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Renowned curator, and a trailblazer of âusefulnessâ in art, Alistair Hudson is the forthcoming Artistic & Scientific Chairman of ZKM (Center for Art & Media in Karlsruhe.
Alistair Hudson grabbed everybodyâs attention when - with Adam Sutherland - he turned Grizedale Arts, an art institution in Northwest Englandâs Lake District, into a hotspot of artistic discussion and production between 2004 and 2015. A directorship followed, at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. There he developed the idea of the useful museum, opening up questions on how the museum âcan be usedâ otherwise; simultaneously reflecting on a wide collection as well as new commissions and projects. In collaboration with the artist Tania Bruguera the Van Abbemuseum and Queens Museum, he got involved in the exhibition "Museum of Arte Util", later undertaking the role of co-directorship of the Association de Arte Ătil that resulted from the exhibition. This project has become a repository of artistic activities that propose new uses for art, work on a 1:1 scale, and embrace artistic thinking to respond to urgencies, in short, all things dear to Ahali Conversations so far.
This Episode includes additional questions by BetĂŒl Aksu, Ceminay Kara, Sarp Ăzer, and Alessandra Saviotti.
Over the last two decades, Grizedale Arts has become an acclaimed and influential model for a new kind of art institution, one that works beyond the established structures of the contemporary art world.
Liam Gillick works across diverse forms, whose wider body of work includes published essays and collaborative projects, all of which inform (and are informed by) his art practice.
The British Home Office (the UK ministry responsible for immigration, security, and law and order) building was designed by Terry Farrell and has multiple integrated artworks by Gillick.
Terminal Convention was a contemporary exhibition and symposium housed in the decommissioned terminal building of Cork International Airport in the Republic of Ireland. https://rhizome.org/editorial/2011/apr/07/terminal-convention/
Arte Ătil roughly translates into English as 'useful art' but it goes further suggesting art as a tool or device.https://www.arte-util.org
Tania Bruguera is a politically motivated performance artist, who explores the relationship between art, activism, and social change in works that examine the social effects of political and economic power. https://art21.org/artist/tania-bruguera/
The Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven is one of the leading museums for contemporary art in Europe. https://vanabbemuseum.nl/en
Charles Esche is a museum director, who has been directing the Van Abbemuseum since 2004.
John Ruskin was an English writer, philosopher, art critic, and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany, and political economy. Wikipedia
The ZKM (Center for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe âis a house of all media and genres, a house of both spatial arts such as painting, photography and sculpture and time-based arts such as film, video, media art, music, dance, theater, and performance. ZKM was founded in 1989 with the mission of continuing the classical arts into the digital age. This is why it is sometimes called the digital Bauhausâ. https://zkm.de/en
Peter Weibel was a post-conceptual artist, curator, and new media theoretician. He was at the helm of ZKM since 1999. Weibel passed away in March 2023, shortly after the recording of this episode.
Arts Council is UKâs national development agency for creativity and culture. They invest public money from Government and The National Lottery into cultural institutions and projects. https://artscouncil.org.uk
Rainer Rochlitz (1946-2022) was a philospher, art historian focusing on aesthetics theory, and a translator who played a key role in publicizing the writings of German authors such as Benjamin and Habermas.
JĂŒrgen Habermas is one of the key theorists of the 20th century, with his widely read and influential works on communicative action, discourse, and perhaps most importantly on the âpublic sphereâ.
Erwin Panofsky was an influential art historian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Panofsky
Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022) probably needs no introduction, he was a filmmaker who pushed the medium to its limits while remaining relevant and influential, throughout his whole time on this earth.
Onur Yıldız is a political theorist who also was the Senior Public Programmer at SALT, Istanbul.
For more on Meriç Ăner, head over to our conversation with her: https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-17-meric-oner
Stephen Wright defines âusologyâ as âa sweeping field of extradisciplinary enquiry, spanning everything from the history of the ways and means of using to usershipâs conditions of possibility as put forward in various theories of practiceâ.https://museumarteutil.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Toward-a-lexicon-of-usership.pdf
Alessandra Saviotti, a frequent contributor in our Ahali Live Sessions, co-authored this article on the usological turn: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0752/11/1/22
This season of Ahali Conversations is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The Graham provides project-based grants to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.
This episode was also supported by a Moon & Stars Project Grant from the American Turkish Society.
This episode was recorded on Zoom on December 15th, 2022.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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We are hosting Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas (artists and educators, born in Lithuania). They work together as Urbonas Studio, with an artistic practice that combines new media, urbanism, social science, ecology, and pedagogy to transform civic spaces and collective imaginaries. Weâll start off the conversation focusing on their work on Swamps, that disregarded wealth of organic complexity; and together unpack questions around ecology, technology, and artistic practice. Youâll also get to hear about their mode of operation within often contested social and political realities.
This Episode includes sound samples that act as interludes from the work:
The Swamp Observatory. Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
Sound mixing by Mouse on Mars based on sampling by pupils at the Innovitaskolan Visby, Sweden. 2022
Ecotones are transitional spaces between two biological communities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotone
Riparian Territories are zones that tie and lie in-between land and rivers or streams.
âDrain the swampâ refers to the removal of water from marsh areas which causes the removal of creatures dependent on the water. The phrase is adopted by politicians from Mussolini to Donald Trump who used it as a metaphor for âcleansingâ of various sorts.
Bruno Latour is a philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/
Established in 1895, La Biennale di Venezia is a cultural institution that organizes events and exhibitions in Art (1895), Architecture (1980), Cinema (1932), Dance (1999), Music (1930), and Theatre (1934) departments. https://www.labiennale.org/en
Swamp School took place in Swamp Pavillion curated by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas, the first individual pavilion Lithuania presents as a part of the 16th Venice International Architecture Biennale, Freespace, in 2018. Throughout the biennale, Swamp School functioned as a changing, flexible, open-ended infrastructure that supports experiments in design, pedagogy and artistic intelligence. https://www.swamp.lt/
George Washington was one of the investors of the Dismal Swamp Company, a land speculation venture founded in 1763 to drain, tame and make profit from the Great Dismal Swamp, a wetland that stretches between Norfolk, Virginia, and Edeltan, North Carolina.
The Baltic Pavillion was the joint contribution of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia to the 15th Venice International Architecture Biennale in 2016. https://balticpavilion.eu/
Located in the Church of San Lorenzo in Venice, Ocean Space is a global center for exhibitions, research, and public programs harboring contributions to ocean literacy and advocacy through the arts. https://www.ocean-space.org/
Barrenas refers to emerged lands and sandbanks of Venetian geography.
Giardini della Biennale is the traditional site of La Biennale Art Exhibitions since the first edition in 1895.
Swamp Radio is the independent chapter of Swamp School, featuring a number of contributors to explore spatial qualities of sonic experiments.
Jana Winderen is a sound artist based in Norway. https://www.janawinderen.com/
Sam Auinger is a sound artist based in Austria. http://www.samauinger.de/
Petteri Nisunen is a sound artist based in Finland. https://g-n.fi/
Tommi Gronlund is a sound artist based in Finland. https://g-n.fi/
Nicole LâHuillier is an architect based in Chile and USA. https://nicolelhuillier.com/
The Marsh Labrador Tea (Rhododendron tomentosum) is an evergreen shrub that preferably grows in moors and peat soils. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhododendron_tomentosum
Pirate radio refers to a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_radio
Sant'Erasmo is an island in the Venetian Lagoon lying north-east of the Lido island and east of Venice, famous for its blue artichokes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sant%27Erasmo
Sundews are one of the largest groups of carnivorous plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosera
Maroons were people who inhabited in the Great Dismal Swamp after escaping enslavement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Dismal_Swamp_maroons
Swamp Thing is a fictional humanoid/plant elemental character, created by writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson. In the mid-1980s a storyline by Alan Moore elevated this character and comics series by reworking the whole origin story building a new world around it. This new Swamp Thing was timely, philosophical and ahead of its time in many ways. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swamp_Thing
Alan Moore (b. 1953) is an English author known primarily for his work in comic books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Moore
Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene is a 2016 book by Donna Haraway, published by Duke University Press. https://www.dukeupress.edu/staying-with-the-trouble
Walden is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau.
Swamp Observatory (2020) is an installation by Urbonas Studio, commissioned for the exhibition, Critical Zones â Observatories for Earthly Politics, curated by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel at ZKM Center for Arts and Media. The installation proposes to approach to the swamp as an interface to Gaia and continues to regenerate itself at different locations and through different mediums.
Swamp Game is the extension of Swamp Observatory installation and stands as an invitation to experience the relations between organisms and their environments.
Jutempus is a non-profit, artist-run initiative that was founded in 1993 and re-organized in 1997 on the initiative of Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas in collaboration with other artists and creative people at the former Cultural Palace of the Railway Workers in Vilnius, the capital and largest city of Lithuania. http://www.vilma.cc/jutempus/
Simone de Beauvoir (1908 â 1986) was a French existentialist philosopher, writer, social theorist, and feminist activist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir
Ground Control: Technology and Utopia is a collection of essays that expand upon an exhibition programme of the same name. The contributors of the collection reflect on the broad divisions and links in culture and history between Eastern and Western Europe.
Baltic Art Center is a residency for contemporary art on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. https://www.balticartcenter.com/home/
Curated by Marco Scotini, Disobedience Archive, is an ongoing, multi-phase video archive and platform of discussion that deals with the relationship between artistic practices and political actions. The latest edition of the archive was presented as a part of the 17th Ä°stanbul Biennial through a display setting designed by Can Altay. http://www.disobediencearchive.othe rg/
Mel King (b. 1928) is an American politician, community organizer, and educator. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_King
The Tent City Protests in Boston was a public revolt demanding the right to affordable housing, led by Mel King in 1968.
Naomi A. Klein (b. 1970) is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Klein
The Occupy movement is an internationally localized socio-political movement in search of âreal democracyâ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement
The Black Panthers, also known as the Black Panther Party, was a political organization founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale to challenge police brutality against the African American community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party
SylvĂšre Lotringer (1938 â 2021) was a French-born literary critic and cultural theorist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylv%C3%A8re_Lotringers.
This season of Ahali Conversations is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The Graham provides project-based grants to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.
This episode was also supported by a Moon & Stars Project Grant from the American Turkish Society.
This episode was recorded on Zoom on November 23rd, 2022.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Fehlende Folgen?
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We are talking with Daniel FernĂĄndez Pascual from the London-based duo Cooking Sections. Together with Alon Schwabe, they use food as a lens and a tool to observe landscapes in transformation. In a broader sense, they examine the systems that organize the world, through food.
Their output manifest in a variety of media: using site-responsive installations, performance, and video. Cooking Sections offer a mode of cultural production that navigates the overlapping boundaries between art, architecture, ecology, and geopolitics.
EPISODE NOTES
TThis episode includes additional questions by Sarp Renk Ăzer & Jing Yi.
Find more about Cooking Sections from https://www.cooking-sections.com/
CLIMAVORE is a long-term project that sets out to envision seasons of food production and consumption that react to man-induced climatic events and landscape alterations.
For hundreds of years, the wetlands north of Istanbul have been home to water Buffalo. Wallowland (Ăamuralem) presents the outcomes of a series of metabolic surveys conducted at different times of the year. Buffalo kaymak, yoghurt, and sĂŒtlaç made from local producers are offered as tastings accompanied by field recordings and Buffalo songs aiming to enhance a cultural landscape on the verge of extinction. https://bienal.iksv.org/en/17b-artists/cooking-sections https://saltonline.org/en/2317/climavore-seasons-made-to-drift?q=cooking+sect%C4%B1ons
The First Geography Congress (Turkish: Birinci TĂŒrk CoÄrafya Kongresi), which was held in Ankara in 1941, separated Turkey into seven geographical regions, which are still used today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Geography_Congress,_Turkey
Salmon: A Red Herring was first exhibited at Art Now, Tate Britain. As part of the project, Tate removed farmed salmon from its menus across all four Tate sites and introduced CLIMAVORE dishes instead.
Set on the intertidal zone/seal-mara at Bayfield, CLIMAVORE: On Tidal Zones explores the environmental impact of intensive salmon aquaculture and reacts to the changing shores of Portree, Isle of Skye.
