Fillip Magazine, 2007
MS You curated the 3rd Istanbul Biennial in 1993.
I was a meta-curator. I asked several curators to do certain sections and organized the whole exhibition with them.
MS Can you talk a little about that project came to be: how you were selected, and what you were doing before the exhibition?
I was not selected exactly. I was initially selected as an organizer, just as in the previous two editions. From the outset, I did not want to work as an organizer. But I wanted to make the exhibition myself in one way or another. I wanted to have a stronghold on the exhibition. The previous biennials were organized by a committee—an advisory group. I told the advisory group that I was not interested in making the exhibition with them and that I would do it, and they should give me a chance. If it fails, it fails. But doing it myself would be the most appropriate way to do it. I couldn’t be a mushy project where five people take different parts of the exhibition. I also knew that they had no idea about contemporary art. It was a local group of people. Grudgingly or not, they accepted my proposal. I told them I did not need their ideas. At that time, the foundation [IFCA] underwent drastic changes. It was, at that time, a confusing place. (The parent organization that organizes the biennial is the foundation.) It got through the cracks, and I could do what I wanted. It was pure chance.
That’s number one and two: the budget for the biennial at that time was under $400,000.
MS What is it today, do you suppose?
Today, it would be over $600,000. With these kinds of figures, you can’t do any exhibition, which is obvious. On top of this, there was no funding from Turkey.
MS The Government?
No, of course not. And there was no local support. The total local support would come up to $80,000. So, unlike the first two, there was no overarching funder. That meant a heavy reliance on countries as guests. It was clear from the outset that I had to work with countries. It could not have been curated or organized otherwise because we did not have the money.
So, the second part was to approach the countries and how to approach them in a way that would allow the exhibition to take a different form. There were two strategies here. Also, at the time, the official representations of most countries were done through bureaucratic processes and political powers. And that was another problem. Also, some countries I wanted to work with did not have a secularized system of appointments, transparency, or contemporary art professionals—no such institutions. So, instead of going directly to the countries, I went to certain curators in certain countries. Who would they be? Like Victor Misiano from Russia, Luchezar Boyadjiev from Bulgaria, an artist, and a curator; Sub Real—I invited them as artists and curators of their project; Anda Rottenberg from Poland, and so on. I also asked the New Museum Curators, Laura Trippi and Gary Sangster, who were to bring a smaller version of the Decade show. I put a kind of perimeter on the show, which included artists who were mostly under 35 years old and ‘production of cultural difference.’
So, I worked with these curators. In most cases, it worked, and in two cases, it did not. These were the worst parts of the exhibition. One was Italy; the other was Spain. I turned down a few countries.
MS Such as?
Germany and Switzerland. Germany thought that their idea was good enough, and they would not negotiate. They said, “This is good enough for Turkey.” I turned it down. With Switzerland, we had the same problem. But it was a time when Turkey was still like a backwater place. So, the Swiss and the Germans would always only offer something good enough for Turkey.
MS Something would come in a familiar package?
Yeah.
MS Is it possible to compare that experience to the 9th Istanbul Biennial?
No. Not at all, for quite a few reasons. First, this was coming right after 1989: the Wall came down, and everything was still up in the air. For the 3rd Biennial, I did the show by myself, with a law student as a part-time assistant.
MS So the ‘meta-curator’ replaces the advisor board?
There was no group of people working for me. I was just doing everything, all the writing—everything. Again, financially, it was compromised. It was a tough situation.
I did invite an exhibition designer who had done some exhibition design at MoMA—a Turkish American guy. We worked for four months on the layout of the exhibition, which was very precise. The whole project was based on two premises. One is Orhan Pamuk’s Black Book: Istanbul is a subterranean city, a layered city, and Istanbul is a place where you would just lose your orientation constantly. This whole disorientation issue was fundamental. The other thing was to make a transparency between the national sections in the exhibition, so you would not quite know when you were leaving one section and entering another. All these lines of sight were throughout the exhibition, breaking down the sections. I wanted to keep them together because they were articulate and opened them up.
MS The exhibition took place primarily in one place, right?
