[spectre] No Ifs, No Buts | Opening: 30 November, DEPO - Istanbul

[Gulsen Bal]

you are cordially invited to the opening of the exhibition:

*°** **No Ifs, No Buts *| 1 December - 9 January 2010





Opening: 30 November, 18.00 - 21.00



Project curators: Gülsen Bal and Walter Seidl**

*
*

Participant artists:



Nevin Aladağ

Zbyněk Baladrán

Ursula Biemann

Esra Ersen

Marina Gržini*ć* / Aina Šmid

*Siniša Ilić *

Daniel Knorr

Aglaia Konrad

Marco Poloni

Nada Prlja

Santiago Sierra

*
*



Close up, Intro to the project:



The changing experiences with time and space formed the post-modern and
postcolonial subject, which, according to Fredric Jameson, has been exposed
to a loss of maps, and thus attaches less importance to the geographical
departure and arrival points than to interim stages, which are mostly
perceived in passing, yet producing significant visual, linguistic and
cultural codes of interaction, while the economic transition flow of the
past decades necessitated an increased concentration on various forms of
signification in mainly urban environments.



In exploring the new ways of thinking about the multiplicity of
subject-positions “that begins from the critique of its present conditions
(‘being’) in order to embark upon the careful construction of mechanisms of
engagement (‘becoming’)”[1], <#12c69855b7cf0645__ftn1> we are interested in
how this might offer the possibility of a “new” space. This is intended to
produce relational entities in which an interrelation takes place as “an
activity of an un-framing* *[…] which leads to a recreation and a
reinvention of the subject itself.” <#12c69855b7cf0645__ftn2> [2] This is
where “identity-form” can be re-evaluated beyond the “I-other”* *dichotomy
and beyond representational boundaries.* *



This brings up a question: how is all this manifested within the realm of
creative practice and brought into the spaces of art?



Revealing the rapid transformation of several turning points in pursing a
nexus that constitutes new forms of life within the framework of different
topologies is the starting point for the exhibition *No Ifs, No Buts*, which
focuses on the geopolitical implications of what governs the walls of the
former East and West divide. The questions of geopolitical topology find
themselves addressed in specific cultural conditions. The latter suggests
that the sensitiveness of these issues marks the production of cultural
spaces reflecting the respective representational politics. It is therefore
necessary to engage or share an artistic platform of discussion as one of
the remits of this multi-layered project. By discussing radical modes of
self-referentiality which allow *No Ifs, No Buts*, thereby forming counter
strategies to globalised forces which restrict personal space, the
exhibition raises questions about trans-cultural forms of geopolitical and
economic conditions, which lead to a new mapping of terrains on a visual and
discursive level.


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[1] O’Sullivan, S.* *and* *Zepke, S. *Deleuze and Contemporary Art*,
Edinburgh University Press,2009, p.2

[2] Guattari, F. *Chaosmosis: An Ethicoaesthetic Paradigm*. Indiana
University Press, 1995, p.131


**

*
*

*Artist info**:***

* *

*Nevin Aladağ *

*Hochparterre, *video documentation of a live performance, 2010**

* *

Nevin Aladağ spoke with the residents of the Große Bergstrasse in Hamburg´s
district Altona about their living conditions and experiences they have had
>From these encounters she created an audio portrait of the street.

In her performative work “Mezzanine” (“Hochparterre”) the multi-voiced
assemblage is represented by the single face of the actress who moves her mo
uth according to the playback and outlines the invisible speakers through
the display of a precise mime.

Since all of the statements collected by Aladağ share the same interface,
namely the face of the performer, none of the speakers run the risk of being
perceived as prototypes of a sociotope. As confident subjects of a staging
that continuously and transparently refers to itself, they offer a rich
description of their environment. The result is a concrete poetry of the
city, in which spectator, actress and generators of the original soundtrack
become actors of a fair play with authenticity and curiosity.**

* *

*Zbyněk Baladrán***

*randez-vous nowhere*, video installation, 2008* *

* *

The film is founded on the confrontation between the Communist Manifesto and
the utopian ideas of functionalist architect Karel Honzík. Based upon the
film footage of socialist Czechoslovakia a question is posited here
regarding the further development of post-communist countries. The Communist
Manifesto and the concepts of Karel Honzík, who in the early '60s developed
in his literary work the idea of a perfect communist society as the
inevitable goal of cosmic matter, serve as a reflective bridge for
considerations directed towards liberal capitalist societies.