Eyal Weizman is the director of the research agency Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London where he is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and a founding director there of the Centre for Research Architecture at the department of Visual Cultures. https://forensic-architecture.org/
Tim Ingold is an anthropologist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Ingold
LĂŒfer Koruma Timi was a campaign to protect the bluefish of the Bosphorus, urging fisher people, restaurants, and the consumers to not fish, sell, or buy younger fish, until the fish reaches its proper growth to reproduce. https://www.yesilist.com/tag/lufer-koruma-timi/
The Lionfish is an invasive marine species. https://www.wri.org/research/reefs-risk-revisited/atlantic-and-caribbean-lionfish-invasion-threatens-reefs#:~:text=With%20venomous%20spines%2C%20lionfish%20have,of%20fish%20in%20the%20region.
This season of Ahali Conversations is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The Graham provides project-based grants to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.
This episode was also supported by a Moon & Stars Project Grant from the American Turkish Society.
This episode was recorded on Zoom on August 25th, 2021.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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We are hosting Paul OâNeill. We closed our last episode at a crucial and rather existential moment. This second part of our conversation extends to our small group of audience members. You will hear Paul responding to questions on the educational turn, auto-theory, and variations on how to work with artists.
Ahali Conversations are often recorded with an intimate group of audience members, so if youâd like to be in the loop, and join live sessions, please feel free to get in touch.
EPISODE NOTES PART 2
This episode includes questions by Alessandra Saviotti, Ula Soley, Enrico Arduini, and Furkan Ä°nan.
Paul OâNeill is a curator, artist, writer, and educator. He is currently the artistic director of Publics, in Helsinki, Finland.
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an artistic and cultural center based in London. https://www.ica.art/
Mick Wilson is an artist, educator and researcher based in Gothenburg and Dublin.
Adrian Rifkin is a professor of art writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. http://gai-savoir.net/
Dr. Andrea Phillips is BALTIC Professor and Director of BxNU Research Institute, Northumbria University & BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.
Richard Birkett was a curator at the ICA, London; and at the Artists Space in New York. He is currently a curator at the Yale Union art center in Portland, Oregon.
Dave Beech is an artist and writer. https://www.davebeech.co.uk/
Sarah Pierce is an artist based in Dublin.
Nought to Sixty was a program of exhibitions and events, curated by Richard Birkett at the ICA, in 2008. Over the course of six months, the program was presenting solo projects by sixty emerging British- and Irish-based artists. https://archive.ica.art/nought-sixty-artists-index/
The Copenhagen Free University is an artist-run institution, dedicated to the production of critical consciousness and poetic language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Free_University
unitednationsplaza is a project by Anton Vidokle in collaboration with Boris Groys, Jalal Toufic, Liam Gillick, Martha Rosler, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Nikolaus Hirsch, Tirdad Zolghadr, and Walid Raad It operated as a temporary, experimental school in Berlin, following the cancellation of Manifesta 6 on Cyprus, in 2006. The project traveled to Mexico City (2008) and to New York City under the name Night School (2008-2009) at the New Museum. Its program was organized around a number of public seminars, most of which are available in the online archive. https://www.unitednationsplaza.org/
The text Paul was referring to âIntroduction to The Paraeducation Departmentâ written by Annie Fletcher and Sarah Pierce is in the anthology Curating and the Educational Turn edited by Paul OâNeill and Mick Wilson: https://betonsalon.net/PDF/essai.pdf
Kate Zambreno is an American novelist, essayist, critic, and professor.
Roland Barthes (1915 â 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes
Octavia Butler (1947 â 2006) was an American science fiction author. Her writings have finally attracted well-deserved attention in the past years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octavia_E._Butler
Maryam Jafri is a Copenhagen-based American artist. The artistâs book Independence Days presents an expanded version of her photo installation and includes texts by Ariella AĂŻsha Azoulay, Paul OâNeill, Nina Tabassomi. https://www.maryamjafri.net/
Lygia Pimentel Lins (1920 â 1988), better known as Lygia Clark, was a Brazilian artist and co-founder of Neo-Concrete movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lygia_Clark
P! is a multidisciplinary gallery and project space formerly in New York, currently based in Berlin. http://p-exclamation.com/
Taken place in P!, in 2016, We are the (Epi)center was a group exhibition organized with the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, featuring: Can Altay, David Blamey, Katarina Burin, Jasmina Cibic, CĂ©line Condorelli, Marjolijn Dijkman, Chris Kraus, Gareth Long, Ronan McCrea, Harold Offeh, William McKeown, Eduardo Padilha, Sarah Pierce, Richard Venlet, Grace Weir, and many others.
PARSE is an international artistic research publishing and biennial conference platform based in the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts at University of Gothenburg. This is the visual essay Paul was referring to: https://parsejournal.com/article/before-and-after/
Autotheory refers to a critical approach in which the author uses personal experiences as the major creative force and the body as the source of knowledge.
Sigmund Freud (1856 â 1939) is an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Jacques Marie Ămile Lacan (1901-1981) is a French psychoanalyst and interpreter of Sigmund Freudâs studies. Their contributions to the psychoanalytic theory have been influential on the literary theory in terms of deciphering a work based on the psychological condition its author is in, or conversely, portraying such condition through unconscious revelations of the author within the work.
Maggie Nelson is an American writer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_Nelson
Semiotext(e) is an independent press, publishing works of theory, fiction, madness, economics, satire, sexuality, science fiction, activism, and confession. http://www.semiotextes.com/
McKenzie Wark is an Australian-born writer and professor of Media and Culture at Hudson University.
Raymond Williams (1921 â 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist, and critic. In his essay Dominant, Residual, and Emergent, he characterizes the grounded parts of cultural groups and their operating methods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Williams
Stephen Wright is a writer and gardener. Listen to Episode 1 to get to know him better. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-1-stephen-wright
Tania Bruguera is an artist and activist. https://www.taniabruguera.com/
Dr. Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, teacher, and activist.
NTS is a global radio station and media platform founded in 2011 by Femi Adeyemi. https://www.nts.live/
Bjork is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, record producer, and actress. https://bjork.com/
Annie Fletcher is the Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of communism through dictatorship of the proletariat.
Stalinism is a totalitarian extension of Leninism and a period of governing by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1953.
COALESCE is an ongoing exhibition project by Paul OâNeill which takes place at different locations with different artists and shapes around the idea of cohabitation.
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We are hosting the curator, artist, writer, and educator Paul OâNeill. Paul is someone who is very attentive and elaborate in figuring out and shaping thought around curatorial and artistic work. Together, we delve into his take on what publics means and discuss the importance of opening up spaces of contact and sites for âworking togetherâ.
We also scrutinize the state of art institutions today and their future, along with hearing his take on the convergence of exhibition-making and programming, along with insights on establishing and running an institution or an art space today.
We release this conversation in two parts, something weâve never done before. But there was so much valuable insight in the q&a session that I thought this time deserves its own space.
EPISODE NOTES PART 1
Paul OâNeill is a curator, artist, writer, and educator. He is the artistic director of Publics. OâNeill has held numerous curatorial and research positions over the years and taught in many curatorial and visual arts programs in Europe, the UK, and the USA. He was the Director of the Curatorial Studies program and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Hessel Museum at the Bard College, NY. He has co-curated more than sixty projects across the world including We are the (Epi)center, P! Gallery, New York (2016), and the multi-faceted We are the Center for Curatorial Studies for the Hessel Museum, Bard College (2016-17). He has co-edited the books Kathrin Böhm; Art on the Scale of Life, MIT Press (forthcoming), Curating After the Global; Roadmaps to the Present, MIT Press, CCS Bard and LUMA Foundation, Arles 2019, How Institutions Think; Between Contemporary Art and Curatorial Discourse, MIT Press, 2017, and many more.http://www.pauloneill.org.uk
PUBLICS is a curatorial agency with a dedicated library, event space, and reading room in Helsinki. PUBLICS follows and expands on OâNeillâs critical social thinking, contemporary art, and publicness, with a much more open and participatory stance. https://www.publics.fi
Center for Curatorial Studies is an experimentation base at Bard College dedicated to curatorial studies and exhibition making. The Hessel Museum of Art in Bard College is an extension of the Center for Curatorial Studies. https://ccs.bard.edu/
Checkpoint Helsinki, was a contemporary art organization that operates as a critical platform to support local cultural activities and public engagement while contributing to the international visibility of artistic production in the city of Helsinki. https://www.checkpointhelsinki.org
Julia Studio is a design practice that brings together graphic and spatial design. Operating between London, Paris and Rome. https://julia.studio
Liam Gillick is an artist based in New York. https://liamgillick.info/
Kathrin Böhm is an artist. Listen to Episode 13 to get to know her better. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-13-kathrinbohm
Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons is a non-profit public art institution based in Utrecht. https://casco.art
BĂ©tonsalon is a center for contemporary art and research-based practice in Paris. https://www.betonsalon.net
SAVVY, the laboratory of form and ideas is a public cultural institution based in Berlin. Find more about SAVVY in Episode 15, featuring Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung:https://savvy-contemporary.com/
https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-15-bonaventure
Walter Benjamin criticizes the monistic approach of historical materialism and considers history as a concept made out of self-standing memory layers and relations.
Chris Kraus is an American writer and filmmaker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Kraus
Cynthia Cruz is a contemporary American poet. http://cynthiacruzblog.blogspot.com/
Eliisa Suvantoâ is the Program Manager at PUBLICS.
Shimmer is a curatorial studio based in Rotterdam. https://shimmershimmer.org/
Latitudes is a curatorial office based in Barcelona that works internationally across contemporary art practices. https://www.lttds.org/
Laia Estruch is an artist based in Barcelona. https://laiaestruch.com/
Black Lives Matter is a decentralized political and social movement and a growing quest for racial justice, began in 2013, as a reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter
MeToo is a phrase coined by sexual assault survivor and activist Tarana Burke. Following its initial use in 2006, to establish an empowering ground among survivors, it became a social movement against sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and rape culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeToo_movement
Mary Douglas (1921 â 2007) was a British anthropologist. In her book âHow Institutions Thinkâ, Douglas discusses the recurring effects of individuals and institutions on each other, regarding the processes of thinking. https://www.routledge.com/How-Institutions-Think-Routledge-Revivals/Douglas/p/book/9780415684781
SHAPE map is a website resource for Helsinkiâs contemporary art landscape, a mapping of art spaces and public events across the city. https://www.shape-helsinki.fi/
Multiples X was an organization that commissioned and supported curated exhibitions of artist'â editions.
Keller Easterling is an architect, writer, and professor of architecture.Listen to Episode 25 to get to know her better. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/25kellereasterling
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Our guests are the legendary Raqs Media Collective, formed in New Delhi in 1992, by Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. I like to call them intellectuals-at-large, but their production ranges from artistic to curatorial projects, from theoretical to educational works. The collective also co-founded Saraiâthe inter-disciplinary and incubatory space at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.
Youâll hear their unique blend of thinking on technologies and media, from surveillance to bureaucratic interfaces as deeply embedded in societal dynamics; and weâll get to explore together how they have been producing knowledge as artists. The tidal changes in image cultures; how digital technologies are intertwined with urban infrastructures; how the poetic is also the political; and ultimately the significance of languages are a few of the things that are lingering in my mind and provoking further thoughts after this conversation.
EPISODE NOTES & LINKS
Based in New Delhi, Raqs Media Collective comprises three practitioners: Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. For the past three decades, the Collective has been concerned with urbanism, epistemology, technology, globalization, and the experience of time. Drawing upon critical theory and political philosophy, their work is marked by active inquiry, double-meanings, pluralism, and entanglement. https://www.raqsmediacollective.net/
Sarai is among South Asiaâs most prominent and productive platforms for research and reflection on the transformation of urban space and contemporary realities, especially with regard to cities, data and information, law, and media infrastructures. https://sarai.net/about/
Initiated by Ankur: Society for Alternatives in Education, Delhi, and Sarai-CSDS, Delhi in the year 2001 Cybermohalla is a network of dispersed labs for experimentation and exploration among young working-class individuals https://sarai.net/projects/cybermohalla/.
The first Cybermohalla took place in LNJP (Lok Nayak Jarai Prakash), an informal settlement in Central Delhi.
Parda-darii is a noun in Hindu meaning play of the veil, removing the veil, revealing the truth, and revealment of secrets.
