is need, arthere sends the masks to anybody who asks. But that’s not going to last long… The material needed for the 3D printers are rolls of plastic string. Raw material goes into a tube, gets melted and transformed into a plastic shape. But for the moment, Omar and his team only have a filament called PLA, which is inconvenient because it melts or deforms when heated up to 60°C, common practice in hospitals for disinfecting and cleaning purposes. The material that would be needed is PETG. Since the outbreak of the virus, arthere, as many other places, had to cancel the totality of their program. Being a space for solidarity, for mutual support within the community, making masks was seen as a responsibility. It isn’t only about the masks; it is the position of an art space, an active group of people who want to respond to the crisis. It is possible to support arthere’s initiative by contributing to the required material: PETG filament. It can be sent directly to the art space at the following address: Rasimpasa Mh, Beydagi Sk, 3A, Kadiköy, Istanbul. Or, if more information is needed: Tel. +905380867691 / info@arthereistanbul.com.... Read more...Interview with the artist Elmas DenizIsidoraI’m glad to introduce this raw audio file of conversation with the artist Elmas Deniz, dear friend and colleague that have met a decade ago on the artist in residency program in Istanbul. The interview is about her artwork exhibited at the 16th Istanbul Biennial titled “The Seventh Continent”, lasted from September 14 to November 10, 2019. In her conceptual works, Elmas Deniz calls attention to ecological changes occurring with capitalism and the age of Anthropocene. She examines the changing of the landscape and the deterioration of the nature by humankind. Deniz is showing two works about disappeared flows of water. The first one is a three-dimensional topographic relief of Istanbul, spanning the area from Şişli to Taksim Square. On this relief, lost rivers and creeks are marked on the current roads. Deniz’s other piece centres on a creek near which she grew up, near Bergama. This wall installation, which focusing on the small and insignificant, calls attention to natural and human-caused environmental transformations and extinctions. Interview by Isidora Ficovic, visual artist – isidoravisualart ... Read more...HOW WE LET THE BERLIN WALL FALL TOO EARLY…Thomas BüschWith the “SHLIM-LINE Show” on the 24th of October 89 we (Johannes Beck & Uli M Schueppel, as studio guest Christoph Dreher / Die Haut) produced a show live in the West Berlin Radio100 in which we suddenly announced the fall of the Wall. The whole thing had triggered tremendous reactions – but perhaps not necessarily led to the real fall of the Wall 2 weeks later … or did it? On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of this “SHLIM-LINE SHOW”, as an acoustic journey into a West Berlin night, here for the first time to listen (slightly shortened & sorry, only in German!)... Read more...Soufiane Ababri, Memories of a Solitary CruiseSabine Küper The first solo exhibition in Turkey of Moroccan artist Soufiane Ababri. « Memories of a solitary cruise » at “The Pill” offers an immersive journey into fantasy, western representations, and projections by sensitively avoiding counter-stereotyping. The set-up of the exhibition invites to a kind of shielded Boudoir. The audience has to cross through a thick double-layered brown curtain to enter the exhibition space. “Bedworks” is a title artist Soufiane Ababri invented for his small scaled colorful paintings. Çüneyt Çakırlar, lecturer for film and media studies at Nottingham Trent Universities School of Art and Humanities, underlines: “Ababri swerves from a professionalized and disembodied space of art production to a personal, sexual intimate and affective territory. The bed becomes the studio”. The artist is tired of underlying racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic biases in average societies conscience and in the mainly social pedagogic oriented discourse of political correctness. The value of the esthetics of the memories of a solitary cruise is the mixture of banal daily erotic scenes, satirical quotations of classical idealizing sculpturing features and casual formulated but touching written reflections on home- and homelessness. The Video-scene of the artist in a kitchen brewing coffee has a refreshing anti-exhibitionist touch. The 15th Istanbul Art Biennial in 2017, curated by the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset and entitled “a good neighbor”, had given space to several positions by artist working on queer themes. One of the most impressive positions was Mahmoud Khaled’s Proposal for a House Museum of an Unknown Crying Man (2017). Conceived as a fictional museum, the audience entered a house in the lively neighborhood of Cihangir with an audio guide and discovered that the absent inhabitant of the house was an Egyptian man who moved from Cairo to Istanbul a decade ago. A narrative of queer persecution in Egypt and later in Istanbul is told through this unknown man’s belongings. Soufiane Ababri’s show at The Pill is a valuable continuation of the topic and the metaphor of cruises as an internal journey with a political context. The exhibition-text contextualizes: “The exhibition’s starting point is a public policy polling survey made in the United States in 2015 which found that 30% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats said they support ‘bombing Agrabah’ – the fictional nation of Disney’s Aladdin – the pool emphasis a whopping 41% of