Mika Hannula, Istanbul, 2012, unpublished
Mika Hannula: How do you answer when asked what you do when you do what you do?
Vasif Kortun: I used to say that I work as a curator and with a lot of deviation about it. Nowadays, I build institutions because that is what I am doing. I am building institutions. I am building institutions in a context; that’s what I do.
MH: Building institutions in a context? What does that mean and imply?
VK: Basically, it is what I have done so far. You remember ICAP – Istanbul Contemporary Art Project, a hole in the wall, where we also had our first conversation in the summer of 1999. It was a tiny place with a small library, archive, and community that came together. It was a base with very modest goals.
This would be the second case of building an institution in a context, whereas the first was the Istanbul Biennial in 1992. That first case was not about creating an institution but more about taking and dealing with the premises of the Istanbul Biennial, which were in a completely different order in 1987 and 1989, and trying to make something of the conditions available at that time.
ICAP was then the first institution project, a place for artists. During that time, especially after 2000, I realized it was no longer possible to continue with the premises that ICAP had made possible. I wanted to shift the interest from the artists to the public, especially the more general public in Istanbul. And that is how and when Platform began; it opened to the public in September 2001. At the same time, we also opened the exhibition space Proje4L. Platform was in the process of development of what it could be.
MH: OK, you say that before, the focus was on the artist, and you wanted to shift it to the general public. What motivated you to make this change?
VK: I was very dissatisfied with the institution’s output. The artists were artists, but they were not producing something at or with ICAP. There was no outlet for the discussion to develop. If nobody is making work, what is there to talk about? There is a limit to how much and long we can speak of potentialities.
That was also when the younger artists started finding venues to work and breathe. Platform was a place for a lot of talks and conversations. There were a lot of informal structures working, the artists’ archive growing, and the normalization of the relationships between here and there, establishing new colleges and friends and venues and outlets. At the same time, this was the only place in West Europe and North West Europe with a funding structure, even if they were modest, but they allowed us, the artists, to produce.
This was the early 2000s, and then many things changed. They changed in ways that most of us could not have predicted before. 9/11 has to do with that. Also, the changes in Turkey have to do with that. There is also the drive, the attention move to the East and the South. A lot of things came into focus at the same time. It was the post-9/11 world, with much interest in new geographies and many things happening in places like Beirut, Cairo, and Istanbul. Then, we had excellent contacts and relationships with all these three places in the Middle East. Thus, while early 2000 was more of a dialogue, or whatever you want to call it, with Holland and Northern Europe, and in particular with Finland, there was a shift of momentum. We were riding the wave of history, too. What made sense in the 90s was no longer meaningful.
Thus, with this wave came the final and recent institutional transformation. This is the place now, SALT, its buildings both in Beyoglu and Galata, and the whole process. And, well, this was a completely different ball game then.
MH: SALT also had a long incubation time.
VK: Yes, it was 4 ½ years of thinking through what we can do in Istanbul and also, in a general way, asking what makes sense for an institution that is not only a contemporary art institution, not only an exhibition space, not only a mediatic institution. Instead of these what-nots and what they will become— we are now at the beginning. We have a structure, but what it will grow into, we do not yet know.
It was a question already in the Platform days, thinking about how to have a space between an established and an alternative institution. We had a lovely space, everything was paid for, and the finances were modest, but we weren’t an option. It was never facing closure or anything; it had a structure of support. It was not a mainstream institution. It was an undefined zone. We were still under the radar because we weren’t a publishing institution; we weren’t producing knowledge, and things were made without us being in the center of that activity. Things happened, but we were not driving that at all.
Then, the SALT story is a different story. SALT is an amalgamation of three institutions: the late Ottoman period, the history of minorities, and all that stuff. So, from the very beginning, it was very different. Now, everything is under SALT’s structure, and that must inform our actions.
My whole idea and aim were this: How do I skip out of the matrix? Of course, this is not totally possible, but the aim is to think and ask how you can produce your own conditions without having to be referential to any other institution next to you or anywhere in the world. Thus, it’s not a museum; it is not this or that but something else.