Can has written on the design of Cybermohalla Hub, in relation to his âSetting a Settingâ idea.
https://www.academia.edu/5980837/_Setting_and_Remaking_in_Cybermohalla_Hub_eds_Hirsch_N_and_S_Sarda_Berlin_Sternberg_Press_2012
Curated by Raqs Media Collective âIn the Open or In Stealthâ was a group exhibition that has taken place at MACBA in 2018-2019 about the concept of a future in which multiple histories and geographies were placed in dialogue. https://www.macba.cat/en/exhibitions-activities/exhibitions/open-or-stealth
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. https://walkerart.org/visit
Established by Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima in Tokyo, Atelier Bow-Wow is an architecture firm. http://www.bow-wow.jp/
Taken place in Walker Art center in 2003, How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age was an exhibition about ways that globalization, or the ânew internationalism in artâ is affecting visual culture. https://walkerart.org/calendar/2003/how-latitudes-become-forms-art-in-a-global-ag
How Latitudes Become Forms has a vintage website that constitutes substantial archival material about the project. http://latitudes.walkerart.org/overview/index.html
Fatwa is a ruling on a point of Islamic law given by a recognized authority.
Abhinavagupta (c. 950 â 1016 CE) was a philosopher, mystic, and aesthetician from Kashmir. He was also considered an influential musician, poet, dramatist, exegete, theologian, and logician â a polymathic personality who exercised strong influences on Indian culture.
William Shakespeare used more than 20,000 words in his plays and poems, and his works provide the first recorded use of over 1,700 words in the English language. https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/shakespedia/shakespeares-words/
Submitted by Rohana Khattak, a sixteen-year-old reader of the New York Times from, Islamabad, Pakistan to the newspaperâs Invent a Word Challenge, âOblivionnaireâ refers to a billionaire who chooses to be blind to the disparity and inequality that his or her wealth is creating.
âKhullja Sim Simâ translates as âOpen Sesameâ in English, and âAçıl Susam Açılâ in Turkish. It is a magical phrase in the story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" and in Antoine Galland's version of One Thousand and One Nights. It opens the mouth of a cave in which forty thieves have hidden a treasure.
Nishastagah is a Hindu word referring to a place not (yet, ever) inhabited by memory.
In response to the passage of the Citizenship Act on 11 December 2019 and the ensuing police intervention against students at Jamia Millia Islamia who were opposing the Amendment, the Shaheen Bagh protest was a peaceful sit-in protest in Delhi, India, that began on 15 December 2019 and lasted until 24 March 2020.
The permanently lost 16mm film, âHalf the Night left, and the Universe to Comprehendâ is Raqs Media Collectiveâs first work.
In the Hindu epic the Mahabharata, Ashwatthama was a Maharathi warrior who became a Chiranjivi (immortal) due to a curse given to him by the god of protection, compassion, tenderness, and love, Krishna.
In the essay titled dictionary of war by Raqs Media Collective Ashwatthama is described both as an omnipresent immaterial entity that acts as a propagator of war while tracing his essence within the essence of human subjectivity. http://dictionaryofwar.org/node/894
Mahendra Raj (1924 - 2022) was a structural engineer and designer who contributed to the structural design of many buildings in India including the Hall of Nations at the Pragati Maidan in Delhi.
Opened in 1972, the Hall of Nations was a building designed by architect Raj Rewal, and structurally engineered by Mahendra Raj. The structure was demolished in April 2017 to make way for a new complex.
The essay that Jabeesh mentions while referring to Mahendra Raj is titled Living with the Future in South Asia by Chris Moffat. https://www.publicbooks.org/modernist-architecture-heritage-south-asia-pragati-maidan/
This season of Ahali Conversations is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The Graham provides project-based grants to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.
This episode was also supported by a Moon & Stars Project Grant from the American Turkish Society.
This episode was recorded on Zoom on May 17th, 2022.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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In this episode, we are in conversation with the architect, writer, and Professor of Architecture at Yale, Keller Easterling. Her books include Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (Verso, 2014); Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades (MIT, 2005); and her latest Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World, to which we dedicate special attention to in this episode.
I think Easterlingâs project boils down to how architecture and design can actually intervene and/or contribute to the cultural change around social justice and ecological crises; through thinking about, and âknowing-howâ to work the systems at play. So designing within interplay; rather than the total compliance and submission on behalf of the architectural profession is what she seeks. She redirects our attention to the spatial dimension of how things are arranged, be it politically, financially, or socially.
Episode Notes & Links
http://kellereasterling.com/
In Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space, Keller Easterling reveals the nexus of emerging governmental and corporate forces buried within the concrete and fiber-optics of our modern habitat. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/enduring-innocence http://kellereasterling.com/books/extrastatecraft-the-power-of-infrastructure-space
In Enduring Innocence, Keller Easterling tells the stories of outlaw "spatial products"âresorts, information technology campuses, retail chains, golf courses, ports, and other hybrid spaces that exist outside normal constituencies and jurisdictionsâin difficult political situations around the world. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/enduring-innocence
Medium Design by Keller Easterling looks not to new technologies for innovation but rather to sophisticated relationships between emergent and incumbent technologies. It does not try to eliminate problems but rather put them together in productive combinations. And it offers forms of activism for modulating power and temperament in organisations of all kinds. https://www.versobooks.com/books/3245-medium-design
http://kellereasterling.com/books/medium-design-knowing-how-to-work-on-the-world
Elements of Architecture was the title of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale curated by Rem Koolhaas. https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2014/elements-architecture
Beatriz Colomina is an architecture historian, theorist, and curator.
Mark Wigley is an architect and author.
Colomina and Wigley co-curated the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial with the same title in 2016. https://tasarimbienali.iksv.org/en/biennial-archive/3rd-istanbul-design-biennial
James Jerome Gibson (1904-1979) was an American psychologist known as a seminal figure in the field of visual perception. He coined the phrase âaffordanceâ which later became a key concept in the field of design.
John Durham Peters is a professor of English and film and media studies. His book The Marvelous Clouds reveals the long prehistory of so-called new media and shows how media lie at the very heart of our interactions with the world around us. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo20069392.html
Tim Ingold is an antropologist. This is the text Can is referring to:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1380203807002127
Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) was a polymath of the 20th century. He was engaged in many knowledge fields including physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. Check his thoughts on positivism to provoke your mind.
Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) was a philosopher, principally known for his critique of Cartesian dualism, for which he coined the phrase "ghost in the machine." which of course influenced the legendary Ghost in the Shell manga series by Masamune Shirow.
Bruno Latour is a philosopher, anthropologist, and sociologist. He is especially known for his work in the field of science and technology studies. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/
Richard III by William Shakespeare is the last in a sequence of four history plays known collectively as the âfirst tetralogy,â treating major events of English history during the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
Lady Anne is a fictional character from Richard III
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lady-Anne
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an author, poet, and mathematician. His most notable works are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass.
Jorge Luis Borges (1889-1986) was an essayist, poet, and translator of Carrollâs work to Spanish.
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer.
MarshallAI detects objects and incidents in real-time from any video feed through consistent monitorization and employment of precise artificial intelligence and machine vision. They provide sharp and automatic situational awareness and intelligent automation by gathering relevant data for smart cities, security, and authorities. https://marshallai.com/
J.K Gibson-Graham is the pen-name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham. As feminist political economists and economic geographers, they have extensively written about diverse economies, urbanism, alternative communities, and regional economic development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Gibson-Graham
Arturo Escobar is an anthropologist whose research interests include political ecology, anthropology of development, social movements, anti-globalization movements, and post-development theory. We suggest Territories of Difference published by Duke University press in 2008 to learn more about his thought. https://www.dukeupress.edu/territories-of-difference
Zenzile Miriam Makeba (1932-2008) nicknamed Mama Africa was a South African singer, songwriter, actress, and civil rights, activist. https://www.miriammakeba.co.za/
Silvia Federici is an academic and activist particularly influential for radical Marxist feminist theory.
McKinsey & Company is a management consulting firm that advises on strategic management to corporations, governments, and other organizations.
Deloitte is one of the Big Four accounting organizations and the largest professional services network in the world by revenue and number of professionals, with headquarters in London, England.
Vilém Flusser (1920-1991) was a philosopher, writer, and journalist. You can meet fellow flusserians or learn more about his works through https://www.flusserstudies.net/flusser
Kathrin Böhm is an artist. Listen to Episode 13 to get to know her better. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-13-kathrinbohm
This season of Ahali Conversations is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The Graham provides project-based grants to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.
This episode was also supported by a Moon & Stars Project Grant from the American Turkish Society.
This episode was recorded on Zoom on March 29th, 2022.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Design Studio for Social Intervention (DS4SI), is a Boston-based âartistic research and development outfitâ that operates in response to social justice and its literal and figurative resonations in public space.
Founded by Kenneth Bailey and Lori Lobenstine in 2006, DS4SI invites activists, artists, academics, designers, dreamers, tricksters, organizations, and foundations to respond to critical and urgent social problems in a light and playful manner. Through these encounters, DS4SI questions the impacts of change in social relationships that may affect everyday life and intervenes in the ways of practicing it. In their words, they are âdedicated to changing how social justice is imagined, developed and deployed in the U.S.Aâ. https://www.ds4si.org/#test-section
Written by DS4SI, IDEAS ARRANGEMENTS EFFECTS could be considered a roadmap for using social interventions to invite the larger public into imagining and creating a more just and vibrant world. https://www.ds4si.org/bookshop/ideas-arrangements-effects-systems-design-and-social-justice-paperback-book
SUMMITT undertakes the role of executive dog within the team of DS4SI. https://www.ds4si.org/people/2021/3/1/summitt-executive-dog
Inspired by the family kitchen as a gathering place, the Public Kitchen invited Upham's Corner and Dudley Street residents to feast, learn, share, imagine, unite and claim public space. https://www.ds4si.org/creativity-labs//public-kitchen
Alongside various other academic positions, Ceasar McDowell is a Professor of Civic Design at MIT. He teaches civic and community engagement and the use of social technology to enhance both.
The Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) at MIT supports the Department of Urban Studies Program by bringing together the best thinking in planning and information technology with the learned experience of community practitioners. https://dusp.mit.edu/programs/overview
Trickster Makes This World is a book by Lewis Hyde. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56450.Trickster_Makes_This_World
Razorfish is one of the worldâs largest interactive agencies.
Created by David Walsh, MONA is a museum in Hobart, Tasmania. https://mona.net.au/museum/about
Initiated by DS4SI, Black Citizenship Project engaged artists from the Boston area and beyond to provide a public, artistic response to police-sanctioned violence against Black bodies and Black communities. https://www.ds4si.org/interventions/2016/7/25/black-citizenship-project#:~:text=Black%20Citizenship%20Project%20engaged%20artists,Black%20bodies%20and%20Black%20communities.
Dating back to 2010, The Church Street Partnersâ Gazette by Can Altay was an exhibition and publication that took place in Showroom, London. https://www.theshowroom.org/projects/can-altay-the-church-street-partners-gazette
MĂPS was a work by Can Altay realized in 2017. It was a walk-in jamming/recording studio that popped up in the artist-run space Ä°MĂ 5533, Ä°stanbul.
Lagoon is a novel by Nnedi Okorafor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagoon_(novel)
Sun Ra is a god who walked on earth and made music. https://splice.com/blog/who-is-sun-ra/
Ezra Collective is a band of extremely skilled, visionary jazz musicians. http://ezracollective.com/
Bringing together residents, artists, activists, and passers-by, inPUBLIC highlights the importance of âpublic-makingââthe collective creation of opportunities for interaction, laughter, dialogue, learning, and surprise. https://www.ds4si.org/interventions/inpublic
Social Emergency Response Centers are temporary, emergent, and creative spaces co-led by activists and artists. They pop up in response to a new attack on a population or to a long-standing injustice. Check DS4SIâs detailed manual to learn more or start one in your city! https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53c7166ee4b0e7db2be69480/t/5914a3dd579fb3c20cf4ab9a/1494524919092/DS4SI-SERC-Manual.pdf
Ferguson riots in Ferguson, Missouri, involved protests and riots which began on August 10, 2014, the day after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson.
This season of Ahali Conversations is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The Graham provides project-based grants to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.
This episode was also supported by a Moon & Stars Project Grant from the American Turkish Society.
This episode was recorded on Zoom on March 15th, 2022.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Marina Otero Verzier is an architect, researcher and curator, who is also the current Head of the MA in Social Design program at Design Academy Eindhoven. Until very recently, she was the director of research at the Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. Her work touches on many socio-political and environmental dimensions of design and cultural production; as well as the emergence of new paradigms for institutions.
