An unpublished discussion with an astute colleague from Scotland, whose name I cannot place at the moment.
I begin by asking Kortun what made him feel that the time was right for him to move back to Istanbul to live and work in 1998 after four years at Bard College.
It was a strategic decision to move home, but it had nothing to do with the art world or anything. I moved back to Turkey at a time when, in retrospect, things were not so great. I moved back because it was my hometown. I like the Bosphorus, and my parents are getting older, and we context, so these kinds of things. I liked the States a lot, but I was growing bored of being there; it was just that somehow, the limits of what I would do there would be a kind of institutionalized work, as I had been institutionalized before. What would I be? I would become the director of a big institution, a big museum, which seemed like it would be very dull; it didn’t hold any urgency. We moved back for many reasons; one was that you could do things back home in your hometown where you could make a different impact, get things moving differently, and affect history. Those were the reasons.
One of the things I remember about your talk in Glasgow was that you talked extensively about how you intended SALT to be accessible to the public and not purely aimed at the art world. Even though commercial interests fund SALT, it is a non-profit organization with a powerful focus on facilitating research and archival studies. Was that what seemed most urgent, involving the public in the art and being more involved in research?
It’s very easy for me to talk about what the intentions were at the outset and to talk about this from a context in which work we’ve been highly successful – what we want to actualize, what we thought we would like to be doing, what we try to do. And also learn from what we have already accomplished as an institution over the last four years. Let me put it this way, perhaps. We are all cognizant that the contemporary art world has no significance or priority over anything else, especially not in this institution. So, to put things in the right place doesn’t have to be a priority. That’s not what this institution is about; even if it deals with contemporary visual production, it doesn’t present that as a position of privilege. The whole thing is very complicated, and it has to do with a particular aspect: a majority of contemporary art has become a tool or an extension of the leisure and entertainment and spectacle industry, more so than before, especially in the last two decades, very much so in the last decade. The contemporary culture industry and modern art institutions, especially those in the center, the empire institutions, have reduced themselves to institutions with a death wish; they are constantly consuming or exploiting the potential. The recent discussion about MOMA and Bjork[1] is not a singular incident. It is a representation of a structural problem with the institutions.
We don’t want to be there, we’re not interested in that, we’re not interested in the spectacular. We’re not interested in that kind of art world. To move away from that kind of art world, you have to retain the promise of contemporary art, that it can affect people, change the world or enter into discussions with other things, hold notions of interdisciplinarity, etc. We had the means to do it because we had different sets of knowledge within the institution, so putting everything together and seeing what comes out has been our most significant interest. Somehow, today, there are institutions that I admire, such as contemporary art institutions and museums. I realize that the research capacity is limited even within them, and research is driven primarily towards an end. The end will be an exhibition or a publication. We have this kind of limited research capacity we don’t have. We have the research capacity, and we don’t know if it will be an exhibition or a publication or a book or nothing at the end or just an archive that remains an archive at the end. This means that institutions are not tooled to do research the way they should be doing it. And universities are also, weirdly, in pretty much the same predicament. But it is a priority for us, and how to protect it is very important. And protect that and somehow not completely shy away from the limelight but enter the limelight with responsibility and seriousness – with a position that this can be done. This is what is being asked of us, what should be demanded from us, and that’s what cultural institutions are for, to kind of consistently do all of that and to retain and be and to be a privately supported institution at the same time, these are all complicated, networked questions, in a way. We’re trying to set up a different example but are not fully conscious of it. Some of it is like building as you go; some do not know how. Still, unfortunately, that sense of experimentation, that sense of responsible experimentationality, is not something that large institutions do these days. We won’t be judged from today; I will leave that for history. Hopefully, there will be such a thing as to figure out what we were actually [trying to achieve] at this particular time in this specific geography in this particular region with this particular kind of network of affiliations with other institutions in other places.
Looking at SALT’s program, you are directly addressing some of the pressing Turkish social issues, for example, the Kurdish issue, which the government has issued conflicting statements about, saying there is an issue, or there isn’t an issue. One of the things that SALT seems to be addressing is looking at these issues and problems.