MH: This brings us back to what you started with, this idea of building institutions in a context, but, well, it begs to ask: a context? A context of what and with what?
VK: This is an excellent question (laughter). It is also a very difficult one because the context is shifting all the time. Well, that is why you sometimes become a zombie institution. You build an exact institution in this context: you bring your biggest ship so far to the docks, but then again, when you try to bring it in, the dock has moved somewhere else; it is no longer where it used to be. Your ship is there, and you spent so much time on that ship, and due to that, it is always doomed to failure. That colossal ship is not as elastic as you would wish. Then, you can take the boat somewhere else.
MH: Interestingly, you chose to answer the real hard way because the easy way to address this is to point out the physical and mental locality where almost all of your actions have taken place, and that is, of course, the city of Istanbul – or?
VK: Well, yes, but it is also something we’re not predicting. ICAP in the late ’90s, when the country was in transition, there was a kind of breathing moment; after deep state issues and drug issues, the economy was really shit, and nobody came here outside of the Biennial times. That was a small place working in those conditions. Then, after we move on to the Platform period, the macro level tells us about the opening of the talks with the EU. It’s much more international, with EU funding coming in and all of that, but it’s still tiny. Then, by 2006, we realize that history has moved ahead of us. We could have done what we had been doing efficiently, and it would have been an art center, of course, but it was not enough. At the same time, I did not want to ditch all of it. So you take what is useful and try to make something else. And now, you know, Istanbul has become a monster city. The city has changed enormously in the last 2-3 years. First of all, now it is arrogant. It is full of arrogance. It is living in some bubble.
MH: Yes, this is undeniable, and then the scale of change grows stronger when we compare today with the end of the ’90s or even the early years of 2000. But that is also so fascinating with the process you have created and generated because it clearly shows how the commitment and effects have grown with the years and with the city. Another important thing is that you have decided to continue here, to stay here – within all its contradictions, chances, and challenges, and not to move somewhere else. Because, well, if you would only need to confront the current arrogance, that would be relatively easy, but there are many other heavy issues to deal with, and to deal with them daily.
Therefore, let me turn it this way: What makes you stay here? To stay here and, for example, fight through those 4 ½ years of uncertainties leading to the current version of SALT?
VK: I always want to go away, but it is not like that. There is a better place out there? It’s the same shit everywhere, pretty much. You never wholly escape genetically modified food, and you never escape the weird kind of political repressions; you can’t step out of that. It is the horrific global conditions. And well, there is something about this city that I cannot leave. You can’t leave your city. I am completely attached to the city. I hate it; I hate every bit of this city; I hate everything the moment I leave this institution, but the moment I leave, well, it’s the same. I also hate Cairo, but I feel good there. Early this year, I was in Dakar, and, well, I did not want to come back. It was good, it was very dignified, dignified in its poverty. It was a fantastic place.
MH: About a year ago, you gave a fascinating interview in SüdDeutsche Zeitung, calling this city a place on steroids. Do you still think that? You know, taking into account a couple of years of continuous macroeconomic growth of over 10% while the current government of AKP party, a so-called Muslim party, is very busy liberalizing the economy and at the same time with more and more self-confidence stepping into the cultural politics and changing laws on education, moving into dictating what is the required version of architecture, etc.
VK: Yes, the AKP are getting there. But sure, this is now one substantial fat motherfucker of a city, but well, it just cannot go on like this. Look at this Galata area; more than 400 hotel rooms have increased in less than a year since we moved here. What am I going to do? I am located at the mouth of the Golden Horn, in the middle of Istanbul’s entire tourism industry. We are at the heart where two lines converge, the one being Istanbul Modern at the Bosporus, and then the Atatürk Cultural Center– and all of that, and then there are all the institutions that come together at Istiklal Caddesi. Here at SALT, 45% of the audience comes from outside of Turkey, which is normal for a big city; for any big institution, like TATE, it would be low. Thus, we now have this phenomenon of the tourist attitude to our city.
