An Unpublished Interview with a colleague from the region

2014

Questions

As an internationally acclaimed curator with extensive experience, a writer, teacher, and director of the nonprofit gallery and research center SALT, how can you impact the contemporary art scene in our neighboring country?
It has been 25 years since I used the appellation “curator,” which was a first in Turkey, but different necessities emerged as time went on, and I have been stepping away from contemporary art. True, I had a substantial impact on the local context. Still, I would rather be credited for the work on memory, incorporation both with the ethical side of the regional and international art world, critical and interdisciplinary thinking, and providing counsel and possibilities for younger generations—all I wanted in my little way to make this place a better one to live in.

Acting as an intermediary between contemporary art in your country and that of the Western world, is there something completely different (as an attitude) that contemporary Turkish art can offer in the contemporary global art scene, or you think that is necessary for it to comply with what this scene propose to be part of it?
I have not been a conduit between the “West” and here. A significant component of our work was about liaising with the South-East Mediterranean and South-East Europe since the end of the 1990s. We have been engaged with this context long before it became vogue, profitable and cool. Contemporary art is a consequence of globalization, and as such, the locality registers how things are anchored to geography, social, and political contexts, and their pseudo-internal dynamics are not so evident. I can feel and even articulate the difference, not because of the DNA of a place but of shared stories and social and political contexts. The incorporation of the flows is most often about structures of support. There are great artists worldwide; among those are the luckier ones with the financial backing.

Can you describe the terms under which the international art market works and the prerequisites for a peripheral art market to be part of it?
I am not an expert on the market, and I really do not want to know. The market thinks of the short term, while I think of the decades.

Having been director and co-director of Chief Curator and Director of the 3rd (1992), and Co-director of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial (2005), how can problems posed by the gap between the international character of a Biennial and the local one of the art institutions in the host country-city be anticipated each time?
Unfortunately, not many curators ask these kinds of questions, and when they do, they are often not so sincere about it, and they don’t have an engagement that outlives the biennial. It should be in the ecology of things to acknowledge a context, devise ways of working with it, and be genial about it. I do not mean you have to be at peace with everything that exists because it is there. Still, all meaningful biennials impact communities, students, artists, initiatives, institutions, and even universities. New relationships are also established. I like to take that seriously and think of ways of making it more discerning.

Is it only a matter of management, or is it something more profound that the organizers should consider, keeping in mind that they should also educate and attract people not familiar with contemporary art and not only address people close to contemporary art forms?
I would have to isolate each case. Istanbul Biennial has been free for the last two editions. That has been a significant development. What Charles Esche and his curatorial team did for the 2014 Biennial in Sao Paolo, particularly how they used the ground floor, was an excellent response to your question. However, I can answer your question with a complete curatorial strategy that turns this problem into a resource. You cannot just do the exhibition as usual; build an interpretation, education, and social program around it and expect it to work. At the same time, that may be useful to a degree the biennial has to embody a different imagination. What we do is not for a limited clan and its tribal interests. I have no categorical interest in the “art world.”

Could you explain the context in which contemporary art and contemporary political regimes, as executed by Erdoğan government, work together (or apart) in Turkey?
On the cultural front, the government’s report card is an F, like Egypt, China, India, and others. Most countries get no better than a D; a few get a notch higher. Turkey’s government is more distraught. They can build highrises, bridges, and tunnels, but culture does not come from the assembly line. They keep returning to the origin of their trauma, which is the formation of the secularist republic and its efficient cultural machinery of the years between the two world wars. The government’s belatedness is that they would like such machinery in these times propagating their ideals about a blissful, unitary society. I have never had the opportunity to work with any of the governments in Turkey, and I am pretty inexperienced in that area. But the city government of the late 1980s in Istanbul was quite advanced, with Hilmi Yavuz [a poet, writer, and thinker] at the helm of the cultural department. That was an arbitrary moment, as any. I do not know how to answer your question. I have a right to work with the public sector; nearly half of my salary is seized by the state, and that has to come back in services that includes cultural utilities of the kind that transcends the private.

Could you describe why there is a gap between the aspirations of contemporary art scene in Turkey and those of state art institutions?
This is a book. Up until the beginning of the 1950s, most artists were shaped into “perfection” by the state; the difference between the artist’s position and the ideology of the state was naught. Hence, state art institutions were doing just fine without any frictions. Between the 1950s and the 1971 coup, modest private initiatives came through, and we saw beautiful, progressive generations but less state support. But after 1970, emancipatory movements, local and international, scared the state and its institutions, which were increasingly managed into oblivion. The end was more or less after the last coup in 1980.

Could you explain how an International Biennial in Istanbul flourished (if so) and how the regime maintained strict control over art and architecture?
Private support from venerable families and big companies keeps the boat afloat. The “regime” has no content. Regimes should not have content anyway; it is not their prerogative to produce content.

How do the above two are balanced (if they are)?
Programs like the Istanbul Biennial, some institutions, artists, writers, filmmakers, and young generations offer remarkable quality. At one level, it is becoming an expanded situation where artistic practice and discourse are ever more deeply enmeshed with the humanities. It may be out of desperation that this convergence occurs out of fear of being alone or crushed by populism. So, there is no balance. The state offer is pretty farcical. But they do not know that it is a farce, unfortunately, they have not seen better.

How do the two are related to societal structures in contemporary Turkish society?
Here is the sad part: They are not related. No matter what, we have to find ways to come to the table, agree on at least some fundamentals, and begin from there. The onus is on the regime’s shoulders; I cannot make the move.

Can we find an analogous situation (the gap between the needed freedom for contemporary art creation and state control promoting certain ideals) concerning other forms of culture (literature, film, theatre), and which is this?
I did not understand the question.

Finally what’s your political explanation as an intellectual about the events at the Gezi Park?
Those days were worth all the suffering we endure now. I have written enough about them and do not want to mythologize them. It would be a very, very long answer.

What do you think about your country’s entrance into the EU in light of the recent economic crisis in the EU countries of the South?
Turkey may, unfortunately, never become a member of the EU, not for economic reasons but simply because it does not deserve to be part of that community. There is no democracy, human rights, economic justice, separation of powers, or education. We have a century-old tradition of mass murders, persecutions, and systemic driving out of all ethnic, cultural, religious, and political constituencies. All that has not only gone unpunished but rewarded. I thought that to resolve this, we had to be in the EU, but that is no longer the compelling aspect.