07-06-2009

22-11-2009

Italy, Venice
Arsenale

Posted by: artcitizens

Category: Festival/Biennial/Triennal

Field: Visual arts

The project titled “Lapses” will be representing Turkey in the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial that takes place between 7 June – 22 November 2009. Sponsored by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinated by Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, the curator of the exhibition is Basak Senova.

"Lapses" consists of projects that demonstrate how the perception of "occurring events" can vary and lead to the differing narrations of history because of lapses in collective memory - which is composed both by the media and by other surrounding environmental data. The project will be realized through the works of two artists: Banu Cennetoglu's "Catalog", and Ahmet Ögüt's "Exploded City". Both projects reveal the possibility for diverse memory formations – or diverse narratives - conceivable through lapses.

(extract from the catalogue text by Basak Senova)
Ahmet Ögüt traces buildings that have recently been the site of a crucial event and have turned into ruins, thus triggering associations in our subconscious. “Exploded City” presents a model city by referring to the original architectural features of each building. The work questions the significations and values attributed to these buildings before and after the explosion, while detecting lapses that occur in our memory via media images. It also manifests otherwise concealed lapses by ripping the buildings off their memory. In viewers' minds, this research may find openings similar to Borges' forking paths, Calvino's fictions of imaginary cities, and Toufic's ruins.

"Catalog” holds to the fact that photography, extracted from the reality in which it was shot, is not only expected to exist in a new subjective and critical context, but also to become the bearer of expression for this new context. Banu Cennetoglu’s photographs pertain to different geographies whilst simultaneously being open to fictional narratives. The work is presented in the form of a performative “mail order catalog” where hundreds of photographs are classified under subjective categories. The artist will allow free download of all the photographs from the mailing catalog exclusively during the duration of the Venice Biennial. This process also signifies the questioning of the dissemination of artwork and photography as extracts of memory.

The project is accompanied by a book series of three volumes: the first volume is on the conceptual framework, the process and the spatial design; the second volume functions as the source, inspiration, reference for the entire project, consisting of philosophical articles; and the third volume discuses “lapses” through four case studies. The first and third volumes are edited by Basak Senova, while the second volume is edited by Jalal Toufic.

The Turkish Pavilion is designed to be a straightforward, self-standing building at the Arsenale. This scaffold building functions as an interface to present these two projects with the intention of both separating and intersecting them in a subversive manner.

For detailed information on the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial – Turkish Pavilion, visit:
http://www.venicebiennial-turkey.org
http://www.iksv.org

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