Together with Marina we unpack what designing the social might mean, and we explore the outer reaches of architectural research; both in the political and ecological realms. I think her particular mix of cautious optimism and her introspective openness allows us to reflect on how culture can be put to work, both in everyday life and in the sites of knowledge production, whether itâs the museum, the school, or the archive.
EPISODE NOTES & LINKS
Marina Otero Verzier is an architect. She was formerly Director of Research at Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI), the Dutch Institute for Architecture, Design, and Digital Culture. She is the Department Head of the MA in Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven. https://www.designacademy.nl/p/about-dae/community/marina-otero-verzier
Design Academy Eindhoven is an interdisciplinary educational institute for art, architecture, and design in Eindhoven, Netherlands. https://www.designacademy.nl/
Het Nieuwe Instituut is a cultural centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It focuses on architecture, design, and digital culture.https://hetnieuweinstituut.nl/home
The term âcanonâ pops up quite often, it refers to cultural works (books, buildings, etc) that come to be accepted as exceptional and set the criteria for good work. Canon has the same root as Kanun, or Qanun, which means the rule, or the law. So in a way, these works become unquestionable.
Cartesian Grid refers to grids often used in architecture as the basis for organizing spatial form, as composed of squares (or cubes) aligned with the Cartesian coordinate axes. Cartesian coordinate axes exist in a coordinate system that specifies each point uniquely by a pair of numerical coordinates, which are the signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, measured in the same unit of length.
Conceived as a spa resort, the exhibition Lithium took place in 2020 at Het Nieuwe. It delved into the beneficial and destructive aspects of the eternal human search for energy and reflected on the role of the chemical element lithium in powering todayâs economy. https://lithium.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en
More-than-human is an edited volume by Andres Jacque, Marina, and our previous guest Lucia Pietroiusti. https://research-development.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en/morethanhuman
Coauthored by Marina, Drone: Unmanned. Architecture and Security Series investigates the relationship between drone technology, cultural production, and forms of surveillance and violence.
âArchitecture of Appropriationâ was an exhibition developed by Het Nieuwe in 2017 that asked questions about squatting from various perspectives including squatters, artists, and architects. https://hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en/press-releases/architecture-appropriation#:~:text=Architecture%20of%20Appropriation%20is%20designed,Architecture%2C%20Design%20and%20Digital%20Culture.
The Dutch Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2018 was titled âWork, Body, Leisureâ. The exhibition was about the spatial configurations, living conditions, and notions of the human body engendered by disruptive changes in labor, its ethos, and its conditions. https://work-body-leisure.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/
Studio-X is a Columbia University project that appeared in various cities as laboratories for exploring the future of citiesâproducing events, research projects, pop-up exhibitions, and publications. Marina previously worked as Director of Programming.
https://www.arch.columbia.edu/studio-x
The Master Program in Social Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven focuses on new social roles for designers attuned to contemporary ecological and social challenges. https://www.designacademy.nl/p/study-at-dae/masters/social-design
Can Altay was the Head of the Industrial Design Department at Istanbul Bilgi University between 2012 -2019.
Kombucha is a fermented, lightly effervescent, sweetened black or green tea drink.
A biomaterial is a substance that has been engineered to interact with biological systems for a medical purpose, either a therapeutic or a diagnostic one.
Stephen Wright is a writer and gardener. His works and thought on artistic activity redefining cultural practices in response to permaculture and ecological thinking are influential for the Ahali Community. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-1-stephen-wright
Ana Devic is a curator, writer, and teacher Ana DeviÄ and a member of the curatorial collective What, How and from Whom (WHW). Find more about Ana in Episode 21. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode21-ana-devic
Nato Thompson is a curator and the founder of the Alternative Art School. Head over to Episode 18 to discover more. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-18-nato-thompson
Ahali Conversationsâ Episode 14 is a great episode to explore his âout of this worldâ mode of thought. Jerzsy Seymour conceives of design as the creation of situations, such as the relationship we have with the constructed and the natural world, with other people, and with ourselves, and is as much about the inhabitation of the planet as the inhabitation of the mind.
Amal Alhaag is a curator and researcher.
Vasıf Kortun is a curator, educator and writer. He was the guest of Ahali Conversations Episode 6. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-6-vasif-kortun
Heman Chong is an artist, curator, and writer who creates texts, objects, installations, and situations in order to investigate the manner through which individuals form associations between objects in their environments. https://www.hemanchong.com/
Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene is a 2016 book by Donna Haraway, published by Duke University Press.
Lucia Pietroiusti is a curator whose work intersects art, ecology, and systems in her work. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-16-lucia-pietroiusti
Kathrin Böhm is an artist whose practice focuses on the collective re-production of public space; on economy as a public realm; and the everyday as a starting point for culture. Episode 13 to get to know her better. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-13-kathrinbohm
Doughnut Economics explores the mindset and ways of thinking needed by humanity to thrive in the 21st century. https://doughnuteconomics.org/about-doughnut-economics
ACCESS SERVER is a digital tool developed by MELT that addresses the unequal inclusion of disabled people in art institutions. It will be a website that provides email templates and a modest fee per email to support disabled peopleâs access requests. https://research-development.hetnieuweinstituut.nl/en/het-nieuwe-instituuts-call-fellows-2021-jury-report
Ahali Conversationsâ Episode 10 featured Chus Martinez. She is a curator and teacher. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-10-chusmartinez
Evanescent Institutions is the title of Marinaâs PhD. Thesis. This work would be helpful to think about how public cultural institutions should resituate themselves in the 21st century.
Misiones PedagĂłgicas (The Pedagogical Missions) was a socio-pedagogical project committed to social justice. It fostered educational renewal and was active between 1931 - 1936.
The Franco dictatorship (dictadura franquista) took place between 1939 and 1975 when Francisco Franco ruled Spain with the title Caudillo. After his death in 1975, Spain transitioned into a democracy.
CĂĄtedra Ambulante Francisco Franco was a mobile propaganda project which appropriated Misiones PedagĂłgicasâ ideas about reaching small towns and villages through on-site activities.
This season of Ahali Conversations is supported by the âGraham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Artsâ. The Graham provides project-based grants to foster the development and exchange of diverse and challenging ideas about architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society.
This episode was also supported by a Moon & Stars Project Grant from the American Turkish Society.
This episode was recorded on Zoom on March 10th, 2022.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Mike Nelson is an artist whose influential works oscillate between salvage yards and dreamscapes. He works with things from the present and the just-past, to create these spaces, that ask you to think twice about contemporary culture, and our ways of being. In his words through situations that are on the brink of obsolescence.
Mike Nelsonâs lessons on the agency and potency of objects, and his take on his own positionality as an artist; through the metaphor of sliders on an equalizer were thought-provoking. On every occasion, an artist has to decide over a multiplicity of issues, over ethics, politics, effects, income, and many other dimensions. These virtual sliders operate as part of a decision-making process, over the give and take, and to decide how to negotiate as well as reconcile our decisions.
EPISODE NOTES & LINKS
Acclaimed artist Mike Nelson's work stems from a period of living and working in a particular location in the form of large-scale, site-specific sculptural environments. http://mikenelson.org.uk/
Protocinema is a cross-cultural art organization that commissions and presents site-aware art around the world. https://www.protocinema.org/about
PROJEKTĂR was an exhibition organized by Protocinema in 2019. Nelson combined architectural intervention, sculpture, and video across sixteen rooms of the seventh floor of a historic commercial building (GĂŒrĂŒn Han) to reflect on the changing landscape of the city, both intimate and global. https://www.protocinema.org/exhibitions/mike-nelson
Rip Van Winkle is a short story about nostalgia by Washington Irving, published in 1819. The protagonist of the story falls into a deep slumber for two decades and wakes up to a completely different world.
Crystal Palace is a neighborhood in London that takes its name from the exhibition space designed by Joseph Paxton in 1851 to display examples of technology developed in the Industrial Revolution.
The United States Capitol attack took place in 2021 by the supporters of Donald Trump to disrupt the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize President-elect Joe Biden's victory.
Formed in 1968, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY) was a folk-rock supergroup. They were not only known for their tumultuous relationship but also for political activism.
Charles Manson is a criminal who led the infamous Manson Family in California, in the late 1960s.
Minicab was a precarious taxi service that could be booked in advance but not licensed to pick up passengers who hail it in the street. It predates and was replaced by ride-share apps.
Han is the urban version of Caravanserai, a roadside inn where travelers could rest and recover from the day's journey. They could be considered commercial settlements or artisanal facilities.
Founded in 1651 by Kösem Valide Sultan, the mother of the Ottoman sultans Murat IV and Ibrahim, BĂŒyĂŒk Valide Han is the largest historic han in Istanbul.
A darkroom is a completely dark working environment that serves to carry out tasks like processing photographic film or making prints.
Duveen (1869-1939), was a British art dealer who was highly active and influential in the 1920âs and 1930âs. His success is famously attributed to his observation that "Europe has a great deal of art, and America has a great deal of money."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Duveen,_1st_Baron_Duveen
Henry Moore (1898-1986) was one of the most important British artists of the twentieth century and arguably the most internationally celebrated sculptor of the period. https://www.henry-moore.org/
Asset Stripper is a slang term used in a pejorative sense in the field of finances which refers to the practice of selling off a company's assets to improve returns for equity investors.
âAsset Strippersâ was the title of the annual Tate Britain commission in 2019 where Mike has transformed the grand spaces of the Duveen Galleries into something between a sculpture court and a salvage yard. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/mike-nelson
Founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. V&A Museum is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts, and design in terms of inventory. https://www.vam.ac.uk/
Nelson also has a longstanding interest and knowledge of Middle Eastern art and architecture, a topic we didnât go much into during this conversation. Assyrian Bowl https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_N-94
An equalizing deck is a circuit or equipment used to adjust the volume of different frequency bands within an audio signal during the processes of sound recording or reproduction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_(audio)
The Arab Spring (Arabic: ۧÙ۱ۚÙŰč ۧÙŰč۱ۚÙ) was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s.
Edward Kienholz (1927-1994) and Nancy Kienholz (1943-2019) were artists whose work heavily criticized the modern way of living and in particular Americana mostly through installation and sculptural works.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov are artists whose ground (or ceiling) breaking installations were highly influential in defining the Post-Soviet cultural production with their subtle humor and captivating visual language.
Paul Thek (1933â1988) is the quintessential âartistsâ artistâ with his unique materiality and fragile life and oeuvre that ended up being posthumously celebrated by the following generation of artists who emerged in the 90âs.
Dieter Roth (1930â1998) was an artist best known for works made of found materials, including rotting food. In the present day, his work is carried out by his son Björn Roth.
William Franklin Culbert (1935 â 2019) was an artist who worked with and through painting, photography, sculpture, and installation as well as found and recycled materials.
Ron Haselden is an artist who works with light, sound, film, and video, often as part of architectural projects.
Richard Wilson is an artist known for his architectural sculptures and large-scale installations.
Marc Camille Chaimowicz is an artist whose cross-disciplinary work in painting, drawing, collage, sculpture, installation, furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, and wallpaper challenges the categorical divisions between art and design.
Robin Klassnik is the founder and director of Matt's Gallery. Founded in 1979, Mattâs Gallery is a contemporary art gallery located in London. https://www.mattsgallery.org/
Robert Smithson (1938 - 1973) is another legendary artist who is best known for his artwork Spiral Jetty (1970). Due credit should also be given to Nancy Holt (1938-2014), in creating what is known as Land Art. https://holtsmithsonfoundation.org/ is the custodian of their legacy, until 2038, when the foundation will terminate at the 100th birthday of the couple.
HĂ©lio Oiticica (1937 - 1980) is an influential artist from Brazil known for his environments and iconic artworks: such as parangolĂ©s, wearable, experiential garments, and penetrables a series of structural works that he considers as âmovable frescos on a human scale except that (most importantly) they are penetrable.â
Stanislaw Lem (1921 - 2006) was a Soviet writer and thinker whose work on futurology historically stands out because of his influential work titled Solaris (1961) thanks to director Andrei Tarkovsky's movie adaptation of the novel in 1971.
A Perfect Vacuum (1971) comprises Stanislav Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexisting books. The texts included reads as drafts of his science fiction novels, philosophical pieces across scientific topics, from cosmology to the pervasiveness of computers while others satirize and parody everything from the nouveau roman to pornography, Ulysses, authorless writing, and Dostoevsky.