Donald Trump voters favor bombing Agrabah adding to the evidence indicating that his support is disproportionately drawn from the least knowledgeable parts of the electorate. This tragi-comic news suddenly reveals the strength of collective belief mechanisms and in this case raises the question of how exoticism influences the way the ‘exotic subject’ is perceived and how he is determined as other. Soufiane Ababri uses parodic tools to deconstruct the multiple layered constructions of what exoticism should be in the eyes of a Western viewer”. This effect isn’t to limit on the Western Viewer. In an age of global manipulation and stupefaction this news would have worked in a lot of places. The current show is extremely recommendable and consolidates the importance of the visionary Gallery in Istanbul’s upcoming district Balat. The Pill had hosted the show “Animal Farm” by Turkish artist Ferhat Özgür during the time of the 15th Istanbul Biennial. It was brilliantly creating connections to the Dystopian novels of George Orwell and the current stage of politics in Turkey. Showing Soufiane Ababri position now is a fine elaboration of a very central topic in the current political atmosphere, where queer topics are banned from most public spaces. The Tangier-born artist has been living in France for the past 16 years since studying at the National School of Decorative Arts and completing a master’s at Lyon’s School of Fine Arts. “My drawings tell the stories of the communities in which I belong. I am a homosexual North African immigrant who is part of a small middle class in a postcolonial generation. My experiences are central to my drawings and I hope they can highlight some of society’s stigmas,” Soufiane told the London based “It’s nice that-Platform last June. Soufiane Ababri, Memories of a Solitary Cruise. 10.01.-23.02.2019. The Pill, Müselpaşa Cad. No.181, 34087 Balat- Istanbul ... Read more...Inside the InvisibleDavid Siegel“Time appears longer when you cannot see.” A poignant and powerful phrase from the beginning of Kamen Stoyanov’s documentary IN-VISIBLE. The narrator emerges from a railway tunnel into Slovenia much like one of Plato’s chosen cave-dwellers. The perception of time is not the only thing that is about to change. Part-allegory and part-hero’s journey, the film tacks along the course of darkness, discovery, light, and the role of the guide along the way. The classic narrative structure beautifully compliments the documentary’s own exploration of the invisible/visible as clear parallels to darkness/light. The grounding in Ljubljana is a reminder that these are not just concepts reserved for mythology. They are happening everywhere as a kind of everyday yin and yang. Where there is visible, there is invisible. And if there is any truth the the concept, the invisible world is equally counterbalancing the visible once – with equal importance. As the title suggests, there is a path inside the visible. Stoyanov takes us in invisible Ljubljana. We meet two guides in Marko Pogačnik and Taubi in a path of discovery of the hidden Ljubljana. Each a sage in their own way, Stoyanov assumes the role of seeker and transmitter of their wisdom, allowing the two men to speak of an invisible truth. Marko offers a path into a world of metaphysics – dreamlike and symbolic. Taubi, worldly and raw, blends politics and emotions from the deep fringes of urban Ljubljana. The juxtaposition is evocative and enjoyably open-ended, leaving room for personal choice in a journey. There are always decisions to be made in how to regard newly visible places. Far from preachy or patronizing, the film echoes the words of a third guide and another invisible world: “I don’t help anyone. I give you only a place.” -Don Pierino Despite their differences, Taubi, Pogačnik, Pierino, and Stoyanov echo a similar kind of compassion which creates space for what might be found in invisible worlds. Where there is invisible, there is often neglect and suffering that elicits a strong desire to help. But maybe it is as Don Pierino says – rather than trying to help, maybe we could do more with the act of providing a place. Film Trailer: https://vimeo.com/kamenstoyanov/in-visibletrailer For more information visit : www.kamenstoyanov.com... Read more...The Lion, the “Which” and the War ToldDavid SiegelThere is a bit of Darwin to Katharina Swoboda’s lions. An origin of a species of lion, one might say, migrating and changing despite being made of stone. The Lion of Atlanta: a Research Story explores the one of the distant relatives of the Lion of Lucerne, which has made its home in Atlanta, USA since 1894. Swoboda’s film is a purposefully incomplete tapestry. One that is an enchantingly strange patchwork, which captures the lion’s survival and fitness wonderfully following its creation as a monument to confederate soldiers from the American Civil War. The 124 year-old lion’s environment is a fascinating mixture of ghosts, graveyards, changing allegiances, living lions, hollywood elites, and classic literature. The often eerie atmosphere and cuts seem to amplify the disembodied nature of a radically shifting area in a relatively short historical timeline. The Lion of Atlanta must too be disembodied to be properly suited to the space. Further supported by the film’s audio, Swoboda plays with evocative acoustic contrasts. The research story shifts between pop songs and songs of American history. Additionally, the narration moves between European accented English and a native speaker. Two subtle and interesting ways suggesting of the lion’s