* *

*Ursula Biemann*

*X-Mission*,* *video essay, single channel, 40', 2008**

* *

*X-Mission* explores the logic of the refugee camp as one of the oldest
extraterritorial zones. Taking the Palestinian refugee camps as a case in
point, the video engages with the different discourses – legal, symbolic,
urban, mythological, and historical – that give meaning to this exceptional
space. According to International Law, the Palestinian refugee represents
indeed the exception within the exception.



In the course of 60 years they had to build a civil life in the camps,
fostering an intense microcosm with complex relations to homeland and
Diaspora. The refugee camp harbours an intense microcosm with complex
relations to homeland and to related communities abroad. Given the vital
connections among the separated Palestinian populations, the video attempts
to place the Palestinian refugee in the context of a global Diaspora and
considers post-national models of belonging which have emerged through the
networked matrix of this widely dispersed community. Special case studies
include the reconstruction of Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in Lebanon and the
entanglement between the Qualified Industrial Zone in Jordan recruiting its
labour force from China and India and the among Palestinian refugees of a
nearby camp.



The narrative relies on a series of interviews made with experts (lawyer,
journalist, architect, anthropologist, historian) interspersed with
multiple-layer video montage deriving from both downloaded and self-recorded
sources. Speakers include Susan Akram, Bilal Khabeiz, Samar Kanafani, Ismaël
Sheikh Hassan, Oroub elAbed, Beshara Doumani. The video also reflects on the
fine distinctions between humanitarian and artistic missions.



*Esra Ersen *

*Which One You Choose*, video installation, 17’39’, 2003

The work *Which One You Choose* confronts ‘gender-specific’ positioning in
very specific contexts -Turkey and Japan – as well as the issue of
identification while it provides alternatives to conventional ideas against
the backdrop of multilayered hierarchical structures.

This sub-set has been brought together in the context of “the constitutive
political subject as well as the class that is excluded - *de facto*, if not
*de jure* - from politics’” out of the practical reading of Agamben. In the
same line of enquiry; the discourse on overcoming this fundamental
biopolitical fracture, Esra Ersen draws our attention to the precarization
that has emerged in the past decade, forcing us to rethink of a specific
conjuncture of a simultaneous relationship of the proliferation of the
sites. This reflects the importance of the “politics of space” that
reinforces the issues further by the eventuality of the possibilities for a
variety of forms of precarization in recognition of a dialogical
subjectivity to come into existence beyond gender-specific’ positioning and
identity politics at a distance from the cognitive capitalist game.


**

*Marina Gržini**ć** / **Aina Šmid* in collaboration with Zvonka Simčič

Naked Freedom, video, 25 min., 2010



This video work, connecting Ljubljana, Belgrade and Durham USA, presents a
conceptual political space of engagement that allows for rethinking what
local community is. It conceptualizes the possibility of social change under
the conditions of finance capitalism and its financialization processes that
permeate art, the social, political and critical discourse. The collective
process of making the video “Naked Freedom” is about the enactment of
social, political and collective performative practices for the screen that
resonates with the performers’ own off-screen lives.



In Ljubljana seven young activists, musicians, poets and youth workers,
members of the Youth Center Medvode, a village near Ljubljana, discuss
capitalism, colonialism, education and the power of art as a possibility for
politics. They also rethink the possibility for a radicalization of a proper
life. The work is not only recognition of local youth power but as well an
initiation, through the making of the video work, to social relations that
will make visible those agencies seeking new possibilities.

**

*Siniša Ilić *

*A Letter to Heiner M/Version 2*, wall installation and performance,
2009/2010



The joint work of Siniša Ilić and Goran Ferčec *A Letter to Heiner M/Version
2* (working title) has began during KulturKontakt’s AiR program in Vienna as
research into the wide field of potential relations between text and
picture. A performance text by Goran Ferčec *A Letter to Heiner M* was taken
as the basis for Ilić’s work: a reading presented in story boards.



Ilić is interested in this text as instructions for performance executed in
the borderline area between the private sphere and artistic statement, but
not necessarily linked to culture as an institute. This reveals the process
of the continuous re-articulation of our own position in the world we live
in and work. For this exhibition, Siniša Ilić will present one possible
combination of picture, text and instructions for the audience to connect
and create relations between them.

