13 Oct 2010

The 2nd International Antakya Biennial

The 2nd International Antakya Biennial, entitled 'Anlayışınız için teşekkür ederiz / Thank you for your understanding' will take place between 15 October - 20 November 2010. The biennial is organized by the Antakya Academy Association.

Historically, Antakya has been one of the largest cities of the Roman Empire and Byzantium and an important centre for the history of the Christian Church and the rise of Islam. Throughout its history, Antakya has always been a cosmopolitan city where different ethnicities, religions and languages coexist. Being so near to the Syrian border, the Arabic culture is still predominate within the city and both Arabic and Turkish are spoken.

Contemporary Antakya is a wealthy city in a process of fast development. Its historical and geographic connections to Syria have been recently reinforced by the visa exemption agreement between Turkey and Syria, and changes in the Turkish government policies have confirmed its place as a unique cultural, trade and tourist centre in the country.

Consequently, the city is going through a rapid transformation - culturally, socially, spatially and economically. A new airport is being constructed, most of the big old houses have been turned into hotels and each day a new souvenir shop or tourism office is opened, replacing the old workshops. People in Antakya begin to undergo the same processes of urbanisation, gentrification and gradual increase of control of the public space that has advanced with varying speed and degree elsewhere.

The title 'Thank you for your understanding' is borrowed from a work by artist Simon Kentgens, which will be shown in the Biennial. It refers to the signs we often see in the city, when public or private interventions obstruct our common spaces. In the context of Antakya, 'Thank you for your understanding' is an effort for finding a common ground on which we can stand as public – both in the exhibition and in the city.

Today, our world remains fragmented and our individual efforts dispersed behind the unifying façade of globalization. Discovering what could be truly common means finding solidarities and shared sensibilities that are not based on the reigning form of universality today: capitalism. The biennial experiments with its own form as a global, temporary, exportable structure in search for a possible common space, a commonality beyond the market.

'Thank you for your understanding' is an attempt to create intersections between the biennial format and the city as the spatial model of the way society is organized and functions today. Following David Harvey, we claim that the question of what kind of city we want cannot be separated from what kind of people we want to be and what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyles, technologies and aesthetic values we desire. The biennial therefore questions the possibilities for practicing, albeit temporarily and within the limited territory of art, our rights to common space.

More than 40 artists address these questions in Antakya, many with site-specific works, performances and public space interventions. To acknowledge the importance of the relationship between the biennial and the city, the curators have included among the artists the names of local people – mainly housewives – who have creatively participated in the artists' projects.

The main exhibition venue – Antim Business Center – is situated in the industrial part of Antakya's centre and the process of organizing the Biennial has become one among the many activities of the daily working life in the neighbourhood. A former office space, the premises of the biennial embody simultaneously two historical forms of the universality of the white cube - the exhibition and the office.

The opening events will take place between 15 and 17 October 2010 and include performances, workshops, discussions and open-air video screenings, which will continue throughout the biennial in different neighbourhoods of Antakya.


ARTISTS

A77 - ADALET AKBAŞ - MUHAMMAD ALİ - GÜNAY ALKAN- BURAK ARIKAN - VARTAN AVAKIAN – NISRINE BOUKHARI - PIERRE BISMUTH - HAKAN BİTMEZ - LUCHEZAR BOYADJIEV - RANA ÇUHADAROĞLU - BURAK DELİER - HÜLYA DOLAŞ - NATALYA DYU - IŞIL EĞRİKAVUK - VOLKAN ERAY - MEHMET FAHRACI - EMEL SIKAR GENÇ - NADİ GULER & M. HASAN DEMİRCİ - CYPRIEN GAILLARD – EMRAH GÖKDEMİR - ÖZLEM GÜNYOL & MUSTAFA KUNT - SANJA IVEKOVIC - SIMON KENTGENS - FEVZİYE KOKU - DANIELA KOSTOVA - CÜNEYT KURT - GHASSAN MAASRI - RENZO MARTENS - IVAN MOUDOV - VESSELINA NIKOLAEVA - BORA PETKOVA - FERHAT ÖZGÜR - LARISSA SANSOUR - BASTIAAN SCHEVERS - AYGÜL SEZER - MARY HYUNHEE SONG - EMEL SÖKMEN - FATİH TAN - KEZBAN TATLI - SEVGİ TATLI - GÜNEŞ TERKOL - VAROL TOPAC - ISSA TOUMA - GÖNÜL TÜRKER - MACİDE YALÇINKAYA & ZEHRA GÜZEL - FADI YAZIGI - MEDİHA YENİOCAK - EDİZ YENMİŞ - ELA YILMAZ - SEVCAN YILMAZ - NALAN YIRTMAÇ