C Magazine, Canada, 2003
Xandra Eden. On the way to your lecture in Toronto you asked me, “What is the strength of the arts in Toronto?” I replied that it was the artists and the activism of artists collectives that drives Toronto’s art scene. I want to ask you the same question about Istanbul and I’d also like to know what you think is necessary for artists to participate in the cultural life of a city?
Vasif Kortun. Istanbul is in a permanent state of flux; almost nothing can be taken for granted or anchored in depth. Nevertheless, the two institutions I had started (Platform Garanti and Proje4L) drive Istanbul`s art scene. But this was all possible with the spiritual and unconditional support of a close-knit art community, most of whom we will probably never even work with. I mean, we are nothing without the artists. You can not guarantee continuity when suspended from a frail string of cotton, but you still strategize to be around for the long haul. It is a paradox and self-exploitation; we try to overperform to cover the deficiency of the institutions. For a long time, the Biennial was the sine-qua-non and the driving force; although it is not anymore, it is still our most valuable asset.
Your second question implies that there is an impoverishment in terms of the artists` participation in the cultural life of the city. I never thought that contemporary art has much to do with culture; I would take the other option, which is to exploit the fickle character of contemporary art in undoing our expectations about what constitutes art, culture, and our lives. Moreover, as people who work in institutions, we both have to engineer frameworks of such possibilities, protect the discourse, and maintain these spaces of free speech. I may not get your question, as what seems to be very distinct in our local situation is over-participation and head-butting.
XE. I did not intend to imply a lack on the part of artists in terms of their participation. My question concerns the necessity for a platform for public exhibition and discussion merely to exist. Is it difficult to negotiate a space like this in a city like Istanbul? Could you comment on whether you feel curators and directors at contemporary art institutions today are obligated to be socially active within their local communities?
VK. We have produced a situation in Istanbul from the ground up without public or private support. Once it reached a certain degree of maturity, it became possible to muster support and expand to broader constituencies. This does not mean that the artists and the institutions are active within their local communities. I have reviewed our audience base at Platform in the last 18 months. While we have clocked over one hundred thousand visitors during this period, I cannot say how effective we were. I do not think the issue of being socially active can be generalized; there are too many factors such as demographics, education, ethnic background, patterns of circulation in the city, what defines the local, and what kind of program one pursues and articulates. The strategies are not translatable across cultures. These issues can neither be overlooked nor can they be fetishized. In Istanbul, I keep my doors open until late hours, support the projects with public lectures, rely on communicative projects, and often help them with informationals, and expand the audiences with projects of social pertinency that target specific communities or situations, nothing creative. As a result, people do not remember the institution, but they remember the projects. To be very frank with you, quite a few places I saw operating with public funds in Canada simply did not fulfill their mission as public institutions. I don`t trust this insider`s game between exhibiting artists and institutions.
XE. How have recent events and changes in the world altered or affected the idea of the international biennial, say, in comparison to the Third Istanbul Biennial which you curated in 1992?
VK. Gosh, that’s a tough question. How can I answer this within a few pages of a magazine? The world has changed radically in the last decade. The biennials can no longer satisfy themselves only by accounting for the fact that contemporary art production is a diversified worldwide phenomenon or by drawing attention to cities with an ascendant contemporary art culture. Documenta XI tour-de-force and this year`s Venice Biennial will be a good opportunity for many of us to rethink the depth and impact of the biennial. After all, it is just a periodic exhibition, and it is up to you what you make of it. No matter where the exhibition is, I would not opt for a big event if I were given the opportunity.
XE. I want to get back to your comment about Canadian public galleries not really serving the public. Can you elaborate on what you mean by an “insiders game”? Is it your perception that some Canadian public galleries and museums do not respond to their communities and function more as commercial spaces? The idea of an insiders game being played is peculiar given that Canadian institutions and artists often see themselves as perennial outsiders of the artworld.
VK. There were too many one-person presentations. Some spaces even looked exactly like commercial galleries, not public institutions. Institutions and artists work with each other to articulate projects for various publics. This is the limit of their interdependency; they are not exactly bedfellows.
XE. I would say that in Canada, because of the small number of commercial spaces, a solo exhibition of a particular artist is something which is not really possible without the support of public institutions. But what is the value of a group exhibition as opposed to a solo exhibition? The notion that group exhibitions are suspect, if not inadequate, as formulas for the presentation of contemporary art seems fairly ubiquitous to me, hence the large number of solo exhibitions at so many institutions, not only in Canada but in Europe and the U.S..
VK. I cherish group exhibitions because one can allow a multivalence of readings of the works between them and the space they temporarily inhabit. A curator helps produce a climate to ask novel questions and bring together energy, concern, communality, diversification, and difference. The works operate both as monument and document. A project’s quality does not depend on its status as a solo or a group exhibition. In some of the solo presentations I saw in Canada, as well as in many places, were often not more than putting several works simply one after another in a space. That is not a sufficient notion of a solo exhibition; it is a highly contrived and nominal practice that is way too predictable. When does a solo exhibition become a project, not a variation of an idea or inventory? As exhibition makers, how can we provide more mediation channels of difference, access, and context to solo exhibitions? I have to ask myself these questions in both my failures and accomplishments. I have failed miserably, mostly when I did not put enough care and surplus on a project, solo or group. Adam Smith wrote in 1776, “The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”
vasıf kortun 