Just now, the journalists of the government critical newspaper “Cumhuriyet” have been sentenced in an unprecedented politically induced trial and just now, the state of emergency in Turkey has been extended once again. Meanwhile, Osman Kavala, Turkey’s most important and influential civil society activist and philanthropist, has been in prison without charge since October 2017. What does this mean for artists and cultural producers in Turkey? And how has the art scene in Turkey changed since 2016 (the coup-d’etat), or shall we say, since 2013 (the Gezi protests)? And what can we understand about it and how can we help our colleagues in Turkey?

Asena Günal is the program coordinator of the art center Depo in Istanbul-Tophane. Depo is an initiative of Anadolu Kültür which was founded by Osman Kavala. She is concerned about the isolation Turkish art scene might face with the rise of authoritarianism. Depo is a space for critical debate and cultural exchange with a wide variety of international art exhibitions, screenings, talks and such and the first initiative in Turkey to focus on regional collaborations among Turkey and countries in the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Balkans. Asena Günal is also the co-founder of Siyah Bant, a platform that documents censorship incidents in the field of arts.

Asena Günal has studied International Relations and Sociology and obtained her PhD in the History of Modern Turkey program at the Atatürk Institute, Boğaziçi University. She previously worked as an editor in İletişim Publishing House between 1998 and 2005.

In this open talk, Asena Günal will speak about the current situation in Turkey and especially in Istanbul’s art scene, how does the state of emergency affect the artists, who is Osman Kavala and how does his detention and arrest intimidate the civil society and the art scene; she will also talk about the artistic programme at Depo and their resistance strategies.

An invitation by para polis/Anke Hoffmann in collaboration with Corner College/Dimitrina Sevova.

A TETI Group exhibition in two parts for Corner College

Curated by Gabriel Gee & Anne-Laure Franchette


Saturday, 2 – Saturday, 23 June 2018 (Part 2: Blood as a rover)

Opening Hours: Wed/Thu/Fri 16:00h-19:00h & Sat 14:00h-19:00h

With works and interventions by Jürgen Baumann, Gregory Collavini, David Jacques, Tuula Närhinen, Claudia Stöckli, & VOLUMES Library

Opening Saturday, 2 June 18:00h
19:00h: Borderless poetics in fluidity, performance by Claudia Stöckli, accompanied by Michael Cerezo

Discussion Tuesday, 19 June 18:00h In contact with the wild, with Michael Günzburger & Lukas Bärfuss



Finissage Saturday, 23 June 18:00h with a book presentation: Changing representations of nature and cities: the 1960s and 1970s and their legacies, Gabriel Gee & Alison Vogelaar (eds.), 2018.





Curatorial text

See Hinterland, Part 1. The eyes of the lighthouse



Jürgen Baumann

Holey Mountain
2017



Holey Mountain by Jürgen Baumann radiates blackness, it drips more than it seats on a black stool, surrounded by white bowls filled with dark oil. The metabolic fluids of our global surroundings are indeed best captured as pitch black, with an oily whiff that threatens to choke the air we breathe when we take the time to truly look into the ground beneath our feet.



Gregory Collavini

Conduite forcée
2011



As part of Hinterland, Blood as a rover, Gregory Collavini presents a series of photographs exploring the management and exploitation of water in Switzerland: “One of the greatest powers in Switzerland is water. I wanted to illustrate this force, which is mainly used to produce electricity. But the year I did this project the precipitation was as its lowest. So it dried rivers and still machines became my subjects. However due to the roughness of the constructions they appeared to me as modern ruins, sculptures from the past and scars in the landscape.”



David Jacques

Oil is the devil’s excrement
2017




For Hinterland, blood as a rover, David Jacques explores the pernicious nature of oil in the shaping of our contemporary global societies. His film Oil is the devil’s excrement takes as a starting point a 1975 prophetic speech by the Venezuelan politician Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonzo, in which the former minister of energy declared: “Ten years from now, twenty years from now, you will see; oil will bring us ruin. Oil is the Devil’s excrement.” The animation film depicts an ailing Alfonzo in bed in hospital, as he is visited by a diabolic creature, who has come to claim its due. The metaphoric tale ultimately meditates on the extent to which humans, far from gaining control of oil, have always been its slaves…



Tuula Närhinen

Baltic Sea Plastique



Närhinen will present in Hinterland work from her series Baltic Sea Plastic, composed of sculptural forms made out of plastic found on the sea shore in Helsinki. The series explores the complex issue of environmental pollution by plastic waste, combining visual plasticity with the resilient capacity of marine life to evoke the formative process of nature.