Yeah. The idea in the second case was for Turkey to move toward a post-Fordist context. The reference point was not the historical monument anymore; it was the industrial past. The building we selected was outside the city walls and the tourist zone, in the country’s first factory—of the Empire. It was built in 1848, brought in from Belgium. It is a glass and iron building, single-floor. We used about 54,000 square feet.
MS This idea of moving past the historical site, it seems, was even with you during the 3rd Biennial?
Yeah, of course.
MS And that was an important part again in the 9th Biennial?
Yeah. There’s a particular kind of mix between 3 and 9. One is moving outside the historical city. Two works with a specific context of building an inventory that would also signify in and of itself.
MS Building and inventing?
Inventing? No, like an inventory of buildings that would signify the context of the exhibition.
MS If we can’t compare the two biennials directly, which makes sense—they’re quite a few years apart, how had the city changed between the 3rd and the 9th Istanbul Biennials?
The 3rd was based on Istanbul’s 1985 master plan. Because the zone with the 3rd was situated, the factory was in a massive cluster of factories, workshops, and sweatshops on the Golden Horn. You could not see this building in ’86, for example. It was not visible because both sides of the Golden Horn were filled with factories. Then, the city government began cleaning, so to speak, that whole area. They razed everything down as they went along, and few buildings were spared. This was one of the buildings. Even the powerhouse for that building that stood next to it was razed. So, that was one idea.
Also, there was no tourism in the city at that time. It wasn’t that kind of context. Globalization hadn’t taken effect at all. What had taken effect was the other kind of globalization: the post-’89 situation, with the break-up of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block—the end of Bureau-Communism and the traffic of all these people, which the exhibition had a lot to do with, especially the Romanian and Bulgarian sections and the Russian section as well.
MS So the Balkans, to some degree, were connected to Turkey again.
Yeah…. My whole obsession at that time was connecting the Balkans to Turkey. I also wanted to include Bosnia, but that was impossible. It was the beginning of the war. I also wanted to involve Egypt, but that was impossible because I had no links to people that I could trust. I don’t know that there was anything in Egypt at that time, but you realize this in retrospect. I couldn’t find any more secular independent professionals to work with elsewhere.
It was a different world. It was a completely different world. Even the history of the American section in the exhibition is a story. It came right on the collapse of the whole NEA controversy. It was the last year of Papa Bush. There was a massive ordeal with censorship in the States at that time. The exhibition we wanted to do with Gary Sangster and Laura Trippi was a pared-down version of the Decade show, which would have been amazing, I think—with Donald Moffett, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and a whole group of people. And then the Consul General of the USA said that this was the most disgusting thing that he had ever seen in his life and he would never allow this to take place in Turkey. That they [funders] would get into trouble: The Pew Charitable Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation and Arts International, the organizing agency, which at that time was linked to the USIA—the United States Information Agency—you know the legacy with the institution vis à vis what people call “How the United States Stole the Idea of Modern Art.”
MS Serge Guilbaut.
Yes. Well, they shut the exhibition down. They killed the show. They censored it. They said this could not be done in Turkey. This is going to be detrimental to Turkish-American relations.
MS It’s worth noting that you had been the United States for what, most of the ‘80s.
Yes, ’83 to ’88.
Four months later, I got another offer from the USA. Another show had been censored during the Cairo Biennial. The curator flew from Cairo to Istanbul on his way back, and we met with him. He was from Central Cultural de la Raza in San Diego. He had gone through the whole censorship thing, and I had gone through this. I mean, I wasn’t entirely positive about it, but I didn’t want to say I didn’t want to meet him because he had also been victimized. So, we decided to do the show and work together. That show came to Istanbul. But then Art International censored his text for the catalog. It was called “La Re-Conquista.” It was the fifth centennial of the Conquistadors.
MS They censored it in San Diego?
No, in Turkey. He was censored before in Cairo; they thought his proposal had Christian content, which was ridiculous.
MS So, you worked with him in Egypt.
No, I worked with him in Istanbul for the biennial. The USIA and Arts International said we are not allowing this essay to enter your catalog. So, I said fuck you. We cannot work like this together. This was the second time the USA was censoring us. I appealed to Rockefeller and the Pew and said: Please consider supporting the show—even if it’s not an official American exhibition, even if the Arts International does not allow it. They said okay, and we did the show, and the catalog text is still there. You see, they were talking about the invasion of the Americas. So, the USA was not excited about that kind of text being in the catalog.