First published in 1719, Robinson Crusoe is a highly influential and seminal work of literature by William Defoe It tells the story of a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical desert island near the coasts of Venezuela and Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers, before ultimately being rescued.
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Our guest in this episode is curator, author, and educator Ana Devic. She is best known as a member of the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom (WHW). Formed in 1999, WHW is an exemplary case in the history of curatorial studies.
Ana Devic is also in charge of the international study program for young artists called WHW Akademija based in Zagreb. With Ana, weâll further our exploration into other modes of engaging with artistic practice and hear about other possibilities, within and through art and politics. Her take on collectivity, as a spark rather than a value in and of itself; her emphasis on encounters and accessibility, and formal and informal modes of learning were really thought-provoking.
EPISODE NOTES AND LINKS
This episodeâs conversation is part of the collaborative project âCommunities of Learning, Bridging the Gap of Isolationâ, initiated by WHW and supported by the Culture of Solidarity Fund of the European Cultural Foundation.
Ana Devic is a curator, writer, and teacher Ana DeviÄ and a member of the curatorial collective What, How and from Whom (WHW). https://www.whw.hr/novosti/index.html#
Formed in 1999, the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom (WHW) is an exemplary case in the history of curatorial studies. They were one of the pioneer groups who were influential in saving curatorial practice from going obsolete in a moment in which author curators (often white and male) reluctant to operate in plural forms were dominating the field of contemporary art. Itâs members are Ivet Äurlin, Ana DeviÄ, NataĆĄa IliÄ, Sabina SaboloviÄ and designer and publicist Dejan KrĆĄiÄ.
Based in Zagreb, WHW Academija is an international study program for young artists. The tuition-free academy takes up to 12 fellows per year intending to work on new forms of self-determination based on modes of critical reflection, curiosity, and encounters among artists, artworks, arts professionals, scholars, and practitioners. This program consists of a series of intensives, experimental exercises, workshops, and seminars, as well as a range of exhibitions, performances, and other forms of discursive programs. http://whw-akademija.whw.hr/about-whw/
IRWIN is a highly influential artist collective, whose paintings, actions and installations played a crucial role in Balkan and Eastern European conceptual art, especially in the definitive era of 90âs and the Post-Yugoslavian context. They were a part of NSK, along with the legendary band Laibach. https://www.irwin-nsk.org/about/
Gezi Park Protests occurred in Turkey in 2013 to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. https://creativetimereports.org/2013/06/14/here-we-are-the-imagination-of-public-space-in-gezi-park/
Christine Tohme is a curator and the founding director of Ashkal Alwan. The Home Workspace Program is a tuition-free annual arts study program targeting emerging artists and cultural practitioners wishing to develop their critical skills and practice in a supportive environment in Beirut. https://ashkalalwan.org/about.php#
Mladen StilinoviÄ (1947-2016) was a conceptual artist and one of the leading figures of the so-called "New Art Practice" in Croatia.
Sanja IvekoviÄ is a photographer, performer, sculptor and installation artist.
Tomislav Gotovac (1937-2010) was a film director, actor, performer, multimedia and conceptual artist.
Goran Trbuljak is a cinematographer, photographer and conceptual artist.
Decolonizing Architecture Art Research (DAAR) is an artistic practice situated between architecture, art, pedagogy and politics in the struggle for justice and equality http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/about/
Alessandro Petti is an architect and researcher. He is one of the cofounders of DAAR.
Sandi Hilal is an architect and researcher. She is one of the cofounders of DAAR.
Conducted by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, The Tree School is a place where people can gather for communal learning and the production of knowledge grounded in lived experience and connected to communities. http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/the-tree-school/
The artist group Etcetera Collective, was founded by Loreto GarĂn GuzmĂĄn and Federico Zukerfeld in 1997. In 2005 they founded FundaciĂłn del Movimiento Internacional Errorista (International Errorist Movement Foundation) with other artists and activists which seeks to consolidate error as a life philosophy.
Known for his seminal pedagogical work Deschooling Society, Ivan Dominic Illich (1926 - 2002) was a priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic.
The Alternative Art School (TAAS) is an affordable learning program run by a stellar faculty offering intimate class sizes. TAAS emphasizes group work, community building, and dynamic modes of socializing and art-making. www.thealternativeartschool.net/how-it-works-1
RAW Académie is an experimental residential program for the research and study of artistic and curatorial practice and thought in Dakar. http://www.rawmaterialcompany.org/_RAW_Academy?lang=en
DAI ROAMING ACADEMY, is an itinerant program that fosters a variety of praxes at the intersections of art and theory (both seen as un-disciplines), and invigorates (collective) thinking, researching, performing, curating, writing, voicing, making and publishing. https://dutchartinstitute.eu/program/about
The Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, "New Academy of Fine Arts", also known as NABA, is a privately run university in Milan.
Marco Scotini is a curator, researcher, teacher, and writer.
Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is a type of organization represented by rules encoded as a computer program that is transparent, controlled by the organization members, and not influenced by a central government.
Pirate Care is a transnational research project and a network of activists, scholars, and practitioners who stand against the criminalization of solidarity & for a common care infrastructure. https://pirate.care/pages/concept/
Memory of the World/Public Library is a case for the institution of public library and its principle of universal access to knowledge. https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2015/05/27/repertorium_public_library/
Curated by WHW in 2014, âReally Useful Knowledgeâ was an exhibition that had taken place at Reina Sofia, Madrid which sought to highlight the collective utilization of public resources, activities, and experiments, either forgotten or under threat of eradication, taking the museum as a pedagogical site devoted to the analysis of artistic forms interconnected with actual or desired social relations. https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/really-useful-knowledge
Nato Thompson is an author, curator, and self-proclaimed âcultural infrastructure builderâ. Nato was also the guest of Ahali Conversations Episode 18: https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-18-nato-thompson
Sound.xyz is a startup aiming to support recording artists to monetize their projects through NFTs. https://www.sound.xyz/
PleasrDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that purchases and collects work that is relevant to the digital and crypto culture. https://pleasr.org/
terra0 is an evolving prototype built on the Ethereum network that aims to provide automated ecosystem resilience frameworks. https://terra0.org/
Black Swan is an experimental digital initiative designed to eat the art world by channeling resources from established institutions to cultural practitioners. https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/kul/zut/dao/dab.html
Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. https://www.torproject.org
Peter Lamborn Wilson aka Hakim Bey is an anarchist author and poet, primarily known for his concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones, short-lived spaces which elude formal structures of control. https://www.amazon.com/TAZ-Temporary-Autonomous-Ontological-Autonomedia/dp/1570271518
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-bey-t-a-z-the-temporary-autonomous-zone-ontological-anarchy-poetic-terrorism
Episode recorded on Zoom in December 2021.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Amy Franceschini and Lode Vranken represent Futurefarmers, an international group of artists founded in 1995 including anthropologists, farmers, and architects who work together to propose alternatives to the social, political, and environmental organization of space. They are known for long-lived projects such as the flatbread society and the seed journey.
There are quite a few gems in this conversation, about making spaces that call for communities; how connections to objects matter; and how to think about the tools we make and use. Futurefarmers invite us to rethink innovation, activism, collaboration. For me, the key takeaway was the correlation between crafting, communities, and form. Hearing about the way they use the material aspects of their work as âprobesâ to help collectively form communities, and the way this formal dimension or âauraâ is key to the process was refreshing.
Episode Notes & Links
Amy is an artist and designer whose work with Futurefarmers facilitates encounter, exchange, and tactile forms of inquiry by calling into question the "certainties" of a given time or place where a work is situated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Franceschini
Lode Vranken is an artist, architect, and philosopher.
For more on Futurefarmers visit https://www.futurefarmers.com/
Antoine Boute is an experimental writer and poet.
Futurefarmers work on a public art program for BjĂžrvika, Oslo (Norway) named Flatbread Society which examines the interrelationship of food production to realms of knowledge sharing, cultural production, socio-political formations, and everyday life since 2012. http://www.flatbreadsociety.net/
Built at Pollinaria in Abruzzo, Italy, "This is not a Trojan horse" is a large, human-powered, wooden horse designed by Futurefarmers with architect Lode Vranken. http://www.futurefarmers.com/thisisnotatrojanhorse/about.html
The Canoe Project by Flatbread Society is powered by four human legs and it includes a mobile baking oven within the canoe. Stephen Wright's description of the double ontology is perfectly exemplified in this case as flatbread is a conversation topic that is widely accessible while baking, unlike contemporary art is relatable to anybody regardless of profession or background. http://www.flatbreadsociety.net/actions/39/a-boat-walking-on-land
Flatbread Society Bakehouse was built with local boat builders in the form of a vessel. The "ship" hosts three bread ovens for making a variety of bread types. It seeks to point to the past and to the future, extending metaphors of cultivation and sailing to larger ideas of self-reliance and the foregrounding of organic processes in the development of land use, social relations, and cultural forms. https://www.futurefarmers.com/projects/bakehouse
Stanford University is a private research university located in California which was a key factor in the development of the technology enterprise now known as Silicon Valley. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK158815/
Industrial agriculture is the large-scale, intensive production of crops and animals, often involving chemical fertilizers on crops or the routine, harmful use of antibiotics in animals. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/industrial-agriculture-101
Rudolph Steiner (1861 - 1925) was a philosopher, social reformer, architect, esotericist. Apart from the scholarly work and metaphysical practice, he was interested in biodynamic agriculture, a practice similar to organic farming.
Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that arranges a mutually beneficial relationship for land, resources, people, and the environment and employs multidisciplinary methods that source from the knowhow of agriculture, water harvesting and hydrology, energy, natural building, forestry, waste management, animal systems, aquaculture, appropriate technology, economics, and community development. https://www.permaculturenews.org/what-is-permaculture/
Best known as the frontman of the multinational technology corporation Microsoft, Bill Gates is a business magnate and arguably one of the most influential individuals of the 20th century.
Donna Haraway is a writer, educator, and academic within the field of science and technology studies. She authored countless seminal texts among these, Cyborg Manifesto, as well as the Companion Species Manifesto are must-reads for any and all of us.
Founded by Joan Baez, Struggle Mountain is an international community located in California that evolved out of the sixties' counterculture and, most particularly, nonviolence and the draft resistance movement.
Joan Baez is a singer, songwriter, musician, and activist.
Amy teaches at the EcoSocial Design master program at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Can was there for a lecture. https://www.unibz.it/en/faculties/design-art/master-eco-social-design/
Co-designed by architects DoÄan Tekeli, Sami Sisa ve Metin HepgĂŒler, Ä°MĂ is an exemplary case within the canon of 20th-century architecture in Turkey as an open-air commercial complex located in the historical center of Ä°stanbul. It was occupied by the record companies, especially during the 1980s upon their booming popularity.
Run by artists Nancy Atakan and Volkan Aslan, 5533 is a contemporary art space located in Ä°MĂ.http://imc5533.blogspot.com/
Ahali Conversations is the love child of the Ahali Journal and MĂPS, the recording studio Amy mentions. Realized in 2017, MĂPS was an artwork in which Can turned 5533 into a walk-in record studio where local musicians were able to jump in jams and hang around the Ä°MĂ complex once again long after its prime days passed. http://www.local-legends.org/people/2017/11/18/artist-can-altay-on-music-memory-and-imagined-futures-at-istanbuls-mythical-m-building
Radio Ramona is an internet radio station that deals with strange affairs between bread, astronomy, migration, and gossip about old and forgotten communication gadgets by Future Farmers.
Seed Journey is a seafaring voyage connected to a public art project. It occurred in three legs. Set off at Oslo and concluded in Ä°stanbul a rotating crew of artists, anthropologists, biologists, bakers, activists, sailors, and farmers joined the journey and shared their findings at host institutions along the route from small harbors to large ports from barns to museums (contemporary art, natural history and maritime) to social centers. http://futurefarmers.com/seedjourney/
Twitter is a social media platform that serves for microblogging where users express opinions within 280 characters.
Noah Glass is a technology entrepreneur who launched Twitter in 2006.
Episode recorded on Zoom in July 2021.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, Metahavenâs body of work encompasses filmmaking, writing, objects, and graphics. Their activities offer a kind of cultural practice that doesnât shy away from producing knowledge and reflections; as much as the production of affect.