MH: Does that not make you scared?
VK: Of course, I am scared shitless. It is pushing and propelling us to work out an almost schizophrenic institution for one purpose, shifting the balance continuously between what it shows and what it does. We do not want to compromise too much on what we show. I know there will be pressure coming up, and someday we will be asked to upgrade our exhibition program so that it will have to be more open, mediatic, more exciting, and so on, because, right now, on purpose, we do not have that big exhibition for the general public. I am doing a lot of soul-searching on that problem, asking how we can be popular without compromising our ideas.
MH: OK, let’s finish this part and move on to the cases, the three exhibitions that you have done: the 1992 Istanbul Biennial, the 2005 Istanbul Biennial, and then the retrospective “I Am Not a Studio Artist” of Hüseyin Alptekin in 2011. But before that, one more question: Give me one example of this city that you love, that you really love every morning when you wake up.
VK: This is very perverse, but it is the sound of the call for prayer because where I am, I can hear the sounds of over 100 mosques, the muezzin, and their calls for prayer; there are over 100 of them that compete with each other, they sing it differently, and sometimes quite awfully. There is this cacophony, and you go: oh yes, this is good; the city is back in action again with the first calls just after the sunrise.
MH: I heard they also have competitions for call-for-prayer singers, choosing the best singer …
VK: Well, that best singer is not working in my neighborhood (laughter). I hear the loudness, the range of the styles, and all.
Istanbul Biennial 1992
MH: OK, moving now from the love of the city’s soundscape in the morning, let’s go back to the year 1992. What were you doing there and then? Starting with the name, what was the name of the Istanbul Biennial?
VK: (loud laughter) It was called “Production of Cultural Difference.” (even louder laughter). I was responsible for all that stuff, but the point was that the production of cultural differences was not “genetic” or given. Instead, you can act on and upon it and negotiate with it, you know, all the Homi Bhabha stuff of the early 90’s. All those influences of identity politics, etc.
MH: OK, but please try to get back to that moment, which is, of course, not an authentic moment. Try to revisit something that you did and lived through at the time. What was it that you were trying to achieve and articulate then?
VK: I was acting as a meta-curator for it all. There was the main biennial, and that was great, but my little section was, in fact, in two parts, and they took place in 1993. The whole thing had 15 curators, and I also did one small part. As a meta-curator, I negotiated with every curator about what was in and out, how the spaces were installed, the locations, etc. Thus, I invited 14 curators to join.
MH: Why would you want to do that?
VK: Because I had no money to travel. It was the conditions then. First of all, there is no money to travel, and secondly, how can you trust a young dude from Istanbul at the beginning of the 90s doing a Biennial? It was utterly ridiculous.
MH: How old were you then?
VK: I was 33. In those days, no biennial was yet post-national. Even Sao Paolo had a national section. Venice, except for Aperto, was completely national; there was Sydney, which was also post-national. However, we did not have funding to do the proper post-national version. Therefore, I worked with the people I brought in. The idea was to perforate the exhibition so it would not become nation-based. It needed coherence, and I was trying to make the most of the problematic situation.
MH: OK, so it was already then that you were acting out this both-and strategy, this time being the overall meta-curator but at the same time having a hands-on part that you were involved. It is a strategy of combining macro and micro levels of activities that you have continued and fine-tuned ever after. A plan that is also very specific and characteristic of your work.
VK: At that time, this was still changing and emerging. In 1992, I did the two-part “Memory/Recollection” project. There were supposed to be three, but the last one fell out. It all came from a trip to Germany I made in 1990. With 15-20 artists’ files in my hands, I went to places like IFA to try to present Turkish art. On the way back, I realized that this is not the way to go. This is not the way to think about contemporary art in Turkey in an international context. It was so naïve, I was thinking that I wanted to do good for my country, good for my artists, and blah blah. Of course, I was turned down and rejected. Then I realized that if I wanted to do and achieve something solid, I needed to work this from the inside out. All these issues had to be thought about from the inside first. Hence, this two-part project, “Memory/Recollection,.”