MS You learned a lot about the funding structures in the United States. The way dollars speak versus governmental bodies.
Yeah. The foundations, Rockefeller and the PEW, were fantastic, ultimately. They were much better than other institutions like the New Museum.
It is a funny story. Right at that very time, the US offered me another exhibition that was called I Dream of America. It is about a portrait of black women who have made it.
MS This is the New Museum?
No, this is the Consulate. I decided to take the New Museum exhibition that Gary and Laura had offered, document it, and intercut it with the official exhibition the Consulate had offered me. However, the New Museum did not like that idea. They were also in financial trouble and did not want to challenge the government. The whole process was very sad.
MS What you’re pointing to is the antagonism that I see inherent to aesthetics in the United States: whether it’s exhibition politics, alternative space politics with the non-profits and the 501c3s, or just how artists, even as established as Andreas Serrano, can get pushed around by the government.
Yeah, the main exhibition was Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Andreas Serrano, and Donald Moffet with his gays in the military series. There were six artists, and it would have been fantastic within this project’s context.
MS There’s wasn’t really an American component to the 9th Istanbul Biennial. I wonder if that had anything to do with your previous experience in the 3rd.
No, we did not give any preferential treatment to the USA in the 9th. That’s just one of the places that one could look at or not. There’s nothing from China in the exhibition either. It’s just far…
MS Now, half of the artists were brought from various places within Turkey, and they had longer residencies. The other half were artists brought in from places outside Turkey that have a historical connection. Can you talk more about that scheme?
There are a couple of schemes within that. One is precisely what you said. One is Istanbul. And then there is the Istanbul / not Istanbul connection. For example, Wieder and Fezer are doing Berlin. Then you have Flying City doing Seoul. So that the gentrification/not gentrification—the thing that never happened in Berlin (laughs). How Berlin would have been changed, including that project’s documentation. We had other particularly significant major cities in each site, some with informal economies that would allow you to reflect on Istanbul.
MS Because of its economy?
The informal economy in Seoul and the informal economy in Flying City were, of course, critical. Or you had Mexico City coming in the guise of New York with Daniel Guzmán’s video. It’s called back in the New York Groove. It’s three guys singing in a schlocky way, “Back, back in the New York groove,” and they look like coming out of the subway. If you’re unaware of it, you think it’s New York (because it’s Back in the New York Groove), but it’s Mexico City. That’s through Mexico City, and then you go back to Istanbul. So, there are all of these particular connections. The parallel would be Halil Altindere’s video of the streets of Istanbul, which shows these kinds of Situationist moments.
Istanbul / Not Istanbul came both in the form of cities, so these works were already existing pieces from abroad. So, fifty percent of the work was from outside, existing works that allowed you to reflect on Istanbul through other cities. The work was also produced here through the more extended residencies.
MS Is it possible to make a connection to various parts of Turkey’s history, whether it’s the connection to the Balkans through the Ottomans, or the connection to Egypt being a regional power, or the connection to Germany with various political issues going on today?
Yes, certainly. Charles and I have always wanted to do this kind of exhibition that deals with the larger geography, but not Turkey’s, because I don’t think that’s relevant.
MS Why?
Because what is eighty years in the history of a place versus the hundred or so years when it was a port city—a network city with different kinds of regions? That’s what I mean.
Second, the idea was to see how to spin the exhibition. If this is the site and the center from which we do the project, how do we spin it out? If we spin it out, the Balkans and the Middle East are within that territory. These are the places that the exhibition would have to look at first. My obsession is this kind of lateral, horizontal network. Hence, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, and Bulgaria are present in the exhibition and the text. And how we thought about it—it may have been done without anyone from these geographies. Still, the exhibition considered these geographies to be the larger geography of Istanbul.
MS Can you say more about how you guys settled on the title?
Istanbul? (Laughs) We couldn’t come up with a good title.
MS: Doesn’t the exhibition purport to be Istanbul to some degree?
Yes.
MS How is that embodied, or did it come to be embodied? I know it was a working process.