We hear Daniel reflecting on their practice, through the notions of interface, agency, distribution, formats, versions, iterations, and many other potentials and obstacles towards making something meaningful and compelling.
Episode Notes and Links
Metahaven http://metahaven.net https://mthvn.tumblr.com
Centering on children, adults, and parental relationships, the absence of linguistic reference to reality, and the ineffability of the metaphysical, Metahavenâs latest work titled Chaos Theory (2021) is a multi-voice video essay starred by Georgina DĂĄvid and Valentina Di Mondo. It is a sequel of previous films by Metahaven titled Hometown (2018), Information Skies (2016), and The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) (2015). Excerpt: https://vimeo.com/494444068 https://mthvn.tumblr.com/post/663742206080909312/valentinadimondotalkstometahaven
Assembling genres (anime, sci-fi, fantasy role-playing games) and moving beyond the representation of linear time, Metahavenâs Information Skies offers a dreamlike speculation that questions the boundaries between sound and images, reality and fiction, factuality and technology, reflection and embodiment.
Citation by Lesia Prokopenko for Vdrome. https://www.vdrome.org/metahaven/
Filmed in Beirut and Kyiv, Hometown depicts a fictional city through the perspective of protagonists Lera and Ghina that reveal their attachment to the Hometown which is so familiar yet not what it was once in the past. https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/192165/metahavenhometown/
Released in segments on YouTube, Sprawl is Metahavenâs first feature film delving into various geopolitical disturbances that occurred in the last decade.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/152877677 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5432984/
sprawl.space is the online interface for The Sprawl, where the viewer can see the âshardsâ that make up the full version of the film. The website has been shaped by the interface design of Metahaven and the viewing algorithms of YouTube. https://sprawl.space/about-the-sprawl/
Assembling cinematic sequences shot in the Southeastern Urals and Macedonia, archival footage, and animation, Eurasia (Questions on Happiness) sets forth on a journey towards the Eurasian steppe where it meets the New Silk Road. https://vimeo.com/296095100
Citation from Metahavenâs exhibition at ICA titled Version History in 2018: https://www.ica.art/exhibitions/metahaven-version-history?fbclid=IwAR3tAJ5TQ2xxzVhItTYW7bx6uJcKBYjgdwBnGkXBgI75nmczpt6yDzcbXCw
Expounding the genealogy of viral internet memes and their potential uses within politics as agitprops 2.0 to engineer public opinion, âCan Jokes Bring Down Governmentsâ is a visionary essay on social media warfare by Metahaven. https://strelkamag.com/en/article/memes-design-and-politics
Published by Sternberg Press in 2015, âBlack Transparencyâ reflected on the changes that are introduced to our life with the fast-paced development of communication technologies and their impact on information democracy by tackling matters such as the conscience of the whistleblower, whose personal politics are now instantly geopolitical. https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/black-transparency-the-right-to-know-in-the-age-of-mass-surveillance/
Borrowing its title from the findings of a survey which indicates that an average person in the U.S. spends eight more minutes than the total duration of Stalker (161 minutes) daily, Digital Tarkovsky is a thought-provoking essay investigating the effect of social media platforms on our perception of time. Published by Strelka in 2018. https://strelkamag.com/en/article/digital-tarkovsky-metahaven-excerpt
Filmed in 1979, Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky is a loose adaptation of Arkady and Boris Strugatskyâs science fiction novel Roadside Picnic (1972).
Netflix is a subscription-based streaming service that offers different catalogs of movies, documentaries, and series internationally.
Mubi is a subscription-based streaming service that offers a curated catalog covering a wide range of moving image genres.
Short for Internet Movie Database, IMDB is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMDb
4:3 by Boiler Room is a multifaceted genre-spanning platform for curated and commissioned underground films exploring themes of performance, identity, youth culture, and anti-establishment. https://boilerroom.tv
State of Concept Athens is a non-profit contemporary art institution founded by curator iLiana Fokianaki. https://stateofconcept.org/general/
Conflict is an anarcho-punk band originally based in London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_(band)
Mike Kelley (1954 â 2012) an influential artist who merged childhood objects with youth culture; personal stories with political histories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Kelley_(artist)
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Nato Thompson is a curator and the founder of the Alternative Art School. Before setting up this experimental education project, Nato was the artistic director of Philadelphia Contemporary and a key figure at Creative Time, New Yorkâs influential organization focusing on art in public space.
You will listen to Nato reflecting on that shift, from working within institutions to setting up oneâs own. His insights on the inner workings of the art industry are totally thought-provoking. And itâs the first time we are talking about NFTâs at Ahali! This conversation really shows the many blind spots, or things we tend to overlook about the status quo.
EPISODE NOTES & LINKS
Nato Thompson is an author, curator, and self-proclaimed âcultural infrastructure builderâ. www.natothompson.com/about
The Alternative Art School (TAAS) is an affordable learning program run by a stellar faculty offering intimate class sizes. TAAS emphasizes group work, community building, and dynamic modes of socializing and art-making. www.thealternativeartschool.net/how-it-works-1
Philadelphia Contemporary is an independent and free-standing venue that celebrates the abundance of genre-bending, multidisciplinary practices that make up the field of contemporary art. www.philadelphiacontemporary.org
Operating since 1974, Creative Time is an influential public arts organization in New York. creativetime.org/about/
Growing out of a major exhibition that had occurred in Creative Time, Living as Form contains commissioned essays from noted critics and theorists who look at Socially Engaged Art practiced between the years of 1991-2011. mitpress.mit.edu/books/living-form
MASS MoCA is a contemporary art museum located in North Adams, Massachusetts. massmoca.org/about/
Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century (2015) www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/214258/seeing-power-by-nato-thompson/9781612190440/
Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545444/culture-as-weapon-by-nato-thompson/
Part of the TAAS faculty, Paul Chan is an artist, writer, and publisher. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Chan_(artist)
Trevor Paglen is an artist, geographer, and author whose work critically deals with mass surveillance and data collection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Paglen
A fierce political figure of our time that operates within (but not limited to) the field of contemporary art, Tania Bruguera's work pivots around issues of power and control, and several of her works interrogate and re-present events in Cuban history. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tania_Bruguera
Simone Leigh is an artist who reflects on the black female subjectivity through her practice. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Leigh
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter
Star Trek is a science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek
Janine Antoni is an artist who focuses on process and the transitions between the making and finished product, often portraying feminist ideals. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_Antoni
Miguel LĂłpez is an artist, researcher, and writer. www.bakonline.org/person/miguel-a-lopez/
Yael Bartana is an artist whose work focuses on political or feminist themes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yael_Bartana
Motivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances, Mel Chin is an artist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Chin
Hito Steyerl is an artist, theoretician, and educator. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hito_Steyerl
Marinella Senatore is an artist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinella_Senatore
Mia Yu is an independent researcher, curator, and educator. portal.cca.edu/events-calendar/curatorial-practice-lecture-mia-yu/
Mario Ybarra Jr. employs his multi-layered artistic practice to e various components of Mexican-American identity. www.otis.edu/faculty/mario-ybarra-jr
Kathrin Böhm is an artist whose practice focuses on the collective re-production of public space; on the economy as a public realm; and every day as a starting point for culture. Check out Ahali Conversations Episode 13 to get inspired by Kathrin's way to build diverse economies within, out of, and around the field of culture. www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-13-kathrinbohm
J.K Gibson-Graham is the pen-name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham. As feminist political economists and economic geographers, they have extensively written about diverse economies, urbanism, alternative communities, and regional economic development.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Gibson-Graham
Smashcut is an online learning platform built for real-time, media-based education. www.smashcut.com/about
Pedagogy of the Oppressed is considered one of the foundational texts of critical pedagogy and proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and society by Paolo Freire. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed
Black Mountain College was an experimental college founded in 1933.
John Cage (1912 â 1992) was a composer, music theorist, artist, and philosopher who was a teacher at BMC.
"Merce" Cunningham (1919 â 2009) was a dancer and choreographer who was a teacher at BMC.
Gezi Park Protests occurred in Turkey in 2013 to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezi_Park_protests
The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring
Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a protest movement against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics that began in New York City's Wall Street financial district, in 2011. It gave rise to the wider Occupy movement in the United States and other countries. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street
Sotheby's is a multinational corporation headquartered in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewelry, and collectibles. www.sothebys.com/en/
Christie's is an auction house like Sotheby's known for its involvement in high-profile private transactions. www.christies.com/en
SAHA is an association that seeks to support contemporary art from Turkey. www.saha.org.tr
Protocinema is a cross-cultural art organization that commissions and presents works and exhibitions of contemporary art. www.protocinema.org/about
Fırat Engin is an artist based in İstanbul and Ankara. firatengin.com/cv
Vahap AvĆar is an artist based in New York and Ä°stanbul. vahapavsar.com/bio/
DC hardcore, sometimes referred to in writing as harDCore, is the hardcore punk scene of Washington, D.C. Emerging in late 1979, it is considered one of the first and most influential punk scenes in the United States. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C._hardcore
Bad Brains are a rock band formed in Washington, D.C. in 1977. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Brains
Minor Threat was a hardcore punk band, formed in 1980 in Washington, D.C. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Threat
Fugazi is a post-hardcore band that formed in Washington, D.C. in 1986. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugazi
The Nation of Ulysses was a punk rock band from Washington, D.C., formed in spring 1988. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nation_of_Ulysses
Minecraft is an influential sandbox video game with a major impact on popular internet culture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft
Red Dead Redemption is a Western-themed action-adventure game. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption
Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is a series of action-adventure games. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto
The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista_National_Liberation_Front
Just google Google. g.co/kgs/2CdUks
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Meriç Ăner is the current Director of Research and Programs at SALT, a cultural, or rather as Meriç elaborates a research institution in Istanbul.
I think Meriçâs proposal boils down to imagining the next art institution as a kind of academy, not only as a site of education, but also as a provider of exchange, a social platform where knowledge intermingles with and through the people.
Episode Notes & Links
Meriç Ăner is a trained architect and the Director of Research and Programs at SALT since 2017.
https://news.artnet.com/art-world/meric-oner-announced-director-turkey-salt-802586
SALT is Turkeyâs spearheading cultural institution. With a special focus on art, architecture, and social life, It holds a vast archive of the material and visual culture of Turkey. The institution is active with a variety of cultural programs that include exhibitions. www.saltonline.org
Ä°stanbul Technical University is the world's third-oldest technical university dedicated to engineering sciences. https://www.itu.edu.tr/en
Established in 1996, Bilgi Ăniversitesi is a private university located in Istanbul. https://www.bilgi.edu.tr/en/university/about/
Pelin DerviĆ is an architect, researcher, writer, and editor. Her work focuses mainly on 20th-century architecture and design in Turkey. https://www.pelindervis.com/en/about
The United Nations Development Programme is a United Nations organization tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Development_Programme
The International Union of Architects (UIA) was founded in 1948 to unite the architects of the world through a federation of their national organizations. They hold an international congress once every three years. https://www.uia-architectes.org/webApi/en/about
Hans Hollein (30 March 1934 â 24 April 2014) was an Austrian architect and designer and key figure of postmodern architecture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Hollein
Sibel Bozdoǧan is an architect and academic whose research/teaching covers trans-national histories of modern architecture and urbanism across the globe, with a specialization on Turkey, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. https://www.bu.edu/haa/profile/sibel-bozdogan/
Murat GĂŒvenç is a scholar specializing in urban studies and regional planning.
Ä°hsan Bilgin is an architect and academic. https://readingoffice.com/ihsan-bilgin/
The contemporary art institution Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center opened in 2001 and was located on the pedestrian Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul, Turkey. It ended its activities under this name in 2010 upon the foundation of SALT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_Garanti_Contemporary_Art_Center
Garanti Gallery (GG) was a cultural institution based in Istanbul, Turkey, specializing in design, architecture, and urbanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garanti_Gallery
Founded in March 1997 by the Ottoman Bank in collaboration with the History Foundation (Turkish: Tarih Vakfi), the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre (OBARC) operated in the former Head Office of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul, Turkey from 1999 to 2010 till SALTâs foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Bank_Archives_and_Research_Centre
Vasıf Kortun is a curator, teacher, and writer. He was the guest of Ahaliâs sixth episode: https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-6-vasif-kortun
Arte Ătil seeks to collect case studies to show how initiatives focusing on social practice are not isolated incidents, but part of a larger historical trajectory. https://www.arte-util.org/about/colophon/
Alastair Hudson is the co-director of the AsociaciĂłn de Arte Ătil with Tania Bruguera. https://www.internationaleonline.org/people/alistair_hudson/
Aslıhan DemirtaĆ is an architect. https://aslihan-demirtas.com/about
Han TĂŒmertekin is an architect http://www.mimarlar.com/en-US/Architect/han-tumertekin/1
Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948â1980 is an exhibition that has taken place at MoMa in 2018. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3931?locale=en
Thomas Krens is the former director and Senior Advisor for International Affairs of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York City. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Krens
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We are hosting curator Lucia Pietrouisti; and hearing her take on inhabiting institutions and much much wider ecosystems.