lineage and changes over time. Lucky for us, there is an upcoming prologue and an epilogue. We look forward to Swoboda’s findings as she travels to distant shores as the lion before her. It leaves us wondering: is she the Lioness and what would Darwin have to say about these transformations? The Lion of Atlanta: a Research Story is currently showing at “Löwen Safari.” The exhibition is curated by Peter Fischer at Kunsthalle Luzern in Switzerland. The video was produced as part of L21 «Lion Monument 21» A Multi-Annual Project by Kunsthalle Luzern 2017-2021, which deals with the Lion Monument in Lucerne. More information on the project can be found at: About L21... Read more...Regular Heroes: William Messner-LoebsDavid SiegelIn less than a week, nearly $10,000 has been raised for a local NGO in Howell, Michigan (USA). The organization is called The Severe Weather Network and it is more than meteorology. They provide coordinated support for the homeless in their region but become a life-or-death service to many during the otherwise deadly winter months. In 2017, Howell documented 1003 cases of homelessness in a city of under 10,000 people. Of the documented cases, 445 were homeless students. The Severe Weather Network has seen a recent surge in funding due to a local news article, social media, and one of the giants of comic book art. But sadly, not for his acclaimed work. For decades, William “Bill” Messner-Loebs (now 69 years old) helped bring marginalized narratives into his runs with mainstream comic characters: DC’s first openly gay character (Pied Piper), a modern version of Wonder Woman (credited in the 2017 film), struggles of victims and the mentally ill (The Maxx), and homelessness (The Flash, Bliss Alley). The last one stings the most, as Bill is no longer raising awareness about homelessness in masterful packagings of visual art and scripting. He is living it. Like homelessness everywhere in the world, it comes with a stigma. But homelessness in America comes with a special kind of cruelty. There is a severe lack of social support systems and a form of self-determination social shame “for not being good enough.” But Bill Messner-Loebs is one of the living masters, a recipient of an Inkpot and a Bill Finger Award (two of the most prestigious awards in comics), which should be a wake up call to any young artist working today. Even the best talents and most reputable careers are not immune to more powerful storms: accidents, vicious forms of capitalism, and sometimes both at the same time. It is even more incredible that Bill has done it all with only one arm. Bill is not the problem. For stories like this, it is a sobering reminder that superheroes don’t exist. Worse still, superpowers with the means to help (Marvel, DC, even the United States of America) consistently turn a blind eye toward enacting meaningful policy around worker security. Lack of compassion at the highest levels is a problem. But regular heroes do exist. And from the outpouring of support on social media and small NGOs like The Severe Weather Network, there is an ever-growing movement of ordinary people who are connecting and willing to say: “We see you. We are here to help.” Watch the news segment on William Messner-Loebs here. Click here for GoFundMe page for The Severe Weather Network organization. If you would like to contact Bill directly, you can email fox2newsdesk@foxtv.com... Read more...Monument at Brandenburger TorThomas BüschInstallation with three buses by Syrian artists Manaf Halbouni at Brandenburger Tor, Berlin. In Aleppo, a similar barricade of three bus wrecks had been erected 2015 as a screen in front of snipers. A symbol of the madness of the Syrian civil war … buses with which citizens should go to work, students to university as a barricade against the enemy. The artwork came under criticism after a photograph suggested that the buses in the Syrian city, which had been destroyed by the civil war, had originally been set up by the Islamic terror group Ahrar Al-Sham. But does it change the symbol of the installation? Responsible for the presentation of the installation is the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, which annually receives around ten million euros in grants from the state of Berlin. On behalf of the theater, the German army had brought the monument with low-loaders from Dresden to Berlin in April. Here it is now until the 26th of November in front of the Brandenburg Tor. Manaf Halbouni left Syria 2009 2 year bfeore the revolution. The temporary installation was opened in the presence of artist Halbouni, Gorki Theater co-director Shermin Langhoff and the patron of the action, Berlin’s cultural senator Klaus Lederer. The sculpture “Monument” was on the Dresden Neumarkt from February to April 2017. There it triggered massive protests. Supporters of the right-wing populist “Pegida” movement and the far-right identity movement saw in the Aleppo buses a provocation. In their view, this was a distraction to the commemoration that commemorates the bombing of the capital of Saxony during the Second World War on 13 February each year. An overview in the foyer of the Maxim Gorki Theater informs about the backgrounds and the reception of “Monument”. There will be an open artist talk with Halbouni on 17 November in the Lichtsaal in the Palais am Festungsgraben, Berlin. The sculpture will remain in front of the Berlin landmark until the 26th of November. 17.11.17 : Artist Talk about the Installation “Monument” 6.pm at Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin ... Read more...