We couldn’t come up with a title that would reduce the idea of the exhibition intelligently. So we wanted a title that was a bit redundant and a bit boring: “Istanbul: 9th International Istanbul Biennial taking place in Istanbul … for Istanbulites … for the Istanbul look….” All of that has to do with a particular kind of downplaying strategy. The strategy was to downplay certain things: downplay the arrogance of Istanbul, downplay the Istanbul, which is going in the type of global city race, downplay the physical sites of the exhibition—not the massive white walls to create a sense of provisionality. Do just enough, but not more. Do just enough refurbishing of the spaces. Downplay the size and scale of the exhibition areas—there was a lot of that.
We did not work too much with artists with galleries, for example. So, neither galleries, museum boards, nor collectives were heavily involved in this project. It was more egalitarian and democratic, the process of the whole thing. And it showed, of course. It showed at the opening. And the people who were coming, because they were not the museum boards, were not the collectives, private parties, and none of that. It was like a get-together without the big bang. There was no big bang. There was no big event. That was consistent throughout the project.
MS Provisonality was something that attracted me into looking more into the actual exhibition. Where does that provisional element come in, besides the fact that it’s not, like you said, particularly well-funded? It’s provisional to begin with, in terms of it not being a super-biennial of some sort.
I mean, it’s well-funded because we did what we wanted to do. There was no problem with that. It was well-funded enough to realize what we wanted, and we did not want to do more. In the sense of economy, it’s about the position; it’s not about the money.
MS No, that’s what I’m interested in: the position that can grow out of provisionality, not its economics. As that was something that you mentioned when you gave the talk at InSite that spurred my interest in it. You kept stressing this idea of making do, of provisional circumstances actually being a strength.
What do you think?
MS Yeah, I think that the catalog, for example, was something that you didn’t overdo, the way that the city itself was given over to the context instead of some sort of convention-style building so that it was decentralized. I think that some of the gestures that the artists made matched this provisional attitude. But I also think it ties into other theories that you can go into in terms of praxis that I’m interested in, where it’s more about the tactics than the strategies.
Ok, maybe the wrong word.
MS What do you mean?
It’s not about strategy, maybe. I mean, it’s tactical—there are singular tactics, but it is a part of a larger strategy—a plan to organize the whole exhibition in a way that it stresses that it is humble. It doesn’t go in the way of event culture; it refuses event culture. There is a whole combination of things, from the opening party to how we kept working. The exhibition may still belong to someone else, but you always have to say who the exhibition should belong to and what the exhibition is for. Why are you doing this? Does it produce a discussion, and what kind does it deliver? Can the project be an interesting tool for people to think about? Issues of urbanism and how to work with the city—all of that.
I also have more to do with the outside of the exhibition. My weight in the exhibition is more about the outside of that project: how to work with the city, urbanism, new city tourism, and globalization.
MS Even though it’s not about event culture, it is based in Beyoglu. If you were to go between the sites, you would have to cross Istiklal, and Istiklal will be that centralizing place because the rest of the area is so disorienting.
In terms of density, 5% of artists are on Istiklal. Out of 55 artists, only three are on Istiklal. The smallest venues are on Istiklal. Of course, it is about Istiklal and the general area. If today it’s Istiklal, tomorrow it’s going to be the places where the exhibition was before. They are subject to the same kind of real estate pressure and similar modes of gentrification. We did not dare to go beyond that.
MS I’m not thinking so much in terms of the where the artists projects were placed, but more the way the viewer or the audience member had to navigate the area.
Well, the area’s navigation starts at Platform, and you roll your way down to Topane. It would start from here and roll down in this kind of semicircle. We did not approach Istiklal the way the area is generally approached or used, but we kept ourselves from disregarding the whole area totally.
There are two things to consider here. One is that it is not important how many people come and go; this is not relevant. The relevant part is that the exhibition works at two levels, with the unanimous, I mean the general public primarily. This is the context of a biennial. It would not need to be here if it were a completely different biennale, like InSite.
MS But, I am seeing the viewership being cultivated in a way by the biennial that has to do with provisionality. That I see based not so much in the typical decisions that a curator makes, but in infrastructural elements like a decentralized field, and in paring down all aspects of it to get to the street level.
And it is decentralized in a centralized zone.
