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Press Release
The conceptual framework of the 9th International İstanbul Biennial was announced by the curators Charles Esche and Vasıf Kortun at a press meeting held on Tuesday, October 26th at 17:00 at The Marmara Hotel. The 9th International İstanbul Biennial, organised by the İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, will take place in the city from 16 September to 30 October 2005. For the first time the Biennial will be developed through a working collaboration between the director of Van Abbemuseum, Charles Esche and the Director of Platform Garanti CAC, Vasıf Kortun. Esche and Kortun are working together on an exhibition structure that folds out of and reveals its context - the city of İstanbul. The title of this Biennial is "İstanbul", referring both to the real urban location and the imaginative charge that this city represents for the world. "İstanbul" as a metaphor, as a prediction, as a lived reality, and an inspiration has many stories to tell and the Biennial will attempt to tap directly into this rich history and its possibilities. The curators will not be using any of the monuments located in the historical peninsula, preferring to work in sites that have a more common reference to the every-day, the physical legacy of modernity and the shift to a consumer economy. 9th International İstanbul Biennial Collaborates With Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven Another distinct change is to propose "İstanbul" not as a singular event, but as a series of articulated programmes with two core projects. To this end, the Biennial will be simultaneously extended to the Van AbbeMuseum in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The Eindhoven exhibition will be a parallel project, sharing some artists and drawing on the history of past İstanbul Biennials to represent the idea of 'elsewhere' in all its complexity within an international art museum. In doing so, it will pose questions about the hierarchy between the stable museum context and the transient Biennial event. The works and artists will therefore have the chance to represent themselves in the two situations that have most privileged art in the 21st century: the biennale and the museum. Other venues following Eindhoven are being negotiated at the present.
Artists and Works Esche and Kortun will also select fewer artists than before and start in the region before working outwards to Asia, Europe and beyond. Esche and Kortun plan to select artworks on two grounds. Firstly, by commissioning works by artists who deal directly with the urban conditions of the city, its history and future. Secondly, by selecting works that they judge as capable of provoking a contrast to İstanbul or providing a conscious estrangement from the surrounding reality. The Biennial will organise long-term residencies in İstanbul for some artists and attempt to give each individual presentation greater substance than traditionally done in art biennials. Esche and Kortun have chosen not to entertain general artist portfolios on this occasion, as they wish to concentrate their own and potential artists' interest on the concept of the Biennial. Therefore, only project proposals relating to the conceptual framework will be considered. Proposals can be e-mailed or posted to the addresses below: İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts List of artists will be finalised by the end of February 2005. As part of the presence of the Biennial in İstanbul and elsewhere a series of talks, conversations, and small events willl be organized, beginning with the panel discussion following this press conference. |
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