[spectre] UNCOVERED - Nicosia International Airport

[Basak Senova]

UNCOVERED
NICOSIA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Cyprus
2010-2013

www.uncovered-cyprus.com
info at uncovered-cyprus.com

UNCOVERED is a long-term research-based art and media project under the
curatorship of Basak Senova and Pavlina Paraskevaidou. It was initiated in
2010, based on Cypriot artist Vicky Pericleous¹s idea for an artistic
intervention at the Nicosia International Airport, subsequently submitted as
a proposal to the UNDP by Özgül Ezgin and Argyro Toumazou parallel to the
peace-negotiations process. Three terms ­ ³memory construction,² ³commons,²
and ³control mechanisms² ­ form the conceptual springboard for the project,
which begins by developing a space of encounter for cultural producers from
across the divided island.

Lying abandoned inside the buffer zone since July 1974, off limits for the
local population, the Nicosia Airport represents a spatial order generated
by 36 years of UN control. The airport is a riddle nested within paradoxical
questions of protection ­ Protected. Unprotected. Covered. Uncovered.
Protected for whom? Protected from whom? ­ It is a spatial lapse, an episode
of total invisibility.

The Nicosia airport once served as the central port of entry and departure
from the country. Now empty and protected from view, its former importance
exists only in the islanders¹ childhood memories. The novelty of its
architecture, with its much-hailed new terminal, has acquired a rich patina
of forgetting. A monument to a failed modernism, the airport embodies a
history that is written only to be erased and re-written all over again. Due
to the historical significance of the airport ­ along with its role in
personal histories of division and survival in a state of suspended
animation ­ there is no doubt that the airport ­ the building, the site, the
land it occupies ­ plays a critical role in the construction of the island¹s
collective memory. UNCOVERED, then, places key importance on issues of
memory and amnesia.

UNCOVERED examines how control mechanisms have been operating in the island
on multiple levels via the airport. The project explores how this space,
frozen in time, indicates and exposes the operational and organizational
logics of control that have evolved on the island over the past decades. One
can even see it as an attempt to understand the ways protocols can be
customized and complex systems can be manipulated by control mechanisms.

UNCOVERED also questions the politics of space as it has been exercised on
the island, challenges the validity of control mechanisms, and asks
questions that move beyond the ubiquitous mnemonic to pain in order to
ultimately reclaim the island¹s ³commons.²

The project¹s two phases are to span three years. With the Nicosia
International Airport, located within the UN Protected Area, as its point of
departure, the project aims to engage the local population closely, working
with artists from both sides of the island to produce works and content that
incorporate diverse critical perspectives on the ongoing conditions of
instability. The first phase is dedicated to data collection and the
development of these local perspectives. It will culminate in an exhibition,
seminar, and book launch in October 2011. The second phase will expand to
include international partners, and will focus on data processing and case
analysis through panels, workshops, and publications. This second phase will
give priority to the commission and presentation of international art
projects under the auspices of UNCOVERED, both on Cyprus and abroad, while
developing and improving facilities for art production on Cyprus itself.

The curatorial work of the UNCOVERED project will be presented and discussed
by Basak Senova during the Sharjah Art Foundation¹s 4th Annual March
Meeting. The March Meeting is a three-day cultural symposium featuring
presentations by international artists, institutions, and art professionals
on artistic practice and production in the Middle East, North Africa, and
South Asia. It will precede the 10th edition of the Sharjah Biennial from
March 16 to May 16, 2011.

The partners of UNCOVERED are European-Mediterranean Art Association, The
Pharos Arts Foundation, and Anadolu Kültür.