organized by
Norgunk Publishers, Doxa Journal, Korotonomedya,
KozaVisual, Pyromedia
supported by
Visual Arts Directorate of
Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Project, French Culture Institute, Sanat Limanı
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* Last updated on April 11, 2011. Please check back again before the seminar session starts, since there may be last minute changes in the program.
Alber Nahum
Spinoza and Death
Tuesday, November 23rd, 16:30 , French Cultural Institute
(in Turkish)
He was born in Izmir in 1979. After having finished Izmir St. Joseph High, he graduated from the Department of Sociology in Ege University. With a dissertation titled "Eternity and Immortality in Spinoza", we completed his master's degree in 2006 at Galatasaray University, where he is currently working as a researcher at the department of philosophy. He is continuing his doctorate studies at Galatasaray and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne Universities. In addition to several manuscripts on Spinoza, he has a translation of a collection of the philosophers letters. (Kötülük Mektupları [Letters of Evil], Norgunk Yayıncılık, 2008).
Spinoza and Death
Alber Nahum builds his presentation based on the 67th statement in Chapter IV of Ethica. Spinoza says: "Free man does not think on anything less than he thinks about death and his wisdom lies in the contemplation not on death but on life." Careful readers of Ethica must have noticed that death is one of the topics Spinoza scrupulously avoids or just hardly ever touches on. In fact, the statement above is seems like an answer to the question why one of the philosophy masterpieces written on life excludes death. Free man makes death something which hardly ever concerns him, which –so to- speak- is negligible. But how? Without ever thinking about death and looking for ways to deal with the fear it inspires? In this presentation, by seeking answers to such questions, Alber Nahum is going to try to describe the ethical strategy Spinoza follows against the fear of death.
Raymond Bellour
Cinema and Installations
Tuesday, November 23rd, 18:00, French Cultural Institute
(in French with simultaneous translation to Turkish)
Raymond Bellour, born in Lyon in 1939, is a French writer, critic and theorist who is especially well-known for his essays on cinema. He founded the Artsept review in 1963 and started CNRS in the following year. He became a state scholar in 1973. He teaches at the University of Paris III. He participated to the Passages of the image exhibition in 1989, and founded the Trafic Review in 1991 with Serge Daney.
Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri
Some People Have the Watch. Others Have the Time.
Wednesday, November 24th, 13:00, French Cultural Institute
(in English)
Ayreen Anastas is often not exactly herself and thus feels fields of attraction pulling her to and away from that same self. She is not very good at getting to the heart of things nor does she trust words to do so for her. She often wonders, what is the meaning of a biography without a life. Her method is repetition without boredom. She slightly suffers from the English language, yet she intensely loves you and has little or no worries in letting you know. To write by fragments: the fragments are then so many little stones on the perimeter of an unrecognizable geometric figure: she spreads herself around: her whole little universe in crumbs; at the center, what?
Rene Gabri; A philologist might speculate that this name means or signals the rebirth of non-believing. A historian would look to Tehran, where this name was assembled, attempting to find out how a French name René could attach itself to the name of a Zoroastrian tribe. An anthropologist would object to the very designation of Gabri as non-believer, arguing that not believing in Allah or God does not necessarily mean not believing in anything. An ethnographer would patch together a chronicle of the unforeseeable rituals, events, and passions which would assign a Parska-hay child, this name. A schizoanalyst would reject all of these attempts to delimit this life under the circumscription and signification of a name. Instead, she would emphasize the collective which took up this name: a multiplicity of lines. First she would identify the abstract and segmentarized lines which proceeded at various points to cross over the body assigned this name. The earthquakes, revolutions, genocides, wars, emigrations, racisms, explosions, implosions, collisions, events, which, from time to time, shifted the named's center of gravity and unfurled a matrix of forces. At the same instant, she would trace all the flight paths, the becomings, the attempts to collectively assemble a plane of consistency, to confound and deterritorialize perceived limits, including those of any biography. An artist might attempt to find a precise gesture or act befitting each specific time and place this name would be called.
Some People Have the Watch. Others Have the Time.
The artists will present for the first time their video 'Some People Have the Watch. Others Have the Time,' which is based on fragments of a conversation with Albert Aghazarian videotaped in the Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem. Their conversation mines some of the critical questions of Palestine, while also offering a compelling interpretation of a world unable to affirm its own syncretic history. Questions of art and desire are here confronted with the experiences of struggle, defeat, and resistance.
Sönke Hallmann
Language and Movement
Wednesday, November 24th, 15:30, French Cultural Institute
(in English)
In 2006 Sönke Hallmann initiated the Department of Reading at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht) and has since been engaged with reading and writing in performative settings. He is part of the Faculty of Invisibility, a self-generating institution that traverses formats of social organization and publicness. In his writings he addresses concepts such as similarity, playing and acting, gesture and memory. Earlier this year Sönke Hallmann has published Echo's Book, coming forth from the practice of the Department of Reading. Since 2010 he also works as a member of the board at the art association Flutgraben e.V. Berlin.