Lucia was in charge of public programming at the Serpentine Gallery in London when she launched the General Ecology program. This was not only a program of content as usual, but rather included an in-depth look into the institutionâs ecological footprint and thus came with a range of challenging questions around environmental responsibilities.
We discuss with Lucia the intricacies of maneuvering such realms with severe conventions and bureaucracies. An example she gives is the military in Venice, where they installed the infamous art opera sun & sea (Marina) for the 2019 Venice Biennale.
Episode Notes & Links:
Lucia Pietrouisti often devises ways to intersect her research field with art and systems. https://luciapietroiusti.earth/about-me
Curated by Lucia, âSun and Sea (Marina)â is an opera-performance by RugilÄ BarzdĆŸiukaitÄ, Vaiva GrainytÄ, and Lina LapelytÄ. Commissioned by the Lithuanian Pavilion, it was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation during the 58th Venice Biennale. https://www.sunandsea.lt/en/Venice-Biennale
General Ecology Program is the Serpentineâs long-term and ongoing project researching complexity, more-than-humanism, climate justice, and environmental balance. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/general-ecology
Curated by Lucia alongside Filipa Ramos, âThe Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fishâ is a series of gatherings to bring together a wide range of thinkers and practitioners from various disciplinary ambits across art, literature, environment, science, and technology. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/shape-circle-mind-fish/
Filipa Ramos is a curator, writer, and teacher. She is also an intrepid explorer that considers diving as a cinematic experiment and moving-image-based technologies as gateways to oceans.
Make sure to listen to the Ahali Episode featuring Filipa: https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-12-filiparamos
Fire management is the process of planning, preventing, and fighting fires to protect people, property, and forest resources. It also involves fire to attain forestry, wildlife, and land-use objectives. https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/fire-management
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. They provide scientific assessments on climate change, its implications, and potential future risks, as well as put forward adaptation and mitigation options. https://www.ipcc.ch
Lina LapelytÄ is is an artist, composer, musician, and performer currently exploring the phenomena of song to examines the issues of displacement, otherness, and beauty. http://www.linalapelyte.com
The Venetian Arsenal is a complex of former shipyards and armories clustered together in the city of Venice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal
âPowers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universeâ are two short films written by Charles and Ray Eames. It depicts the relative scale of the Universe according to an order of magnitude based on a factor of ten, first expanding out from the Earth until the entire universe is surveyed, then reducing inward until a single atom and its quarks are observed.https://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/powers-of-ten/
Ecocide is mass damage and destruction of ecosystems â severe harm to nature that is widespread or long-term. https://www.stopecocide.earth/what-is-ecocide
The Dakota Access Pipeline or Bakken pipeline is a 1,172-mile-long underground oil pipeline in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline
âSensing the Planetâ is the launch event of Black Atlantic. It will highlight issues of race and environmental harm while enforcing the role of interdisciplinary artists in imagining new futures built on principles of sustainability and justice. https://www.dartington.org/event/sensing-the-planet/
Black Atlantic is a new decolonial arts partnership, co-established by UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre, Serpentine Galleries, Royal Court Theatre, and Dartington Trust, that aims to strengthen the role of arts and culture in advancing social and climate justice.
https://www.dartington.org/whats-on/info/black-atlantic/
Ben Vickers is a curator, writer, explorer, publisher, technologist, and luddite. He is CTO at the Serpentine Galleries in London, co-founder of Ignota Books, and an initiator of the open-source monastic order unMonastery. https://benvickers.net
The Delphic Oracle known as the Pythia was the high priestess of the temple of Apollo and she was the most authoritative oracle among male-dominated Ancient Greece and the most powerful woman of the classical world. https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/pythian-school-of-futures/id1541454333?i=1000503897028
Judith Butlerâs âExcitable Speechâ provides an intelligent analysis of hate speech to propose a speech act theory of verbal injury that is not dependent on the grammar of accountability. https://books.google.com.tr/books/about/Excitable_Speech.html?id=I7D_AC_aKEMC&redir_esc=y
Realized in 2016, âDevaluing Property Real Estate Agencyâ is an Installation-Performance by Cooking Sections that scrutinizes the peculiar history of Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica) in Britain. http://www.cooking-sections.com/Devaluing-Property-Real-Estate-Agency
Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology.http://www.richardpowers.net
Episode recorded on Zoom on August 11th, 2021.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, is a curator best known as the artistic director of SAVVYâThe Laboratory of Form-Ideas, a self-organized art institution located in Berlin. He has recently been appointed as the new director at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin.
We hear from Bonaventure on the importance of positioning oneself, within collaboration but always in response and with response-ability. He is someone who didnât wait for legitimization and instead went ahead to create a space, and let things emerge from that space and from the people who end up hanging out there.
Episode Notes & Links
This episode was recorded during the Mediterranean wildfires that have taken place in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Algeria and Tunisia.
SAVVY, the laboratory of form and ideas is a public cultural institution located in Berlin. https://savvy-contemporary.com
To go further deep into Bonaventureâs thinking, check out this talk organized by the After the Archive? Initiative. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6SbXJlNDSJjYQPN5tWjM93?si=F0kjcbEERPOIJTQdSmVPqQ&dl_branch=1
To get a better sense of his story of becoming, check out this conversation for the NKATA podcast. He also touches on the impact of the life, work and untimely deaths of two giants of contemporary art: Bisi Silva and Okwui Enwezor. https://nkatapodcast.com/2019/04/05/nkata-with-bonaventure-soh-bejeng-ndikung/
At documenta 14 in Athens and in Kassel, the slogan âWir (alle) sind das Volkâ [We (all) are the people] was displayed on banners and posters in German and Greek and the languages understood by most foreign Documenta visitors, as well as the languages of the migrants and refugees who are exposed to xenophobic aggression in Europe. Among the languages are Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish, Farsi (as spoken in Afghanistan), and the language of refugees from Eritrea.
https://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/13591/hans-haacke
Curated by Bonaventure, the 13th edition of the Bamako Encounters - African Biennale of Photography will be on view in Bamako, Mali from November 20, 2021âJanuary 20, 2022.
In his essay titled âThe Globalized Museum? Decanonization as Method: A Reflection in Three Actsâ, Bonaventure proposes to utilize decanonization as method for âwhat might be a global museum of self-reflexivity, whereby the idea will not be to create new or parallel canons, or place them side by side, or universalize the Western canon, but to decanonize the entire notion of the canon.â https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/the-globalized-museum-bonaventure-soh-bejeng-ndikung-documenta-14-2017/
Thomas Mann was a writer known for his highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas which are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann
Henry Louis Gates is a literary critic, teacher, historian and filmmaker that conceptualized Signifyin', a critical approach to context-bound significance of words, which is accessible only to those who share the cultural values of a given speech community. The expression comes from stories about the Signifying Monkey, a trickster figure said to have originated during slavery in the United. States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_Jr.
Theaster Gates is a Chicago based artist whose work sources from social practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theaster_Gates
The Nettelbeckplatz is a square in the Berlin district of Wedding. https://second.wiki/wiki/nettelbeckplatz
An originally well known Armenian/Greek Christian neighborhood called Tatavla, KurtuluĆ is a district of Istanbul. Meaning "liberation", "salvation", "independence" or "deliverance" in Turkish, KurtuluĆâs non muslim population of the neighborhood is greatly diminished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KurtuluĆ
Sonsbeek is an international exhibition in Arnhem, Netherlands which largely focuses on public works of contemporary art. https://www.sonsbeek20-24.org
âChercher midi Ă quatorze heures" is a quirky way of telling someone that it is making an issue more difficult than it needs to beâturning something simple into something complicated in French.
Director Jef Cornelis made an in-situ documentary about the Sonsbeek that had taken place in 1971 titled âSonsbeek: buiten de perkenâ for the Belgian TV Channel VRT. His body of work is influential to imagine what television can be and how it can be used to document and represent art. https://vimeo.com/433640306
Known as the founder of the art movement fluxus, Joseph Beuys was an influential teacher and artist who was influential in the latter half of the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beuys
A champion of Africa's oral tradition and traditional knowledge, Amadou Hampùté Bù was a writer, historian and ethnologist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Hampùté_Bù
Curatorial Statement of Bamako Biennial quotes Amadou HampĂątĂ© BĂąâs statement (Aspects de la civilisation africaine, Ăditions PrĂ©sence Africaine, 1972) presiding over the manifestation, Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono, translates to, âthe persons of the person are multiple in the person.â
https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/361013/rencontres-de-bamako-african-biennale-of-photographymaa-ka-maaya-ka-ca-a-yere-kono/
Sun Ra, was a jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific output, and theatrical performances. For much of his career, Ra led "The Arkestra," an ensemble with an ever-changing name and flexible line-up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ra
Thelonious Monk was a seminal jazz pianist and composer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk
Stephen Wright is a writer and gardener based in France. He was the first guest of the previous season of Ahali. Listen at https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-1-stephen-wright
Assembled by the king of 6/8, the living legend Brice Wassy
Kelin-Kelin Orchestra is a big band that consists of twelve musicians.
Called the "queen of Taarab and Unyago music, Fatima binti Baraka also known as Bi Kidude, was a Zanzibari-born Tanzanian Taarab singer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi_Kidude
Influenced by the musical traditions of the African Great Lakes, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Taarab is a music genre popular in Tanzania and Kenya.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taarab
Natasha Ginwala is a curator working inââ the field of contemporary art.
Ayesha Hameed is a lecturer, writer and practitioner who produces videos, audio essays and performance lectures.
Matana Roberts is a sound experimentalist, visual artist, jazz saxophonist, clarinetist and composer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matana_Roberts
Formed in 1979 by Pierre-Edouard DĂ©cimus and Jacob Desvarieux, Kassavâ is a Zouk band that makes Guadeloupean carnival music recording it in a more fully orchestrated yet modern and polished style. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassav%27
Jacob Desvarieux was a singer, arranger, and music producer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Desvarieux
Jocelyne BĂ©roard is a singer and songwriter. She is one of the lead singers of the Kassav'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyne_BĂ©roard
Zouk is a musical movement pioneered by the French Antillean band Kassav' in the early 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouk
NĂ©gritude (from French "NĂšgre" and "-itude" to denote a condition that can be translated as "Blackness") is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating "Black consciousness" across Africa and its diaspora. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NĂ©gritude
One of the founders of the Négritude movement, Aimé Césaire was a Martinican poet, author, and politician. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimé_Césaire
Served as the first president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980, LĂ©opold SĂ©dar Senghor was a poet, politician and cultural theorist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LĂ©opold_SĂ©dar_Senghor
Episode recorded on Zoom on August 4th, 2021.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Jerszy Seymour is a designer who first made a name for his industrial products. His practice soon turned into a much more experimental one that combines materiality, relationships, and setting up situations.
While his work is included in numerous museum collections from MoMA to Centre Pompidou; he continues to make large-scale projects or storylines that follow an ethos of imagined societies towards designing the new world. He has also ventured into creating educational situations. He founded and is still directing The Dirty Art Department, a masterâs program focusing on applied arts and design at the Sandberg Institute.
