Opening Speech - 1st International Artist Initiatives Istanbul Meeting

Opening Speech - 1st International Artist Initiatives Istanbul Meeting

Istanbul 2010 Culture Capital of Europe is a project to discover and establish a new map of dialogue and collaboration between state and local government policies and activities and civil cultural investments, initiatives and systems as well as a cultural reciprocity act between Turkey and EU, utilizing Istanbul culture panorama as a tool and a model.

The culture industry with its state and local government components in Turkey has maintained its modernist infrastructure up until the 90’s despite the consequences of the post-modern transformations and needs to be re-organized in its content and form. The private sector and individual culture initiatives on the other hand have acquired the knowledge and skill of employing the force of culture as a manifestation of democratic processes, in regards to the models developed in EU countries since the late 80’s. Within this impeded cultural panorama, the subject of culture industry, the creative individual and producer, needs a new platform of collaboration and communication to deal with the global cultural requirements and assets.

Based on the ideas and proposal of its advisory committee (Erdağ Aksel, Sabancı University, Melih Görgün, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Tayfun Erdoğmuş, Marmara University, Ahmet Öktem, Yıldız Technic University and Nermin Saybaşılı, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) the Visual Arts Section have developed and promoted projects that mainly focus on the creative individual, civil initiatives and their visions as well as on the infrastructural betterment of the existing culture industry.

The Visual Arts Section is presenting the following policy-related matters pertaining to professional artists and the arts sector as a whole, in accordance with the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Master Plan.

Since 1980’s visual arts in Turkey is undergoing a remarkable development due to the investments of the private sector and the contribution of art faculties of universities. However, the developing culture industry is mainly based on “exhibiting” rather than “production of art works”. The insufficiency of international art fairs and collectors is also contributing to this deficiency in art production. Therefore, and within the above mentioned objectives the board indicates that three main underperformances, namely mediocrity, unfeasibility and deficiency of art production can be improved and enhanced within the opportunities of Istanbul 2010. The focal point in this decision was the key-subject of culture industry, the creative individual and producer and its audience. It is clear that the artists of all disciplines need a new vision in the developing cultural industry and a new platform of collaboration and communication with the EU and global cultural partners.

The board aimed to support the main objectives of

• Provoking excellence and diversity in creativity,
• Connecting people and the contemporary arts,
• Empowering the infrastructures and networks of the contemporary arts sector.

The board of Visual Art Section therefore focused its interest and attentions on:

1. Advising, facilitating, realizing all the artistic and theoretical projects and activities conceived and planned for Istanbul 2010 by universities, cultural NGO’s, private sector art centers, private galleries and artist initiatives;

2. Supporting, providing and maintaining workshops, artist materials and essential technologies for nterdisciplinary art production;
3. Introducing Public Programming for communities of all backgrounds to give them the opportunity to participate in and benefit from the broadest possible range of artistic experiences.

The Visual Art Section is presenting and coordinating three main projects for the above mentioned objectives:
1. LIVES AND WORKS IN ISTANBUL International artists are invited to live and work in Istanbul and collaborate with local artists. For this project studio, material and technology facilities will be provided and maintained.
2. PORTABLE ART Exhibition and performance projects, curated or organised by curators, and artist initiatives are encouraged and supported for public programming in arts and culture and will be launched in the existing culture and art centres of local municipalities; the aim here, is to reach audiences in remote districts of Istanbul.
3. FORUMS Theoretical and critical forums are promoted, supported and organized in collaboration with universities, NGO’s and artist initiatives.

Since 3 days because of IMF Summit, Istanbul is the centre of global capitalism. Yesterday a young journalist has protested Mr. Kahn by throwing his shoe. It is very fortunate that he was not jailed like the Iraqi Journalist. Maybe this means that we have some democracy and free speech and expression rights in this country.

I am inviting you to compare your position to the position of the participants of IMF meeting. We are here, artists, cultural operators and private art and culture initiatives, coming together for the first time in Istanbul with a limited financial support –here I have to mention that this money is purely public money- to discuss our visions, goals and problems and to contribute to the improvement and expansion of the global art and culture. There is no difference in the form of our meeting. We have a nice space, we have technological facilities, and we have a nice reception… However in its content there are profound differences. Our main subject matter is not material profit but theoretical and aesthetic creativity. What we are discussing here or the reason of our meeting represent the nucleus, the main factor of the crisis of global capitalism; namely the lack of implantation and distribution of contemporary art theories and productions to larger audiences as a consequence of the global manipulation of the culture industry by culture monopolies. Seeing that we all felt the need to make this meeting, the result or conclusion of this meeting will be significant for further meetings. Artist initiatives, with their strong online networking can be the new rising system to deal with the legal and social problems of theory makers, art makers and other creative people.

First of all I would like to thank all the initiatives, artists for their participation and the organizer AKD and Chameleon for their extraordinary organisation. I also thank to Fatih Municipality for providing this building to the projects of visual arts of Istanbul 2010.

I wish you a peaceful and successful meeting and a pleasant stay in Istanbul.

beral madra
ART CRITIC-CURATOR
VISUAL ARTS DIRECTOR
ISTANBUL 2010