Language and Movement
This talk will be a recapitulation. It takes the Department of Reading as an example for the kind of practices that rely on a politics of friendship, an ethics of désœuvrement as well as on a strategic use of concepts, tight between a lack of definition and the threshold of indeterminacy. Following the inner movements of the Department of Reading, this talk emphasizes its allurement to an experience of language as such and attempts to discuss its implications. The Department of Reading has been set up to assemble and perform different modes of reading. Online-based, but always situated in specific spatial configurations, it pays particular attention to the adjacent space of reading, which cannot be told apart from the body of text itself. In order to reflect on the place of the reader the Department of Reading turns within its practice towards the gestures of reading, elements of repetition as well as the concept of the margin. Up to the programming of new technological modules, during the last four years the Department of Reading has realised more than thirty readings, the Symposium for Readers amongst them, and has published Echo's Book.
http://www.reading.department.cc
Siya Siyabend
"in the shadow of shadow " "ulu us bak er"....
Wednesday, November 24th, 18:00, Sanat Limanı
(Experimental Music Performance)
As a music project, Siya Siyabend was formed in Spring 1996 by Devrim Çetinkayalı and Murat Toktaş. Subsequently many musicians participated to the project. Today, the band is continuing its journey with Hakan Özboz, Memduh Özdemir, Murat Toktaş and Erdem. Although they never had an official release they have numerous demos in circulation. Combining Murat's vocal, and his improvised storytelling with improvised music, Siya Siyabend is a performance of intuitional dreamer mythology…. The band is carrying on producing music by not being attached to a certain genre.
"in the shadow of shadow " "ulu us bak er"....
"We can play out on the street too. We can make music anywhere, where-ever we can liberate ourselves. This is a moment in history where people felt desperate and lonely under power. Each and every one of us has to liberate him/herself starting with his/her thoughts. Against the energy-thirsty attacks of global plunderers, the individual is enslaved under so-called democracies. For most people, music is one of the last fortresses left standing. Although seriously corrupted, music remains a state of intuitive imaginary sageness, transmitting forms of thoughts and senses. In fact, you're not alone. There are millions like you on this earth. Those towers, which may appear gigantic, could be torn down by a single storm. You are not desperate, in fact, you are the remedy. You are the remedy… Music is the language of all free men on the earth. It is a delta, where dreams and thoughts intersect paths. Therefore, we must produce and consume a living music to stand against the song that enslave us, against the languishing affect of pop music. Grab your instruments; let us raise our voice and make life worth living…"
Express Journal
Presentation
Friday, November 26th, 13:00, Sanat Limanı
(in Turkish)
Express was collectively founded in 1993 under the leadership of a group of journalists, who were sick and tired of working in the mainstream media. The first issue of the weekly was published on January 29, 1994. The publication was interrupted in 1997. In 2001, it was relaunched as a monthly. The collective also published a music culture monthly, Roll, for 12 years between 1996-2009, and a culture-art monthly named Bir+Bir since the beginning of 2010. The collective has been actively publishing for 16 years now, sticking by the principles that they manifested in the first issue of Express; without being affiliated with any political party, organization, or Capitalist formation, and steering away in its internal affairs from managerial and administrative logics of Capitalism.
Jim Fleming
Autonomous Media: Theory and Practice
Friday, November 26th, 14:30, Sanat Limanı
(in English)
Jim Fleming is the founding publisher and a member of the editorial collective of Autonomedia. He was also the publisher and co-editor of Semiotext(e) from 1980 to 2000. He has taught in the Film and Media program at Hunter College in the City University of New York since 1981, and has lectured widely in North America, Europe and Japan.
Autonomous Media: Theory and Practice
Jim Fleming will give an illustrated presentation entitled "Autonomous Media: Theory and Practice," which will include a capsule history of western media theory, and argue for the need to develop new media practices striving to pull free from capitalist and/or socialist political hegemony. He will draw examples from over 350 books in radical media, culture and politics published over the past quarter-century by Autonomedia in New York.
Tiyatrolokomotif
Quad
Friday, November 26th, 17:30, Sanat Limanı
(Theater Performance)
Tiyatrolokomotif was founded in 2006 as an independent theater formation by a group of artists lead by A. Bülent Acar, all of whom have been affiliated with one of the oldest university theater companies in Turkey, the Middle East Technical University Players. Although founded and run by people from the tradition of METU Players, Tiyatrolokomotif continues to operate in a semi-professional fashion, and frequently collaborate with professional theater artists for engaging with avant-garde and contemporary theatrical texts.
Quad
Quad is produced in memory of Ulus Baker, particularly to be performed at the Art and Desire Seminars in Istanbul 2010. It is designed as an initial part of Tiyatrolokomotif's ongoing project for staging Samuel Beckett's short plays. It includes two short plays from Beckett; Quad and Not me. Beckett wrote Quad in 1982 and Not me in 1972. Quad is a text which describes a series of physical movements. Tiyatrolokomotif's staging will present a staging that approximates Beckett's description, while including a recent interpretation called Quad III. Not me, on the other hand, is staged in the form of a video-installation. Enjoy the show.