MH: How many artists were involved?
VK: In the first one, it was five, and the second was a bit more people and bigger, with eight artists, also others working with publications. We invited non-art people to contribute. It was another early obsession of taking the art discussions out of there, out to the other parts of the culture. For the second exhibition, I invited people like Orhan Pamuk, journalists, writers, and folks from the social sciences to a preview.
MH: Hold one; when did you leave then for America to work there?
VK: 1993 in September and staying there until November 1997.
MH: OK, let’s focus on the second of the “Memory/Recollection” exhibitions. Now, when you look back at what you did there and then, how does it look—reflecting upon what you wished for and what happened?
VK: It was a great, solid exhibition; I don’t know if I could do it again. I don’t know if I have the same capacity to do a project like that again. It was well thought out, it was the first project that addressed and took issue with the republican past – and doing that from many various angles. But the main thing was that it was not vulgar.
MH: Err, would that theme be necessary and adequate right now?
VK: No, no, and for many reasons. One main reason is that the republican past is now so incredibly fragile. It does not need to be debunked. It needs to be thought through. When we speak about the Republican project, I also made the stupid mistake of narrowing that project to the years of the early 1930s to the years of the end of the Second WW.
It is a critical period, but now it is over-researched, over-used, and over-determined. It’s where and when all the symbolic images have been produced. Like if you go down and look at the Salon exhibition, there are the moments that need to be looked at, even the crafts project, you know, the Modern essay series here at SALT, the early 30’s period compared to the situation we have come to now, how the emotions and motions of crafting have changed. So, it would not make sense to go back to the Second Republic today.
MH: What’s what between the end of the end of the Second World War first major military coup of 1960 called then?
VK: It is the post-war period, that’s it. It is also called the Democratic period.
MH: What about revisiting that period?
VK: Yes, that would be fantastic. There are people already doing this, like Ahmet Öğüt’s Revolution Car work and things like that. But there is not yet any major exhibition about that period. The modern essays at SALT are also about moments, not the overall period.
MH: Yes, started to think of this abc-notion that we always need to be critically aware of our past – of the past that we come from, and in any given location, this mythologization and also instrumentalization of the past is happening, one way or another, twisting history into a neat and clear bag and a form that does violence to its complexity. And well, the only way to get around this one-sidedness is to take part in producing alternative voices and histories.
VK: Yes, here in SALT, the first year, we did all these things with Istanbul, the Becoming Istanbul project, and such. Now, we want to take the focus away from Istanbul and look outside of the classical period at Turkish modernity outside of the Republican period.
MH: OK, let’s go back to the second part of the Memory/Recollection exhibition. What was central to that that particular exhibition for you as a curator? What made it work? What did you do right?
VK: The main thing was the time and space context of the exhibition and the building. It is such a fantastic building; it was built as an annex to the Dolmabahçe Palace. All the palace workers were living there. The corner building was the most gorgeous of them all, it was occupied by the Fausto Zonaro, the court painter who worked in that building for about 12 years, working there until 1909. He even painted a portrait of Enver Pasha, of the Young Turks, but then he was declared a person of non-grata, kicked out of the country, and died in Italy. He was a fantastic painter with great paintings and fascinating stuff.
Later, this building became a kind of conspiracy place before the War of Independence. You know, it has a certain ferment in it. Atatürk was also working there, and so on. Later, after the Second World War, it was the center of the People’s Republican Party organization. It has a great history. In the 1970s, it served as the cultural centre of the same party. I remember visiting that place as a kid.
Then, in 1980, with the military coup, all the parties were dispensed, and all of them closed; during the dictatorship, the government took over the property and was given to the foundation system. Then, the foundation rented it for 49 years to this neo-liberal businessman. So, I got the place just after he got it before renovation. Now, it is a high-end hotel in a high-end neighborhood. It had all the periods, from Ottomans to Young Turks to Atatürk and the Republican times and also the neo-liberal period.