* *

*Daniel Knorr *

*Architecture Bucureşti 2001/2005*, photographs

Courtesy of Kontakt - The Art Collection of Erste Group

* *

The work Architecture Bucureşti 2001/2005 consists of 26 unique photographs
made by Nea’ Costică, a street portrait photographer, after the instructions
of the artist. The photographs deal with urban wasteland and the
construction as well as deconstruction of new and old buildings. The phase
of urban transformation of Bucharest is shown in these photographs, which
are made with an old-fashioned plate camera, referencing to the uniqueness
of each photograph, which exists in both positive and negative prints,
showing the ambiguities of Bucharest’s changing urban outlook. The black-and
white images convey a spooky character of the town as a place where
corruption and dubious business is still under way. Meeting the standards
set by the EU is still a difficult task for a city, which has for a long
time been seen as Communism’s most biggest city, and which is gradually
adapting to the overarching European norms. Reforms in urban planning become
a task, which still seems difficult to tackle with regard to the city’s past
and future.


*Aglaia Konrad*

*Desert** **Cities**, *video, 2008**

* *

Aglaia Konrad focuses a direct gaze on cities such as Cairo, Alexandria, and
Anwar el Sadat. This is not a classic documentary video: The artist asked
two writers to come up with their own text, which makes the video oscillate
between reality and fiction through the voice of the narrators. The video
shows the application of “modernist” principles to architectural development
in desert landscapes. They spotlight an improbable dialogue between imported
models and vernacular elements, constructions and sites, desert and
communities, modernity and tradition. People moving into these buildings try
to find a new exclusivity for social as well as living standards. Yet, many
of these new housing projects from the 1990s are already falling into ruins
and got abandoned; raising questions about the necessity for such grand
endeavours far from traditional traffic routes. How do deserts attract
attention and how easily are the dreams of utopian places destroyed?
Konrad’s video is testimony to these unusual developments.      **



*Marco Poloni *

*Persian Gulf Incubator*, installation, 2008



In *Persian Gulf Incubator*, Marco Poloni’s starting point was a found
amateur photograph from the 1970s. It shows a woman waving farewell amid a
group of passengers on the Italian luxury liner “T/S Raffaello” in the
harbour of New York. This photograph encountered by chance provides the
backdrop for an (also autobiographically motivated) investigation - in his
childhood Poloni actually took this ship from New York to Naples - that
climaxed in a stealthy survey trip the artist took to the Iranian nuclear
compound of Bushehr, which is a primary target point of current US
warmongering. The result is a large medial wall installation that inexorably
generates a dramatic scenario.**

* *

*Nada Prlja *

*Queue,* installation, 2010



The project considers the phenomenon of ‘waiting’ - referring to the
obligatory queuing at airports’ passport control, when entering a foreign
country. The visitors, upon entering the gallery, find themselves queuing in
line, in meandering lanes created by line barriers, without the possibility
to escape, or redirect the direction.



*Santiago** Sierra *

*Polyurethane sprayed on the backs of 10 workers*, video, single channel,
66’08’,* *2004

Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery (London)

* *

The work was created by spraying ten men and women with polyurethane - a
poisonous liquid plastic that hardens quickly in contact with air. What
makes this piece so controversial is the fact that all the ten hired
participants were Iraqis. The themes, then, are the Iraq war, chemical
warfare and the torture of Iraqi prisoners. Despite being toxic,
polyurethane is commonly used for household insulation, so it has
connotations of both safety and danger - a metaphor for the combination of
defence and aggression that motivated the invasion of Iraq.



A video projection documents the entire process. Lined up in groups, jets of
polyurethane spattering over their backs, the participants have to wear
chemically resistant clothing and a thick sheet of plastic draped over their
backs and heads. Given the context, it comes across as a kind of
militarised, updated version of the veil, that most stereotypical of ciphers
for Islam, emblematic of a range of Western anxieties about the Middle East.
A parallel can be drawn here with the hidden atrocities of warfare: war
crimes and torture. The idea is that war, and certainly the Iraq war, is a
continuation of capitalism’s inherent violence. **





*supported by*:



Anadolu Kültür A.Ş.





Initially this project started as a work in progress at *Open Space -
Zentrum für Kunstprojekte *from of 7 September - 3 October 2010. For further
information:  <http://www.openspace-zkp.org/>

http://www.openspace-zkp.org



the previous edition of the project was supported by:



BM:UKK

Stadt Wien - Kulturabteilung MA 7




*° **About DEPO:*



DEPO is a culture and debate centre serving as a platform supporting the
collaboration of artists, artist collectives, civic and cultural
organizations in Turkey, the South Caucasus, the Middle East and the
Balkans.



Address:

Lüleci Hendek Caddesi No.12
Tophane

34425 İstanbul

*e-mail:* depo at depoistanbul.net



http://www.depoistanbul.net/en/index.asp
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