Claudia Stöckli
Borderless poetics in fluidity





«I am on the way to leave my breathable habitat…» With ease my ego departs from anthropocentrism. Levitating approaching contemporary entities, which are thousands of years older then me. New microbes species settle. The dark liquid expands into infinity. Borderless, transnational thinking evolves in the deep sea through sound and loops. In the mostly unexplored ocean the human species is a minority. Perception alters, new connections between humans and non-human entities occur.



The exhibition is supported by the Temperatio Stiftung

TETI Group
www.tetigroup.org
VOLUMES
www.volumeszurich.ch

Einzelausstellung von Isabel Reiß // Personal exhibition of Isabel Reiß

07 July - 18 August 2018
(Summer break: 23 July - 05 August 2018)

Öffnungszeiten / Opening Hours
Thu/Fri 16:00h – 19:00h
Sat 14:00h – 17:00h


Opening Saturday 07 July 2018, 18:00h

Event Thursday 12 July 2018, 19:00h
Combs, Lines, Fields
Interactive audioexperiment/performance by Isabel Reiß and the audience

Event Thursday 09 August 2018, 19:00h
Nux comica
Performance by Anne Käthi Wehrli

Event Thursday 16 August 2018, 19:00h
Selbsthilfegruppe Solidarity and Europe
Open discussion with an introduction by Cathérine Hug and following barbecue
Feel free to bring material on the subject. Beamer/laptop are provided

Finissage Saturday 18 August 2018, 18:00h
with surprise concert by good old Mosh Mosh
10 years of Corner College, and final event at Kochstrasse 1
with DJ Sweatproducer! (Zürich) und DJ Mosh (Berlin)


Diese Ausstellung wird unterstützt von der Stiftung Erna und Curt Burgauer, der Georges und Jenny Bloch Stiftung, und der Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim-Stiftung.

Wer beschreibt gerade die Lage hier?
Kann ich der guten Frau trauen?
Verlässliche Infos?
Sie meldet Gebüsche, sie meldet Dornen und sagt
hier sei die Strasse zu.

Diese Performance ist Teil der Einzelausstellung von Isabel Reiß, Waben, Schlangen, Felder.

Selbsthilfegruppe Solidarity and Europe
Open discussion with an introduction by Cathérine Hug and following barbecue

Feel free to bring material on the subject. Beamer/laptop are provided

Diese Veranstaltung ist Teil der Einzelausstellung von Isabel Reiß, Waben, Schlangen, Felder.

Final event at Kochstrasse 1

From 20:00h party with surprise concert by good old Mosh Mosh

10 years of Corner College
with DJ Sweatproducer! (Zürich) und DJ Mosh (Berlin)
and finissage of the personal exhibition by Isabel Reiß, Waben, Schlangen, Felder.


Diese Veranstaltung ist Teil der Einzelausstellung von Isabel Reiß, Waben, Schlangen, Felder.

[en]

At the event OFF SPACES 2 Kulturbüro Zürich invites art and project spaces in Zurich linked to them to elaborate an event contribution specifically for their twenty-year anniversary. Today these are Corner College, Les Complices* and Raum*Station, with the artists Martina-Sofie Wildberger, Madame Psychosis and Ivy Monteiro.

The conversation between Dimitrina Sevova and Alan Roth of Corner College and the artist Martina-Sofie Wildberger, Conversation on Language, Performance and the Political Performative, will take place in English.