Thus, the building had a context. I invited the People’s Republican party to participate in the whole thing, inviting them to take over one room in the building, bring documents, etc., but they did not want to do that.
MH: Why did they refuse?
VK: I don’t know. At the time, they did not get it, they did not find it worthwhile. There was a guard at the entrance, actually, a guy who used to work with my father, a typical state office guard. He had a huge notebook where you put the visitors’ names and hours, so when you entered, you saw him, the symbol of the state and secularism.
At that time, we guarded the exhibition ourselves, the artists and I. So we were responsible for all that kind of stuff, too.
MH: Did the show have a subtitle?
VK: Yes, number 50 was the building number. And it’s an important door number because it is basically the only place where the door numbers have not changed over the last century. Although, well, it has changed now, but then in 1992, it had not changed for over 100 years.
MH: OK, you have the space and artists who actively interacted with its history and legacy. Is. Is there something else that made it happen?
VK: The important thing was that we had a lot of time. We just discussed a lot. My wife, Defne, also organized the exhibition; she wrote all the press and was the backbone of it all. It was a time of conversation.
I am not a Studio Artist – Retrospective of Hüseyin Alptekin
MH: OK, let’s move on to the second case study, the retrospective of Hüseyin Alptekin, “I Am Not a Studio Artist.”
VK: Yes, that was opened in April last year at SALT Beyoglu. It also had a long incubation time. For sure, that is. When Hüseyin passed away (31.12.2007), I immediately jumped to rescue his library. Not only to keep it together as it was, but to have all the material, especially the books, because, well, as you also know, books were essential to him.
MH: How was it? Was there a plan to do a bigger retrospective with him when he was still alive?
VK: Well, not really; it would have never materialized as a show, but what we wanted to do was to write a book together. It was to be a book about his work. It was nowhere near completed. But this one meaningful discussion is in the book of the retrospective. It was our last discussion, titled as “Last Interview”. So, it was to be a book, and he was to do a show, but then he passed away, and it was all over.
MH: Let’s go back a bit. When did you work together for the first time with Hüseyin?
VK: This was in December 1990. Hüseyin did a project with Michael, including the soap and boxer work. Many years later, in 1998, it was Sao Paolo, the biennial.
MH: How long did Hüseyin work together with Michael?
VK: That went on until the end of 1995. Michael left Turkey in 1993, and then he was in New York, where they did stuff back and forth.
MH: But then, in the summer of 2007, you and Hüseyin were doing something in Venice, right?
VK: (laughter) Yes, we did the biennial, with the huge huts disassembled and transported from the Northwest of Finland. And it was sad that we never got that work done, not even parts of it transported to Turkey. Nobody wanted it, nobody was interested, and that is a shame.
And Hüseyin himself—well, he was not a happy man straight after the Venice experience. He went ballistic. He had problems with Bilgi University, where he had worked for many years, and I think he tried to beat up the guy who was then the director of the university’s recently opened exhibition space and museum. Then Hüseyin got kicked out of there. Well, that’s how it is: some of us are scared, some are not.
The thing was that a lot of stuff was coming together by then and working well. But, of course, he was still complaining and doing a lot of that, but well, now the work is at the Moma Museum of Modern Art, and it was not a gift; they paid money for it; it’s the Lightboard piece. And another institution is trying to buy the Turk Truck piece. Things have gone well after he has been gone. Now, finally, it is all coming together.
But about the exhibition. First, we wanted to assemble the whole archive, photograph it, and arrange it. I jumped on it after he passed away. I was not going to let anybody else do it, and I was not going to let that material be distributed all around the place. I had a firm hand in keeping the work together. But it was only possible because Camilla, Hüseyin’s wife, was helping us. Without her, it would have not been possible. She went utterly along with it, which was needed because I had no authority over the material.
MH: Then, the opening in April 2011, what was the most difficult part of the whole process, a retrospective of an old and close friend who had relatively recently passed away?