MS But it is meant to explore Beyoglu and Galata neighborhoods.
More Galata neighborhood.
MS Was there a critique of the biennial as an exhibition type built into the 9th Istanbul Biennial?
Yes, certainly.
MS I’m very interested in that.
I keep on saying it was not a biennial but a model for us. It is one possible model for approaching the city or working with the city, and that was certainly a concern.
MS “The city” in general, or Istanbul?
For us, Istanbul… For sure… To have a break with the previous ones as well.
MS How did you approach that?
We’re obsessed with creating a model, but the model is a succession of sites: a publication model, a model of working with artists in this process-oriented way of checking, editing, going through, and discussing all along the way what all the residents were doing. Hence, it is also a model for working with the public.
MS How was that handled?
That’s pretty good, no? The public acquired—bought—the exhibition in a way that exceeded our expectations, for sure, both in numbers and how they used it.
MS How did they use it? How do you mean?
Schools, architecture schools, and urbanists used it, and that made it smart. That is the most interesting part, in a way.
MS Is it possible to say more about the model it presented in terms of dealing with the public? Or how you massaged that aspect of it?
The professional or semi-professional public was ready because part of the event was to have conferences the first day of the opening or the day after, which we always did in Istanbul. This started with me in ’92 because I invited a whole group—Tom Mc Evilley, Bruce Ferguson, Bart de Baere—to give an entire series of talks after the exhibition, which became the standard. Every curator will have this one- or two-day conference after the exhibition. People tend to fly in, and 90% visit the show. There is a conference, and it is done, and then everybody goes home.
Instead, we had a lecture program that spread out for a year. We had no conferences of our own after the exhibition. It was just at the opening time when people got together; it was festive, and people were not just thrown into a room to do things. So, people knew what we were doing all along. Our failures (like our failure to find space) were made public. Artists gave talks. Charles and I gave talks before the show.
MS So, is it more than availability on some level, shifting the availability?
It is spreading the exhibition out. In terms of the biennial, it is not the exhibition. The biennial is the whole one-year process that led to it. Also, the series of publications ideally target different kinds of readers, other kinds of public, and various professionals or non-professionals. Additionally, there was the “Hospitality Zone,” where we gave half of our biggest space to guests and other programs. Spreading the exhibition out: the Van AbbeMuseum that covered the history of the biennials in Istanbul, or November [Paynter]’s program at the Ikon gallery that took place after the exhibition with screenings and other things, these kind of positionings. These kinds of positionings had the Hospitality Zone and the outside projects.
MS So that there were many surfaces to it.
Yeah, and the exhibition was the central part of that, but it wasn’t the exhibition.
MS Can we take a broader view and consider what do biennials mean in the larger context of contemporary art? If that’s a reasonable question…
It is still totally needed in Istanbul. I mean, you’ve been here for three months, you know what goes on, which is the best we’ve had in years, actually. It is pretty thin.
MS In terms of activity?
Yes. A year ago, there were no initiatives. Two years ago, there was no Istanbul Modern. There was no dream of Santral İstanbul Campus or any of that. And four years ago, there were just small institutions. The biennial still creates this moment of density that is quite valuable—if not for anyone, but for the artists.
MS So it remains the central contemporary art vehicle?
Yes.
MS What about broader implications in terms of contemporary art internationally with biennials. There is so much talk about biennials…
I don’t feel that biennials are the current engine in the contemporary art world.
MS You have said art fairs are, is that right?
I think so, yeah. That is a more extended discussion, but yeah, for sure.
MS Simply because the market is leading it?
Well, the market has killed the biennials. The market does not need the biennials anymore.
MS And it did five years ago, or ten years ago?
Not that… Ok, this is a question of economy, which we disregard when doing these projects anyway, to a degree. Previously, there was no such liquidity in the market—the hedge funds were not as powerful six years ago, seven years ago, ten years ago. The art world market generally had not expanded at this scale. So, the biennials were used for this purpose. And they’re not needed anymore because the market has superseded them. The market and the biennial are not two different things. They are on the same horizon but with somewhat different intentions. Yet, they are still a consequence of the new economy.
MS I see art fairs and biennials going hand in hand more than anything.
