Collaborative Practice

Non profit Institutions and Spaces, Artist Initiatives and Art Production Centers foster experimental and spontaneous approaches to act on political, social and cultural developments. They are not that determined in form and content and offer wider possibilities to act and react in productive discussions. They are not just showing artworks as such.
This was one point of the 1st Artist Initiatives Istanbul Meeting as a parallel event of the 11th Istanbul Biennial. But more than this, the intention was to assemble the Initiatives, Institutions and Spaces towards a collaborative practice. Especially while Istanbul is one of the 2010 European Capital of Culture.
If you look at the contemporary art scene, these ways of handling and producing are quite significant: Artists working in an interdisciplinary manner and in networks, open spaces and artistic production, where limits become variable and fluid.
To advance these ways of thinking and working, the several initiatives should build collective structures and collaborations. Ideas and activities could be shared and concentrated. And with these collaborations, new projects could be initiated. With regard to Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture, different possibilities can be discussed: guest artists and guest curators, residencies, cultural and site specific projects, cultural and artist exchange, touring exhibition, discussion networks, workshops, meetings, magazines etc.
So maybe there could be more than moving artworks from one site to another: artistic production and discussion could be encouraged. And those Initiatives have the best structures to initiate such international projects.