It is sensitive. We cancel programs constantly, or at least we did last year [2014], because you want to have an opening two days before the opening, something will happen, and you can’t do the opening, it would be really in bad faith. There has been a sense of provisionality, especially since the Gezi resistance, an extra layer of flexibility you must adopt. You have to worry about people’s concerns and show conscience – especially to people who are interested in your research. These are the kinds of users who are worried about these issues. Yes, we accommodate these things; we’ve done maybe 40 or 50 programs about Syria, be it screenings, talks, or conversations about refugees. The condition of the refugee, when represented as a destitute person, is a kind of visualization that does no justice to the Syrian exodus or the refugee condition. They are middle-class people, and doctors are people in the universities. They are people teaching and people in high schools. Turkey, Lebanon, and, to a degree, Egypt have done what no other place has done. You don’t have any refugees in Scotland or London. I’m talking about six hundred thousand people, people who will never leave, who made this place home, in Istanbul, compared to the tens and the five hundred and the thousand refugees taken by selective processes in places like Paris, who take the filmmakers and the writers. I have no respect for West Europe in that respect because we carry the brunt here: we carry the burden. I wouldn’t say that the Syrian condition is handled well by the Turkish government, but it is dealt with in a better way than any other government around the world at the moment. So many people have made this country their home over the last twenty years, from the Iraqi Kurds to the Bulgarian Turks and the Syrians after the Syrian revolution.
I mean, it’s about 5 million people since 1989. That’s not a small number at 13all; it’s like 10% of the population of this country. Nothing of this sort has happened in the last 50 years in Western Europe, but Western Europe controls representation of the Syrian condition. So my idea here is that the fundamental reason I am doing programs with the Syrian community here, or they are doing programs with us, is that this institution is hospitable to the people who write, the filmmakers, literature people, musicians, and students. I love to hear the sound of Arabic in my institution and the sound of Kurdish in this institution. I love to listen to the different voices – that’s what this institution should be about, resonating with Turks and Kurds and Syrians, Arabs coming together, sharing a table, a tea, in a meeting, the same meeting, kind of normalizing the situation. The Syrian condition is not the destitute children in the street, but it’s also someone next door to you, in your neighborhood, in the cinema, to kind of get to know and understand better, and to start from scratch…
To know that this is our common condition, now, that no one is going to go away, no one is going back to Syria. Never, so this is what we have to live with. Arabic has become a ubiquitous language in the street: we see it in the signs and the little shops opening here and there, which interests me. We will introduce Kurdish as a second language soon and start rolling it out in our wall labels and wall texts, and this will be the first step.[2] More than anything, it is a symbolic move because as much as I want to see Arabic, I want to go downstairs and see the name of the café in Kurdish. I like that kind of visibility happening. Suppose you are running a cultural institution in Turkey. In that case, it’s a present issue, and it’s our responsibility to address it. It’s not only our responsibility but also our commitment. We have to probe history constantly, we have to rethink the entire canon over and over again, we have to take it apart, and we have to ask questions about what we think we know. It’s what an institution can do: bring disparate moments together, face to face, eye to eye, to get to know what’s going on outside the media.
How do things feel now in the wake of the Gezi resistance?
The power is stronger these days now than I ever imagined it to be. The tools are potent, both in terms of the weaponization of the police and what the protestors still succeeded in achieving. They were the best days of our lives: magical. Many things happened. 1) We won – we won the park. A shopping center is not being erected in the park. 2) We won – nobody lost their dignity. It was remarkable. We won because people have changed mentally, significantly, and fundamentally. People who have been through this came out as different persons. So we won again. The country has a different mentality and spirit, evident in the growing support for HDP. That is very important. And we saw what power is, you know. It is terrifying right now because of the weaponization of the police all around the world. Anyone who has been repressed and has witnessed an uprising knows that Gezi is not the only example. The moment is now dispersed. People are dealing with more minor things and have left the city to work in different places. Some people went to the country, some worked in different gardens here and there, and some worked on publications…It’s very distributed now, but that kind of thing can only happen once in a hundred years anyway. It was a magical, revolutionary moment; you didn’t know what would happen next, but somehow, it happened. So whatever it is worth, nothing like that has happened ever since; it’s much more mature; we’re grown-ups now. Of course, there were some pretty traumatic parts, but overall, it was great – and the process is not over. It will take a long time, but it will take a long time because the government in power has aligned itself with the “state.” You’re not seeing a new Turkey but a continuation of Turkey for the last 100 years.
Do you think HDP will command 10% of the vote [in the then-forthcoming June 2015 election.]?[3]
I will vote for them. The situation will worsen if they don’t win 10% of the vote, but the current government is doing everything possible to persuade people not to vote for HDP.
Do you think government attempts to control the spread of information (such as making social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube inaccessible) have, in fact, made people more inventive? For example, I saw a photograph online of a wheat paste poster on the shutter of a shop in Istanbul explaining how to use a VPN.