They do go hand in hand, but the way they go hand in hand is different because classic traditional art fairs up until three or four years ago did not purport the same kind of intellectual content. Now, all the fairs come with scholarly content. This intellectual content is not merely meant to bring some sort of legitimacy to the project. It is way beyond that stage. It is part of it—it’s part of the art fair system.
In the old days, it brought some kind of legitimacy. For example, ARCO in Madrid always had this kind of lecture series. They would invite professionals so the people could familiarize themselves with Spanish institutions. And that was a very efficient tool for a state subsidy. You know, Arco was heavily subsidized. But now you can find better intellectual programming at the Frieze Art Fair and Basel.
MS Speaking of intellectual content, what is this supposed rise of the curator that occurred in the ‘90s? And is there a moment that you think marks this turning point?
Indeed, it is related to neo-liberalism and 1989. Totally. It doesn’t refer back to Harald Szeemann. We take our cues from there, obviously, from these kinds of historic or watershed moments. The rise of this kind of curatorial discourse and business is also very heavily and closely linked to the biennial system. They are parallel, if not very strongly interrelated. I think it’s a moment after this whole moment in the ‘80s that kind of fettered out toward the end of the ‘80s. Look at the entire market crash with Black Friday and the end of the ‘80s crash.
There are a few things in there: A, the end of the dictatorships in Latin America and other places, and a neo-liberal economy. And then in the very early ‘80s, you have your Bush-Thatcher-etc., put this whole new system in. With this new system coming in, you have forced the privatization of public institutions in part. You have the first instance of the new economy affecting relationships with so-called former public/public institutions. Instead of public funding, you get things like lottery money coming in and how lottery money fueled things like building booms in the UK through museum buildings, for example. Museum and art centers and institutions being built… all of this stuff… and the end of the welfare state… all of these things came…
The independent, non-institutional, on-the-go independent curator has risen within that whole system. This is a new subject. The independent curator, the whole ‘90s curator, is a consequence of this system.
MS Why?
These are not figures in the service of what we should say are classically public institutions. Their mode of living is based on projects. They have to be project junkies. They have to be entrepreneurs. They must know about fundraising and cobbling to collectors—the entirety of that system. They have to have an international network of support from peers. They existed between the private sector and the public sector. Much of this new curatorial field was filled by these people, who were filling a sort of middle ground between institutions and museums and the other space, which was not yet defined at that point.
MS Financially speaking, or…
No, no, structurally. Until the end of the ‘90s, not a single person from the ‘90s curatorial pioneers was working in any institution.
MS But how does this fit into the idea of the auteur curator or the encroachment on the space of the artist by the curator?
Because the positions are no longer defined, you no longer work for a museum where the processes are well represented.
I mean, you have the curator who makes the checklist. You have the registrars that follow that checklist and all of that stuff. You are not close to the artists—the institutional curators, commissioners, or museum people never work closely with artists, except for a few. You don’t process projects or exhibitions with the artist but process or negotiate them with your institution. The artist is a temporary guest; -who does the work and leaves. And so, the institutions were very, very limited in that way.
What is free about the new curator is his only collaboration partner is the artist, between the curator and the artist. You do not produce exhibitions towards museums, but you produce exhibitions toward middle space: hotel rooms, boats, temporary public spaces, and appropriate shopping centers. You know, a whole range of things. When Cities on the Move was curated or produced with Hou Hanru and Hans-Ulrich, the only place it did not come to was the United States of America because no institution would take it—that would be brave enough to take it. They had a very small or pared-down version of it—a very, very clean version of it at PS1. But they were all over the world on different sites.
Look, Hou Hanru got his first institutional position in 2006.
MS In San Francisco.
In San Francisco. And Hans-Ulrich got his first institutional position in 2006 at the Serpentine. Before that, he had a place at Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, but he was on a retainer to be there. You can go on and on—Francesco Bonami—first position 2001. Name any curator associated with this kind of inventive curatorial practice, and none of them were in any position whatsoever.
MS This is, then, a structural manifestation. It’s not something has a lot to do with the dynamics of authorship that are so often cited.
It has to do with a lot of things. Yes, it has to do with authorship, but that’s just the justification process you receive from people like Szeemann. But you also accept it through incredibly inventive architects in the ‘50s. Or you receive it from artists/curators like Duchamp and that legacy. Harald’s practice was based on artist practice from the late ‘60s onwards.