VK: Oh man, it is hard to say, but well, the most challenging thing was making the decisions on his behalf. It was difficult with his works because the guy would mix stuff, take a piece of one work, and put it together with something else. He moved pieces within works, and even if they were final in their installation, it was never final. The technical guys he worked with were close to him, and he kept everything close and constantly changed things. Like, you know, Heterotopia II work, sold after he passed away to Van AbbeMuseum, well, that work has parts from the Heterotopia I work in. Thus, the question is: what do you do?
I made all those decisions, and well, it was not Hüseyin’s exhibition because he would have done it entirely differently. It was an exhibition of Hüseyin’s work. We showed his work as in how they were finalized at one time; there was no more process going on in and within them.
MH: What was your principle then during the whole work, the guiding idea?
VK: This was very clear. We included works that I had witnessed very closely during the production. This is how we had done it in the past, and then we could reconstruct quite a few pieces, like from 1991, a work he did with Michael, and do it now with Michael. It was also clear that he would not have put the photographs together as we did. We looked at the old installation photos, and we did it like it was done before, but of course, he would have played with the material much more, changing stuff. For us, there was no room for play.
MH: Was it difficult not to start playing around with the material?
VK: Sure, it was difficult, but well, what do you say or do? The man is gone, and that’s it. He is gone, and nobody can fill his shoes. Also, the exhibition was an Istanbul show; we wanted to show works that had not been seen here at all or had been completely forgotten. So, a lot of the work was new to the audience here. It was archival type of work, too, and yes, we are still coming up with stuff.
MH: Was there an idea to tour with the exhibition?
VK: Nobody wanted it, not yet, but the work is here, well stored, and all there is set. If someone wants to do it now, it is possible. We put it all together. I mean, that was a lot of work, finding the work, getting it back, searching for it at friends’ places, just like two days ago, I found another piece, it sits in Ankara, it’s by a guy who now lives in California. We also used a lot of videos in the exhibition, footage of him speaking about the works, and so on. We had two full floors and the walk-in cinema.
MH: OK, well, how do you ask this? Err, it is complicated, but now, with the little distance, was there a point of danger that you felt could have been glorifying his works and his stuff? It’s kind of the dilemma that one might have too much respect for the materials left behind.
VK: No, well, because he was an artist, but it was always his personality that was the thing that was the most important part of it. The question was always this: how to take him seriously? (laughter).
This was the real issue. You are looking at him and wondering what he is doing and what he is talking about. Is it something interesting, or is he just messing about? You know, like three in the morning, he is totally serious about the work – and this kind of thing causes something to go lost with people. Because, well, you went to Hüseyin to have fun. You went there for him to entertain you after a particular hour. Or to be tortured. He was a big sponge, consuming many stories and people around him. With some of you, it was just one or two nights now and then, but with us living here, it was day in and day out without any break.
MH: There is something crucial in this question: How can we take him seriously? Something that puts the finger on a very central character in his works. But, before going into that, another practical question: what was the role of the catalog in the whole process?
VK: This was the most comprehensive part, starting when he began making art. A lot of the 70’s stuff from the archives is not included at all. This is a book of Hüseyin as an artist who is not a studio artist …
The catalog is pretty straightforward because very little has been written about him. There is still so much work to do. It is incomplete, but we are now taking a break from it.
When we talked about doing the book with him, we tried to do the same in the catalogue, looking back but showing the connections.
MH: Hüseyin was born in 1957 and educated in Paris, doing a lot of writing and editing before starting as a visual artist. But here’s a strange question. When we take him as an artist and remember how he worked, with all the indecisions and insecurities embedded into his process, would it be possible for an artist like Hüseyin to survive today?
What I mean is this: Is this kind of character and profile an anomaly today? I am talking about how, in contemporary times, these kinds of very vulnerable processes are quickly turned into vulgar commodities that become static objects that, unfortunately, always lose their live and kicking quality; this kind of turning processes into dead objects.
VK: Well, I do know what you mean, but, well, I do not know. It is a big issue, an important issue.