Halil Turhanlı
Strong Poetry called Music
Friday, December 3rd, 13:30 , Sanat Limanı
(in English)
Halil Turhanlı was born in 1954. Studied law at Istanbul University. Began to write in the early 1980s. His writings on music, art and american underground cinema appeared in numerous periodicals. He published 8 books, three of which -Music and Opposition (Altıkırkbeş, 1996), Sounds of Utopia (Chiviyazıları, 2001), and Anarchic Harmony (Ne Kitaplar, 2003)- are on music.
Strong Poetry called Music
The opening section of this essay will explore what is radical in Richard Rorty's thinking and why radicals take seriously and like Rorty. Subsequently, the essay will try to apply the concepts of "strong poetry" and "strong poets" that Rorty borrowed from Harold Bloom (and transformed in significant ways) to the music formation that developed in tandem with radical social movements such as the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s. Nonetheless examples that will be explored will not be limited to these. In addition to these, examples from modern western music ranging from Schönberg to Sir Michael Tippett will be mobilized to discuss the topic in a widened context..
Simon Reynolds
The Desire Called Underground
Friday, December 3rd, 15:00 , Sanat Limanı
(in English)
Simon Reynolds is a freelance pop culture critic and author. His books include Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-84 (2005), Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture (a/k/a Generation Ecstasy) (1998), and The Sex Revolts: Gender, Rebellion and Rock'n'Roll (with Joy Press, 1995). His seventh book, Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, is due out in June 2011. Born in London and formerly a long time inhabitant of New York, he currently resides in Los Angeles.
The Desire Called Underground
The notion of "the underground" in music culture is amorphous. As ideal and practice, over the past 45 years it has proved to be both durable in its appeal and ever-shifting in its definition. This paper takes a survey of various key phases in the history of underground music: the late Sixties/early Seventies rock underground; late Seventies/early Eighties postpunk and the independent label explosion; the 1990s post-rave dance scene and UK pirate radio; the past decade's noise/drone/free-folk/et al scenes, an array of linked and overlapping micro-genres at once dependent on the web and digital technology yet also reacting against it through ar cult of outmoded analogue media formats such as vinyl and cassette. "The Desire Called Underground" pays particular attention to the ways that scene participants have negotiated a central, abiding contradiction: underground scenes oppose themselves to the corporate record business and commercial pop, but necessarily build themselves in large part through commerce and micro-capitalist activity. Independent label owners, gig promoters, musicians, DJs, and small music publications are literally in the business of building a niche market and supplying it with cultural commodities. This contradiction does not invalidate the motivations for seeking to be underground, which can range from aesthetic revulsion towards mainstream music and passion for particular sounds and musical practices, to more politically-fueled anger and aspiration. But it does produce all kinds of ideological contortions and unresolved tensions.
BİR+BİR Journal
Roundtable
Friday, December 3rd, 16:30 , Sanat Limanı
Express anaakım medyada çalışmaktan sıtkı sıyrılan bir grup gazetecinin öncülüğünde 1993 sonlarında bir kolektif olarak kuruldu, 29 Ocak 1994'te haftalık haber-yorum dergisi olarak yayın hayatına başladı. 1997'de yayına ara veren Express, 2001'de aylık olarak yayınlanmaya başladı. 1996'dan 2009'a, 12 yıl boyunca Roll adlı aylık bir müzik kültürü dergisi çıkaran, 2010 başından itibaren Bir+Bir adlı aylık bir kültür-sanat dergisi yayınlayan bu kolektif, Express'in ilk sayısında ilan ettiği üzere, hiçbir partiye veya örgüte veya sermaye kuruluşuna bağlı olmadan, dahası kendi iç yapısında kapitalizmin yönetim ve işletme kurallarından bağımsız olarak 16 yıldır faaliyetini sürdürmektedir.
Georges Didi-Huberman
Dancing the Desire and the Conflict
Tuesday, April 12th, 18:30, French Cultural Institute
(in French with simulatenous translation to Turkish)
Georges Didi-Huberman is a scholar at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), the School for Advanced Studies in Paris since 1990. He has been offering seminars at EHESS as well as several universities outside France such as Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Berkeley, Courtauld Institute, Berlin, Bâle. He has published remarkable works on the history and theory of images. His recent books include, Devant le Temps: Histoire de l'art et anachronisme des images (2000,) and L'image survivante: Histoire de l'art et temps des fantômes selon Aby Warburg (2002, English edition forthcoming from Penn State Press), La Ressemblance par contact: Archéologie, anachronisme et modernité de l'empreinte (2008), Quand les images prennent position: L'Oeil de l'histoire (2009); Survivance des Lucioles (2009). Besides, he has conceptualized a couple of exhibitions such as L'Empreinte, The imprinting at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, 1997), Fables du lieu/The fables of place at the Studio National des Arts Contemporains (Tourcoing, 2001). Recently, he has curated the exhibition entitled Atlas in Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, in Madrid.
Sanat Limanı
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