We also have to consider how the artist’s practice has changed from the late ‘80s on.
MS How do you see that?
You know, the whole relational aesthetics, processual practice, provisionality, and forms like video, photography… from studio to situation…. And also the geographic expansion and different kinds of practice that had nothing to do with producing materials or objects.
MS But it is not necessarily a loss of aura in the face of video and new media, or something, it’s more a global issue.
When the money came back—I mean the real money came back to the art market at the end of the ‘70s, after the oil crisis—that’s also when neo-expressionism, Neue Wilden, the whole German expressionist movement, and the Italians—the three Cs—the Chia, Clemente, Cucci, and the bad California painting schools—all that stuff was an expression of those times.
MS There’s a strange connection between conservative governments and expressionist movements.
We also have now the return to painting, and so on….
When the geography of art expands, it expands in a way that does not refer to a culture of painting and a culture of the classical auteur artist, but it expands in different ways, too. When you expand to Brazil, you realize a fantastic legacy, or Argentina also informs your practice today.
MS But where are we left with institutional critique…
Oh, but that’s another story…
MS Of course, but one crucial to the story of the 9th Biennial. As a student trying to figure things out, I was caught unawares in terms of your biennial, and in the midst of this InSite exhibition [on the occasion of a talk by Kortun at the University of California San Diego], which I thought was good but much more problematic than what I see coming through in the Istanbul example, and there’s a level of institutional, for lack of a better word, built into this that moves ideas forward that were stuck in terms of artists actually performing these critiques.
Man, it never occurred to us. I don’t know. Maybe someone else should think about that.
MS That’s not your job….
No, it should be my job, but I never thought about that.
MS Well then, say something about failure. That was something you mentioned in a recent talk here in Istanbul.
It wasn’t so deep. I was grumpy that day.
MS But you’ve even brought it up a couple of time today as far as that being a part of the process.
I was more interested that investment does not want to recognize failure. It has to be such that it preempts it. So does collecting, for example, where failure announces to production that failure is a part of its game.
MS Especially since Duchamp…
Yup…and maybe that’s a direction to approach it. How can you work with the notion of exception and not recognize failure? Maybe, though, you should not think of it as failure. By this, I mean you do something, produce a context, and then the market comes and takes it away.
MS Absorbs it.
—Because the market does not know how to fail, and you fail. But how can you both be inside and outside of that equation simultaneously? You try to produce such a context and all these stopgap measures to protect that context from being appropriated. You just move on—it’s important just to move on.
MS Does the context of this argument launch us in to these ideas of desire that are coming into the mix?
I don’t know…. You know, I was just thinking of something. Dennis Hopper was the director and actor in the film Flashback, which is a bad ‘80s film. In that film, he said, “you know, ‘80s are going to make ‘60s look like the ‘50s.” He said this in the ‘80s. About four months ago, he was in Abu Dhabi, and he said Abu Dhabi was the next Florence. You know, times change… That’s the whole story.
MS What about love and caretaking that you’ve mentioned before? I’m rather curious.
My example is not an example. I am now swamped trying to maintain a pocket of survival within this shift. That is, to have this survival pocket strong enough and stable enough to make an impact. Minimally, this is about what we are supposed to do—Platform is supposed to move to another building with two other institutions and more space, and on and on, and all that shit. So, how can we find the next moment for Platform without doing all that?
Meanwhile, getting the same support and reinventing it as a meaningful institution. At this moment, it’s not. At this moment, it’s a place that has finished its mission. And now, how are we going to reinvent it?
That’s the pocket. For me, this place is a pocket. This is like a breathing room, which becomes a real breathing room.
MS And that’s where the love comes in.
Yeah, and then we’ll be ok; we’ll do it, I know.
That’s why we are doing this library project.
MS It’s a great project.
It’s so incredible, I mean finally….
You know, our problem is that we don’t publish.
MS Well, you don’t want to do those things, do you? Do you want to collect or publish or get tangled up in that stuff?
If you don’t publish, you’re just not so loud about it. You’re constantly faced with the fact that you will be pushed out of history.
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