MH: The reason it came to my mind is this – remembering parts of conversations with him, seeing how he worked, constantly being on the balancing act of both burning and healing, going over the top and/or escaping under the radar. And well, when we look at it, so much of the work is just so amazing, even if there were always things that did not add up, but there were those magnificent moments. I feel he could somehow protect himself; he was not producing for the sake of producing. He also had time to think and develop ideas slowly.
VK: Yes, that is true.
MH: But how is it now, with all this hype, all this commodification, that we face? He was, of course, trying to survive financially and sell, but he did not scarify the process because of it.
VK: I agree. One day, the work will be dispersed; it will be all around the place. It is so hard to talk about Hüseyin; he was such a special case, and he left such an amazing emptiness in many people. And it hits you – time and again – and again. You see somebody somewhere, you get together with old friends, and there is always immediately that Hüseyin story, some sobbing and so on. But I mean, the guy was sometimes also terribly intolerable.
MH: But I am thinking of the legacy that is left, which is a body of work that is live and kicking, and what it possibly might say and how it might translate into the current moment . And yes, there is something so powerful there, something that would give us a chance to fight against all these tendencies that force the stuff we do into these rigid compartments and these dead-end objects on the wall – or pre-paid definitions, for that matter.
But well, here is it: How to take him seriously? Well, the guy did make stuff that is not going away, and it’s not losing any of its power. And that’s that, the triple truth, truth.
Istanbul Biennial 2005
Let’s turn to the last case: the biennial you did in Istanbul in 2005, working together with Charles Esche. It was called Istanbul. Why?
VK: Because it was a show about Istanbul. It took place in Istanbul and was about Istanbul as a city.
MH: How does it feel when you look back at the thing now?
VK: I am still pleased about that project. And well, there are not that many projects about which one can feel happy.
MH: Say that again (laughter).
VK: I know, but sometimes things turn out the way you want them to. It is hard to explain. It was an issue of collaboration. It was an outstanding collaboration, not only with us guys but also with the whole group, together with November and Esra. They brought remarkable editorial quality, putting us into the frame and asking, forcing us to articulate what we did and why.
That project is an example of a project that you do with your whole body. It is a specific kind of investment. In 2005, some things came together. It was an intense period.
MH: While preparing for it, you went through a lot of locations that were promised or even promised for, but were then taken away …
VK: Yes, but in the end, everything worked for our benefit. Not every place was successful, but it all worked out.
MH: What was central to it all?
VK: It was the method we used. It involved not dwelling in, not building a parallel economy, working with the city and the neighborhood economy, and making sure the event was not contaminated by dealers and big museum groups and their parties and private things. This was a public event. The method also focused on artists in residency, the fact that they did not go in and out but had to stay in the city for a very long time.
We also worked tightly as a team, making decisions collectively. We discussed and then discussed some more. We turned the publication into a newspaper and did a very simple guide. It is simple stuff, but the structural decisions were important to the whole.
MH: What was the incubation time for the project?
VK: Opening was September 2005. We started a little over a year ago, but we have had all these kinds of discussions with Charles even before. You know, talking about the Balkans and how to do an exhibition here in Istanbul, they were all up in the air before. Some of these things were then implemented into this biennial. It was also a good combination of my more analytic and steady approach and Charles’ more perhaps staccato style, his magical, intuitive, brilliant moments.
MH: What was the most challenging part of collaboration like this, which is always about giving and taking and remembering that you had not worked like that before?
VK: Yes, I had not worked with anyone so close before. Well, we had our difficult moments, but that was primarily due to us sometimes being tired and doing things very sloppy (laughter).
MH: Well, as they say, if there is not enough tension, it is not for real, right? But what was the biggest challenge for you in collaboration?
VK: It was not a challenge. You know, it was about how to make decisions together. Sometimes, you go along with decisions that you don’t understand, and we made all four of the decisions together. if someone felt a proposal or a project was perfect for us, then the others went along.
MH: How many artists do you have with you?
VK: We cut down the number to 51.
MH: Looking back now, was that the correct number?