EPISODE NOTES & LINKS
Magis is an Italian furniture and design company. They collaborated with Jerszy on several products such as the Flux chair and Bureaurama office furniture series: https://www.magisdesign.com/designer/jerszy-seymour/
The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. Their ideas were influential in instigating the protests that occurred in the summer of 1968 in France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International
Macao is a new self-organized center for arts in Milan that was founded during a national uprising that has led to the occupation of many public spaces for a more accessible culture through a radical process of reclaiming centers for the township in 2012. https://www.macaomilano.org/spip.php?article166
In 2004 Jerszy embarked upon a series of experimental projects seeking to revitalize the position of design within society. One notable ongoing exploration centers on an imagined society of amateurs and has been realized in evolving iterations beginning in 2008 with the exhibition âThe First Supperâ at the MAK, Vienna. https://www.viennadesignweek.at/en/archive/2008/mak-design-nite-first-supper/
The "Living Systems" installation was the outcome of a series of experiments with organic plastics developed by Jerszy which was displayed at the Vitra Design Museum. http://collectiononline.design-museum.de/#/en/object/44305?_k=yef2ui
Walden first published in 1854 is a book by Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is a part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, a voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, andâto some degreeâa manual for self-reliance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden
The Amateur Workshop is an exhibition that facilitates the experimental play associated with the dirtying, hands-on experience of the playground. https://jerszyseymourdesignworkshop.com/project/amateur-diagram/https:// https://criticalissuesintheculturalindustries2.wordpress.com/studio-2/ode-to-the-amateur/
The German word Gesamtkunstwerk literally means "total artwork", which refers to a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesamtkunstwerk
Part of the Sandberg Institute, Dirty Art Department is an alternative pedagogical modem that sources from design and applied art. Founded by Jerszy, it is described as an open space for all possible thought, creation, and action. http://dirtyartdepartment.com/about/
The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture is a collection of essays and lectures by Georges Bataille on anthropology, comparative religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781890951566/the-cradle-of-humanity
Martin Kippenberger was a German artist and sculptor known for his extremely prolific output in a wide range of styles and media, as well as his provocative public persona. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kippenberger
Enzo Mari was an Italian modernist artist and furniture designer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Mari
Erik Olin Wrightâs How to BE an Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century is a concise and tightly argued manifesto analyzing the varieties of anti-capitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. https://www.versobooks.com/books/3763-how-to-be-an-anticapitalist-in-the-twenty-first-century
Formed in 2014 as a reaction to the increasing financialization of Higher Education in the UK, School of the Damned (SotD) is an arts and educational platform. Re-forming on an annual basis, each cohort has the opportunity to define the agenda and produce work and events individually and collectively. https://schoolofthedamned.wixsite.com/sotd2019/about
Coined by Thomas More, utopia is an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UtopiaPowered by Macao Milano, Common Coin is a social local currency integrated with a basic income based on social cooperation. https://www.macaomilano.org/IMG/pdf/3_-_commoncoin_basic_income.pdf?1498/0c7e90052d75f199cb712e014f1f8100f3113c3e
The Wandering School is a project by the Dirty Art Department in collaboration with Macao which occurred as a series of events, interacting with the community of Macao and the local and international public for the Design Week and MiArt http://wanderingschool.com
Lucky Larryâs Cosmic Commune proposed a place for people to stay during the Saint Etienne Design Biennale in 2017. Described as a utopian non utopia by Seymour, the experiment aimed to create a space for the public to nap comfortably or take part in the cooking, cleaning, gardening, and distributing propaganda material for the concept. https://www.biennale-design.com/saint-etienne/2017/en/programme/?ev=lucky-larry-s-cosmic-commune-30 https://jerszyseymourdesignworkshop.com/project/lucky-larrys-cosmic-commune-2017/#0
Life on Planet Orsimanirana is a futuristic, immersive DIY radio âpumping funk of molecular consciousnessâ https://www.radio-orsimanirana.com
RiMaflow is a recovered factory that is run by its workers. Located in Milan, it aims to match the solidarity economy with productive activities and social fabric https://commonfare.net/nl/stories/ri-maflow-recovered-factory?story_locale=en
The Mondragon Corporation is a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/about-us/
The MietshÀuser Syndikat provides advice and support to self-organized house projects so that they can be taken off the real estate market. https://www.syndikat.org/en/
Written by Guy Debord in 1967, Society of the Spectacle is a critique of capital, cultural imperialism, and the role of mediation in social relationships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
Xenofeminism is a call to action written by Laboria Cuboniks in the form of a manifesto that aims to situate feminism within the purview of techno-politics and deploy it as an emancipatory affordance towards building a new world in the 21st century. www.laboriacuboniks.net
Mary Maggic is an artist whose work spans amateur science, public workshopology, performance, installation, documentary film, and speculative fiction. https://maggic.ooo/About-Maggic
Inventing the Future is a book by Nick Srncek and Alex Williams in which a post-capitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work, and developing technologies that expand our freedoms is expounded.
In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone.https://www.versobooks.com/books/3156-fully-automated-luxury-communism
Emma Goldman was an anarchist political activist and writer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman
Written in 1890, News from Nowhere is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer, and socialist pioneer William Morris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_from_NowheEpisode recorded on Zoom on April 20th, 2021.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Kathrin Böhm is an artist whose practice focuses on the collective re-production of public space; on economy as a public realm; and the everyday as a starting point for culture. Since the mid-nineties, Kathrin has expanded the terms of socially engaged practice by co-producing complex organisational, spatial, visual, and economic forms.
Many of Kathrinâs works stem from long-lasting collaborations. She is a founding member of the international artist group Myvillages, since 2003; the art and architecture collective Public Works, 1999 â 2012; the Centre for Plausible Economies, since 2018. In 2014 Kathrin founded the arts enterprise called Company Drinks. And today weâll hear from her how working on a 1 to 1 scale matters, for engaging within the public realm. She also walks us through the dimensions of use, how different people and entities âuseâ such projects in myriad ways.
EPISODE NOTES & LINKS
Kathrinâs recent exhibition is titled âCompostâ to refer to the way in which she composts existing works. The exhibition features architectural structures, tape towers, haystacks, a drinks company, posters, books, a pantry, trade shows, pots with noses alongside a live program of talks, workshops, and 1:1 drop-ins will be held at The Showroom and online. https://www.theshowroom.org/exhibitions/kathrin-bohm-compost
Company Drinks is a community space and social enterprise based in Barking and Dagenham. Their high-quality, artisanal juices and beverages are produced from the crops they collect, glean, forage, or simply go picking in surrounding parks, fields, and farms. https://companydrinks.info/drink/
The Center for Plausible Economies was initiated by Kathrin Böhm and Kuba Szreder to bring together artistic action and critical thinking to reclaim the economy.
J.K Gibson-Graham is the pen-name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham. As feminist political economists and economic geographers, they have extensively written about diverse economies, urbanism, alternative communities and regional economic development.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Gibson-Graham
Founded on the groundbreaking work of J.K. Gibson-Graham in publications such as The End of Capitalism (as we knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, A Postcapitalist Politics, and Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming our Communities, the Community Economies Institute (CEI) fosters thought and practice to help communities survive well together. http://www.communityeconomies.org/about/community-economies-institute
Learn to Act is a user-friendly manual explaining and demonstrating international communal and intergenerational learning and socio-economic capacity-building programs with the aim to stimulate and facilitate their replication by others.
https://halfletterpress.com/learn-to-act-introducing-the-eco-nomadic-school/
Stephen Wright is a writer and gardener based in France. He was the first guest of the previous season of Ahali. Listen at https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-1-stephen-wright
âTowards a lexicon of usership" focuses on the politics of usership, as well as other modes of cultural production that do not necessitate artworks, authorship, or spectatorship. You can download a free copy of the lexicon from Arte Utilsâ website.
An alternative to more familiar identifiers (such as .ltd or Inc.), the Interdependence (idt.) stands for a multi-local alliance between community economies initiatives. https://www.communityeconomies.org/news/launch-interdependence-and-idt
Founded by Doina Petrescu and Constantin Petcou, atelier dâarchitecture autogĂ©rĂ©e / studio for self-managed architecture (aaa) is a collective platform that conducts explorations, actions, and research concerning urban mutations and cultural, social, and political emerging practices in the contemporary city.
Myvillages was founded by artists Kathrin Böhm, Wapke Feenstra and Antje Schiffers to advocate for a new understanding of the rural as a place of and for cultural production. They initiate and organise projects which range from work in private spaces to museum exhibitions, from personal questions to multidisciplinary research and publications, from foraging to building permanent infrastructures.
The Rural is part of the Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art series, It was edited by Myvillages in 2019. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/rural
Bringing issues about agricultural land use, local traditions, and collective efforts into discussion, Haystacks is a series of talks and meetings about rural links, places, and practices initiated by Katrin Höhm/Myvillages. https://www.andmillionsandmillions.net/haystacks/
Episode recorded on Zoom on February 16th 2021.
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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Filipa Ramos is a writer, curator, and educator, who has been working on the relationships between contemporary art and cinema, and the way environmental and ecological matters of concern are tackled or manifested in and through art.
She is one of the founding curators of Vdrome, a self-proclaimed online cinema. She is also the Curator of Art Basel Film. and a Lecturer in the MRes Art: Moving Image of Central Saint Martins, London and the Masterâs Program of the Arts Institute in Basel. She is co-curating the symposia series, or the âinterdisciplinary festivalâ The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Lucia Pietroiusti for the Serpentine Galleries, London. Ramos is currently the Head of Research and Publications for the 13th Shanghai Biennale.
Filipa's writing and research on art, film, and nature have been published in magazines and catalogs worldwide. She authored "Lost and Found" (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2009) https://en.silvanaeditoriale.it/libro/9788836613397 and edited "Animals" (London: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2016). https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/documents-contemporary-art-animals/
She curated "Animalesque", a group exhibition on becoming other at the Bildmuseet UmeÄ (Summer 2019) http://www.bildmuseet.umu.se/en/exhibition/animalisk/35302
Filipa is also the curator of Art Basel's film sector. https://www.artbasel.com/stories/online-viewing-rooms-filipa-ramos
V-drome is a perennial online program that presents films by visual artists and filmmakers. http://www.vdrome.org
Lucia Pietrouisti is the head of the general ecology department of the Serpentine Galleries where she also curated the interdisciplinary festival titled "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish" along with Filipa. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/general-ecology/
The 13th Shanghai Biennale aims to advocate for processes of planetary re-alliance relying on transspecies collectivity. https://www.powerstationofart.com/whats-on/programs/shanghai-bienniale/home
Beatriz Colomina is an architecture historian, theorist, and curator. Her text titled âDiary of a Diseaseâ is published online as part of the "Sick Architecture", https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/sick-architecture/364166/diary-of-a-disease/
Inspired by âCyborg Manifestoâ by Donna Haraway, Milanese Fashion House Gucciâs AW 2018 collection titled "Paradoxical Creatures" was designed by Alessandro Michele. https://www.gucci.com/uk/en_gb/st/stories/runway/article/fall-winter-2018-details
Hannah Marriottâs detailed account of the story features how other houses such as Prada and D&G were embracing similar concepts for the 2018 fashion week. https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/feb/27/miquela-cyborg-handbag-drones-milan-fashion-week-weird-vision-future
Director Gus Van Sant and Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele's film "At Home" features a television lecture performed by writer and philosopher Paul B Preciado. https://www.gucci.com/tr/en_gb/st/stories/article/guccifest-episode-1
Published in 1998, âThe Power of Display: a history of exhibition installations at the Museum of Modern Art" is a seminal study of installation design as an aesthetic medium and cultural practice by Mary Anne Staniszewski.
"Plant Sex" is a mind-boggling public program that took place at the Serpentine galleries. Co-curated as a prelude to "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Plants" by Filipa, it sought to reflect on the long and deep relationship between botany and eroticism. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/plantsex/
Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus
Acclaimed curator Chus Martinez was our guest at the previous episode. Make sure to dive into her ocean-like mind to make discoveries about nature, the ocean, and the sciences' potential relations with art through her dazzling array of thoughts. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-10-chusmartinez
Octavia Butler was a groundbreaking afro-futurist science-fiction writer. Her short essay, âThe Lost Races of Science Fiction" tackled the issue of racial presentation within the field of science fiction was first published in Transmission Magazine's summer issue in 1980. https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/d3ekbm/octavia-butler
"Sex, Botany, and Empire" explores the entwined destinies of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banksâ influence served both science and imperialism by Patricia Fara. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/sex-botany-and-empire/9780231134262
âThe Company One Keeps: Laptops, Lap Dances, Lapdogsâ was published at e-flux journal #93 in 2018 https://www.e-flux.com/journal/93/215746/the-company-one-keeps-laptops-lap-dances-lapdogs/
Episode recorded on Zoom on December 7th, 2020. Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Ăzer. Music by Grup Ses.
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