Any kind of social movement has to take place in two places – offline and online. One cannot do without the other, absolutely not. It is impossible today. And this is the agency; this is the only common medium we have. And they tried – the police brought jammers into Taksim Square to jam the internet completely during the resistance. Meanwhile, private companies brought minibusses with satellite dishes and everything to provide extra bandwidth so people could use their phones. But of course, it was an excellent education for everybody because we learned what VPN is, how it is used, how to circumvent all this stuff, how you can do peer-to-peer networking, how you can communicate phone to phone without the internet, or use other forms of programs like telegram and other traceless messaging and all kinds of stuff and this is only going to continue. And you realize there was a lot of international help from outside the country. So, all of this was happening, and it was a good learning process. People learned to write code, and people learned to do other things. Of course, there’s ambivalence; you have to be careful what you put on social media, but in any case, it helps no one to curse at people.
State funding for culture is relatively small in Turkey or attached to particular projects, so most organizations have to seek private sponsorship.
It has always been like this, and I keep repeating this. Apart from one time in the 1970s when there was a social democratic government and things like autonomous art councils were discussed and almost put into action, the money has always been little, and it went to folkloric or whatever projects. The cultural activists here were never really supported at all. So it’s nothing new; it’s just how it is and how it has been.
Regarding SALT, do you have the freedom to do what you want, within reason?
No, of course not. However, it is a reasonable situation; SALT can be much more progressive than any institution in Istanbul. But we are still a neutral institution. We retain a position from the academic world, which is hard to maintain – authoritative neutrality. It’s not a time when you can be neutral; what’s happening is disgusting. But at the same time, I want this place to be around a little longer, so we shy away from making statements. We come very close to that, but we don’t make the statement – we leave that to the public to figure out. So, we present the argument, but we don’t usually have a resolution within the argument.
This is not something that affects us only; it’s a time when museums and cultural institutions have had to give up neutrality, or claims to neutrality, and make hard decisions and say things that must be told. Neutrality can only operate in a truly public context, and we’re no longer in a truly public context. What is Tate going to say about fossil fuels? They have to say something.[4] It’s not ok. They must say what institutions should do today and stand by those claims. That is cultural institutions’ historical role – we can’t be neutral anymore.
Notes
[1] “Björk is a restlessly experimental (and therefore fallible) tremendous creative force, not a tarnishable brand. The same can’t be said for MOMA, which in recent years—with pandering shows of Tim Burton, Marina Abramović, and William Kentridge; Tilda Swinton asleep in a box; the “Rain Room;” and get ready for Yoko Ono, upcoming—has seemed bent on “reorganizing itself as something like a hipster lifestyle brand” […] and incidentally conveyed “disdain for its core audience”. That Björk is both so good and so widely esteemed makes this occasion the worst so far. Presuming to do her a favor, MOMA comes off ridiculous in the way of a wannabe groupie. Björk’s dignity endures. That of the museum disappears.” Peter Schjeldahl, “MOMA’s Embarassing Björk Crush”, The New Yorker, March 17th 2015. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/moma-embarrassing-bjork-crush Accessed 3rd October 2015.
[2] The project was dropped after 2015 due to the agitated political atmosphere and concerns about the regime’s pushback.
[3] Turkish Prime President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan failed to secure an outright majority at the June 7th, 2015 general election, when his AKP lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in 13 years. This resulted in a hung parliament after AKP failed to form a coalition government. Erdoğan then called a second general election on November 1st, 2015, at which the AKP won a clear majority – 317 of the 550 seats. However, this share of the vote still fell short of the “super majority” the AKP needed to call a referendum on changing the constitution and increasing the powers of the president. At this second general election, the pro-Kurdish HDP again crossed the 10% threshold needed to claim seats in parliament, but this time with 21 fewer MPs elected than in the June general election. “Turkey election: Erdoğan calls on world to respect result,” BBC News, 2 November 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34696489 Accessed 2 November 2015.
[4] The growing divestment movement has seen the Rockefeller Foundation, the Church of England, and dozens of universities drop fossil fuel investments in response to the mounting view that public institutions should not be tied to the companies that drive climate change. “[Liberate Tate] protester Yasmin de Silva said the group was compelled to adopt a more antagonistic attitude by the looming climate talks in Paris in December. “Oil companies like BP are trying to carry on pretending its business as usual, but time is running out to act on climate change. We’re already seeing the impact of climate change globally, and companies, foundations, and institutions around the world are turning away from the fossil fuel industry that’s driving us to climate disaster,” she said. The group began protesting against the Tate’s links with BP in 2010. In January, after a three-year legal battle over a freedom of information request, it was forced to reveal the extent of BP’s support, which amounts to an average of £224,000 a year.” Karl Mathiesen, “Climate change activists occupy Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall”, The Guardian, 20th June 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/13/climate-change-activists-occupy-tate-moderns-turbine-hall Accessed 2nd October 2015.
vasıf kortun 