VK: It was a perfect number because we could handle that amount of projects and artists. We could have had a good conversation with everyone, but we could have had it even smaller. And well, you know, when we failed, we failed big, as in all the big public space projects. We failed with David, by Serkan Özkaya and with Pavel Altheimer’s DoubleMoon project. The searchlight did not work because the city had too much light at night. Funny enough, every big project at that time failed.
MH: Would you do another show about Istanbul?
VK: No.
MH: Why not?
VK: Naa, in a few years, perhaps.
MH: Istanbul. Have you been to the Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk?
VK: Sure.
MH: What do you think about that?
VK: It’s a glorified Joseph Cornell box. It is terrific, but it is too big of a statement. The hype around it is way too big compared to what it actually is. It is not a matter of scale or anything like that; it does not have that much to say. There are many things that are very similar to itself. I am not overwhelmed by it. It is not exciting. And it is not a new proposal.
MH: I assume you have read his anti-monumental museum manifesto, in which he strangely says stuff that he does not need to state—juxtaposing all different kinds of things while glorifying the private and the everyday objects.
VK: Yes, sure. And why does he state those things and pretend it’s new when he has already seen over 500 museums like the one he has done now? There are so many of these museums of obsessions all around the world.
MH: What can we learn from his project, this misguided obsession? He had the finances, and undeniably, it is well done; the installation is masterly executed. The museum doesn’t add that much; it’s more of the same as the soap opera of melodrama that’s already in the little over 700 pages of the book.
VK: Yes, even the book is not that great. I kept reading it when he wrote it, chapter by chapter. We helped him with the research. I mean, he got his way; he should be satisfied. But his project, even if he talked to a lot of people, he did not collaborate. It is solely his obsession, and kind of suffocating.
MH: Let’s turn this around again. When you do what you do, how do you avoid the pitfalls of not producing for the sake of producing, of not ending up doing the one-dimensional object but respecting the process …
VK: Well, whenever I do commission work, I fail. It becomes always something else, not something to remember. I guess I have learned from that through the years.
MH: Learned what?
VK: Just by doing the job, it never really works. See, whatever you do just does not turn out to be that interesting. You are not interested yourself, and so it is not interesting to anyone else either. It is not about polishing what you do but about the fundamental quarrel of what you seem to always be missing. You have to be driven by the conviction of the necessity of what you are doing, not because someone pays you to do so or because you are a curator.
I mean, thank god there are moments to remember, but the rest is not up to the same quality. At the end of 2006, I remember talking with November about being very tired of the exhibition space, and the space was very tired of us. We were exhausted and did not want to do another show. Then we did the open library project, and that experience, turning the space for three months into a library, made it enjoyable for us to work with again. When it becomes just a job, it sucks, for sure.
MH: The pressure is up – always.
VK: Sure, that is the other side of it all—there are always these spaces to fill up.
MH: But where is there hope in all this?
VK: There is a lot of hope. I mean, I am right now extremely excited about the things we do, especially with this new place. It is so exciting. The luxury of having good finances is amazing.
After all those years, looking back now, well, some of the arrogance that I had, well, some of it was good and necessary, but there is so much to mend, so much to put together, so much look to at and to understand, so much at the cracks, more to see and feel for. There are so many stories to get to and to take care of.
One of these examples is a new project that we have just recently started in which we are looking at the 70’s, especially at the end of the 70’s. It is a remarkable time, very hardcore. Still, the focus is on the main events of 1.5.1977 and the massacre that happened that day after the mass protests at Taksim Square, leaving 37 people dead.
At that time, artists were having and creating completely different kinds of alliances, working with theatre people, working with labor unions, and so on—something we have completely lost sight of today. It kind of shows that collaborations like that are possible.
MH: What will become of it?
VK: We do not know yet. We start a project without first determining the outcome. The working title is the date 30.4.1977. It is the day before when everything happens, the dramatic events that have had such a huge importance for so many people, for the whole generation of people here in Turkey. The thing is that when we talk to the people who were there, everyone remembers a different thing.
Istanbul, Mika Hannula, 2012.
vasıf kortun 