Dimitrina: So, you shape the piece during rehearsal. And you have an agreement that improvisation is possible as you perform.
Martina: You never know what comes after what. You never know the duration of any of the fragments. It can be short, it can be made longer. It depends on who performs it, since everybody can perform any of it. It’s a kind of big playground.
Dimitrina: Did you research on the logic of different plays and games to elaborate this approach?
Martina: We researched not so much games. The square pieces of Beckett are around, as are aspects of minimal dance. It’s not from movement that it comes, but rather the proximity needed by the word that is said. The voice brings about the movement. What relation this voice needs to the others, or what relation what is said needs to the others, and to the space, is what brings the movement. Whether what you want to say needs to be heard everywhere, or needs to be heard only in one square meter, its physicality will be different.
When we did the improvisation I WANT TO SAY SOMETHING at Corner College, an improvisation on these five words, we went even more minimal on the text substrate, but also we went so minimal with these five words, which we performed for an hour and a half, the words charged themselves with possible meanings. Through the way they are said, you have a variety of possibilities that can also be imagined in the spectators’ impression, in their mind. We can talk about a lot of things with just these five words. A lot of different meaning can emerge. The movement there was a bit similar. But it was entirely interpretation, with no rules or protocol. Sometimes, we all had the same idea. Or we would have different ideas in terms of the relationship with the other two performers. For me, how we move in space, or where we are, is not linked to the meaning of what we say. It’s a landscape of social relationships that is ever changing.

(excerpt from a conversation between Dimitrina Sevova and Martina-Sofie Wildberger, to be published)

[de]

Am Veranstaltungsabend OFF SPACES 2 lädt das Kulturbüro Zürich mit ihnen verbundene, unabhängige Zürcher Kunst- und Projekträume ein, jeweils einen eigens fürs Jubiläum erarbeiteten Veranstaltungsbeitrag im Kulturbüro zu kuratieren. Es sind dies heute Corner College, Les Complices* und Raum*Station, mit den Künstler*innen Martina-Sofie Wildberger, Madame Psychosis und Ivy Monteiro.

Das Gespräch zwischen Dimitrina Sevova und Alan Roth vom Corner College und der Künstlerin Martina-Sofie Wildberger, Conversation on Language, Performance and the Political Performative, findet in Englisch statt.

Dimitrina: Du formst also das Stück während der Proben. Und ihr trefft eine Abmachung, dass Improvisation möglich ist, während ihr performt.
Martina: Du weisst nie, was auf was folgt. Du weisst nie die Dauer eines jeden Fragments. Es kann kurz sein, kann in die Länge gezogen werden. Es kommt darauf an, wer es perform, da jede_r jeden Teil davon performen kann. Es ist gewissermassen ein grosser Spielplatz.
Dimitrina: Hast du die Logik verschiedener Spiele erforscht, als du diese Vorgehensweise entwickelt hast?
Martina: Nicht so sehr Spiele. Die quadratischen Stücke von Beckett sind da, sowie Aspekte des Minimal Dance. Es kommt nicht aus der Bewegung heraus, sondern eher aus der Nähe, die ein Wort verlangt, das gesagt wird. Die Stimme führt zur Bewegung. Was Bewegung bringt, ist das Verhältnis, das die eine Stimme zu den anderen braucht, oder das Verhältnis, das das, was gesagt wird, zu den anderen braucht, oder auch zum Raum. Ob das, was du sagen willst, überall, oder nur innerhalb eines Quadratmeters gehört werden soll. Seine physische Qualität wird davon abhängen.
Als wir die Improvisation I WANT TO SAY SOMETHING im Corner College gemacht haben, eine Improvisation auf fünf Wörter, gingen wir noch mehr ins Minimale, was das Textsubstrat angeht, aber auch in Bezug auf die fünf Wörter selber, die wir anderthalb Stunden lang performt haben, wobei die Wörter sich mit möglichen Bedeutungen aufgeladen haben. Durch die Art und Weise, wie sie gesagt werden, hast du eine Palette von Möglichkeiten, die auch in der Vorstellung der Zuschauer_innen imaginiert werden können, in ihren Köpfen. Mit nur gerade diesen fünf Wörtern können wir über viele Dinge sprechen. Viele Bedeutungen können zum Vorschein kommen. Die Bewegung war da etwas ähnlich. Aber es war ganz und gar Interpretation, ohne jegliche Regeln oder Protokoll. Manchmal hatten wir denselben Gedanken. Oder unterschiedliche Gedanken, was das Verhältnis zu den anderen zwei Performern angeht. Für mich verbindet sich die Art und Weise, wie wir uns im Raum bewegen, oder wo wir sind, nicht mit der Bedeutung dessen, was wir sagen. Es ist eine Landschaft sozialer Beziehungen, die ständig im Wandel begriffen ist.

(Auszug aus einem Gespräch zwischen Dimitrina Sevova und Martina-Sofie Wildberger; Veröffentlichung in Vorbereitung)