Artelier, 2001
One of the leitmotifs of almost every Romanian public debate involving the visual arts is the lack of a contemporary art museum. Unlike most former communist countries, Romania has no such structure. The Contemporary Art Department (a dynamic body with a coherent policy) of the National Museum of Art is now threatened with closure. There is, for the moment, no other governmental structure to take over. Visual arts in Romania are going back underground. Some might say it’s trendy, but unfortunately, it is not.
Vasif Kortun is a Turkish art critic and curator involved in extensive international activities. He studied art history in New York, was the director and chief curator of the Third Istanbul Biennial (1992), and served as the director of the Museum connected to the Center for Curatorial Studies in New York between 1994 and 1997. He is the founder of the Istanbul Contemporary Art Project and the editor of the quarterly contemporary art magazine RG. He is currently founding the first contemporary art museum in Istanbul, Proje4L.
I met him last spring at the Istanbul Contemporary Art Project (ICAP). Our meeting took place the day after the “Contemporary Art Museum” opening exhibition at ICAP. This event was the starting point for a dialogue about the idea of a contemporary art museum in the 21st century, both generally and specifically within the Turkish context of Istanbul—a two-continent city, host to an international contemporary art biennial, and home to a multicultural population of over 12 million inhabitants.
Irina Cios: Let’s talk about ICAP. How did it all start? How did you manage to create it, and how did you succeed in gathering such a rich library?
Vasif Kortun: I decided to start something like this because I was confronted with certain deficits in the visual culture in Turkey. For instance, there is no information center. Universities in Istanbul don’t subscribe to art magazines; they don’t buy books. Public libraries are in the same situation. No information resource covers contemporary art from the ’60s to the present.
This was my primary concern, and this is how it all began. I started to build a library and acquire periodicals, mainly to keep students and artists up-to-date with information. Then, as none existed, I set up an archive about artists from Turkey. You should be familiar with my problems, as information is quite dispersed, and artists often do not maintain their files.
Establishing a perspective on Turkish contemporary art was the primary focus.
I.C.: So ICAP functions mainly as a resource center. Do you also organize conferences, debates, exhibitions, etc.?
V.K.: Yes, we do. Once a week, we organize meetings with students and artists. Sometimes, I give lectures; other times, we decide on a topic for discussion (historical matters, exhibition criticism, etc.). We talk about projects I curated—like the biennial, for instance—or about international events. We critique and ask artists to critique themselves—what works and what doesn’t, how to deal with a curator, and so on. Another topic we touch on is contemporary art history. We make presentations on artists who started their careers in the late 1960s. Eventually, this will turn into a publication.
I.C.: So this also keeps you updated with the local art scene. Tell me, what’s going on in contemporary art in Istanbul? I also recently had the chance to speak with some artists. They all mentioned the aspect (quite frustrating for some) of always being related, in the minds of foreigners, to a perceived closed cultural area. The heritage of mythologies mixed with historical facts and the religious context still foster preconceived ideas about an “oriental” world defined by exoticism and mystery. Turkish artists are very active in contemporary art and are well-represented worldwide. What about this attitude?
V.K.: It’s true. Things changed relatively recently. I would have given a different answer three years ago. I can’t give you the same answer now. The situation was different in the context of Turkish art of the 1980s: more attached to tradition, with accents of neo-expressionism and conceptualist attempts. In recent years, artists in Turkey have become less dependent on institutions and started to act on their own. An art market has taken shape. Private galleries became more active and visible internationally. There has been a change in the art education structure. The biennials have brought more international connections. The number of artists working individually has vastly increased as the general curatorship trend no longer focuses on national representation. Some artists give curators tough times—which I think is very good. The notion of otherness defines two attitudes: establishing communication and/or drawing borders. That’s a very problematic issue for the artist: where and how you draw the borders…
I.C.: You organized one of the Istanbul Biennials—the 3rd—which has remained a reference point ever since. What are your comments on subsequent editions and on collaboration with foreign curators?
V.K.: I considered the 3rd Biennial the zero point in mathematics: the starting point of a new age. For me, the artists, and many people who participated in that exhibition, it was the event that really changed things for Istanbul. We made some radical decisions, although the situation at the time did not really support those decisions. For the following editions, the premises were already set.
What I consider essential is that we tried a new approach, an opening to the Balkans. The history of the Balkan situation (or Southeast Europe), seen through the Ottoman filter, implies shared languages, history, and mythologies. Nowadays, new mythologies about each other are produced in a particular way.
Throughout those 40-50 years, there was no dialogue, discourse, discussion, or anything about, let’s say, Sofia or Bucharest—just gossip. So, it was a way of addressing something new while preserving rich content.
We realized that we knew much less about the neighboring areas than about the Baltic States.
I.C: As we are talking about biennials, what’s your view on this kind of event at the end of the millennium now?
V.K.: I hope it will end soon; this post-1989 biennial syndrome—Istanbul could be considered one of those, along with Johannesburg, Gwangju, Manifesta, and all the rest. We all now have to deal with neoliberal economies, with the forces of globalism. Biennials have taken over the position of serious international group exhibitions, and that’s problematic.
I.C.: It is problematic, primarily due to the rapid and fundamental changes in the geopolitical situation within the last decade. Biennials become institutions but cannot fill the lack of a contemporary art museum. This is a Balkan syndrome because, with some exceptions in the ex-Yugoslav area, few countries, or many capital cities, have a Contemporary Art Museum. This is also the situation in Romania; many artists and curators are fighting for one. The problem is, how does one imagine such a museum?
V.K.: During our discussions at the center, we also touched on the ‘museum’ topic. We discussed artists’ love-hate relationship with the museum and how they would like to transform it in the 21st century. That was a big topic that we kept discussing.
I.C.: You told me about this project, the New Art Museum Istanbul. It seems that these discussions led you to the magic solution.
V.K.: Fundamentally, the Istanbul New Art Museum does not address the deficit of museums in Turkey. It promotes a different attitude: we’re not addressing a gap; we’re just allowing artists to do new work. We found the magic solution: to have a well-funded museum with no budgetary problems at all. We provide all the support the artist would need.
The other aspect is that people in general, and artists in particular, refer to the museum idea in a completely traditional way. No matter how experimental their attitude is, all artists dream of their hall in a museum. I don’t understand why artists want to be in museums.
I.C.: Contemporary art is becoming more and more ‘temporary’ art. Have you thought about a solution to preserve contemporary art?
V.K.: This is the big issue, and I have to admit that we cannot ignore it!
vasıf kortun 