The 13th Istanbul Biennial Public Programme: Public Alchemy

Public Programme co-curated by: Fulya Erdemci and Andrea Phillips

Organised by: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts

The 13th Istanbul Biennial Public Programme titled Public Alchemy examines the ways in which publicness can be reclaimed as an artistic and political tool in the context of global financial imperialism and local social fracture. From February to November 2013, a series of lectures, workshops, seminars, performances and poetry readings will examine how a political, poetic alchemy is at work, both in Turkey and across the world in which conventional concepts of ‘the public’ are being transformed.

Making the city public8–10 February 2013
Venue: Istanbul Technical University, Maçka Campus C101 Conference Hall
Taking the accessibility of civic space and debate over rights to the city as the starting point for our discussion of publicness, the first events of the 13th Istanbul Biennial public programme focus on current urban transformations in Istanbul.
Urban transformation can be understood as a political mechanism the role of which is not only to produce the way in which a city is designed aesthetically and technically but also the way in which its citizens are produced as actors—where and how we live, where and how we work, where and how we socialize. Current urban transformations in Istanbul in which historically and culturally diverse neighbourhoods are being destroyed to make way for newly privatized housing, in which shopping malls are replacing local markets, and in which central areas of social gathering are being relocated to the perimeters of the city, form part of a state-scale rebranding mechanism intended to attract global investment. Such changes intervene in an already complex landscape, wherein layers of competing political and cultural history reveal traces of multifaceted concepts of public space from the Imperial to the Republican, from the informal to the formal. But what is the future of the city for its subjects—those included and excluded by new architectural legislation, those allowed to stay, and those made, once again, barbarian? In this series of events we seek to question the modus operandi of this transformation and the role of the cultural industries within it.

Friday 8 February 20136:30pm: Introduction: Fulya Erdemci & Andrea Phillips
6:45pm: Poetry reading: Lale Müldür (poet)
7pm: Lecture: Teddy Cruz (architect, Professor in Public Culture and Urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at University of California, San Diego, co-founder of CUE/Center for Urban Ecologies)
“Where is Our Collective Imagination? Architecture and the Crisis of the Public”
8:30pm: Improvisation: Cevdet Erek (artist and musician, Lecturer at ITU TM Conservatory and Architecture Faculty)

Saturday 9 February 20132pm: Lecture illustrated by hand: Christoph Schäfer (Conceptual artist, sparkling draughtsman, educational ntertainer, urban writer and uninvited city planner)
“A Machine of Possibilities: the urban turn, art and the right to the city”
3:30pm: Panel discussion: “Agoraphobia: urban transformation in Istanbul” with
Betül Tanbay (Taksim Platform, academician)
Yaşar Adnan Adanalı (development planner, researcher, blogging at reclaimistanbul.com and mutlukent.wordpress.com)
Sedat Doğan (Association of Struggle Against Capitalism, writer at adilmedya.com)
İlhan Tekeli (city and regional planner, social scientist)
Erbay Yucak (legal advisor)
Chair: Fulya Erdemci

Sunday 10 February 201310–2pm: Tour to North-West Istanbul urban transformation areas with Jean-François Perouse (social geographer)
“Towards the emerging peripheries of North-West Istanbul: the striking making of the ‘New Istanbul’”
All events will be in English except the Agoraphobia panel discussion and the tour, which will be in Turkish. Simultaneous translation will be available for all events except for the tour.
Future events:
Public Address 22–23 March 2013
Public Capital 10–11 May 2013
Becoming Public Subjects 14–15 September 2013
Future Publics/New Collectives 1–2 November 2013

na Oficina Arara, Porto

Oficina Arara

Printed Matter: Porto

Em solidariedade com a es.col.a da Fontinha - Porto

"Depois do despejo, o recheio do EsColA foi destruído e o edifício emparedado, a mando da câmara municipal do Porto.

A operação de despejo teve início cerca das 10h00, com a intervenção de grande força policial. Agentes encapuçados entraram no Es.Col.A, rebentando o gradeamento. Vários outros agentes e dez carrinhas de força de intervenção e outros tantos carros policiais bloquearam o acesso ao bairro. 

Ainda no exterior, foram detidos dois apoiantes do projecto, e, posteriormente, um terceiro. 

Entretanto, os ocupantes do edifício foram levados para o exterior pelas forças policiais, juntando-se às dezenas de pessoas que ali se concentravam. Juntos, num sitting de resistência não violenta, tentaram impedir a saída das carrinhas policiais. O momento gerou bastante confusão, com registos de violência por parte das forças de intervenção. As carrinhas acabaram por passar, mantendo-se um cordão policial a bloquear o bairro. 

Entretanto, as cerca 150 pessoas presentes estiveram reunidas no Largo da Fontinha. A assembleia improvisada decidiu rumar até à esquadra do Heroísmo, em solidariedade com os três detidos que ali se encontravam, e que entretanto foram deslocados para a esquadra da Bela Vista, estando previsto que irão a julgamento ao início da tarde. 

O pessoal partiu depois até às traseiras da câmara municipal do Porto. O edifício camarário encontra-se gradeado e "protegido" por um cordão de agentes policiais.

Alegadamente por razões de segurança, uma vez que um dos apoiantes foi detido pela polícia após se regar com gasolina, a Polícia chamou os bombeiros para "limparem" o local. Os manifestantes rumaram para frente ao edifício da câmara municipal. O apoiante que se regou com gasolina estará neste momento a ser levado ao hospital, para ser lavado e será depois libertado, segundo fonte policial.

Encontram-se em frente à câmara cerca de de 200 pessoas. [15h00]"

um dos brilhantes cartazes da es.col.a

 

N30 - London

clown bloc

precarious workers brigade

Goldmiths "Capitalism is Crisis"

AMIW@VBKÖ – Ou Antes, o que Podem as Palavras? / Or Rather, What Can Words Do? / Oder vielmehr, was können Wörter tun?

Mónica Faria, a photo by litcha sparletta on Flickr.

AMIW was initiated in 2005 by the artist Carla Cruz to expound the question of gender and to question power relations in the arts. It wants to affirm itself as a political platform; to let go of the desire of belonging to a discriminatory art world in an attempt to figure out new ways of giving account of hu’wo’man art production.

At the VBKÖ AMIW asks together with the ‘3 Marias’ (Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, Maria Velho da Costa): “Sisters. What can [art] do? Rather, what can words do?” AMIW thus refers to the conscious "New Portuguese Letters" that addressed the age-old oppression of Portuguese woman and provoked, in 1972, during the Salazar/Caetano dictatorship, the biggest literary scandal of Portugal.

The exhibition shows works by the artists André Alves, Catarina Carneiro de Sousa and Sameiro Oliveira Martins, Laura García and Said Dokins, Alice Geirinhas, Risk Hazekamp, Roberta Lima, Ana Pérez-Quiroga, Suzanne van Rossenberg, Ângelo Ferreira de Sousa, Yan María Yaoyólotl, and performances by André Alves, Stefanie Seibold and the duo Projecto Gentileza.

Moreover, visitors will have access to a documentary presentation of AMIW – 2005/10. In addition at the VBKÖ there will be a video lounge, with: Miguel Bonneville, Mónica Faria, Risk Hazekamp, Anna Jonsson, Cristina Mateus, Rita Rainho, Flávio Rodrigues, Evelin Stermitz and Lenka Vráblíková.

The exhibitors take passion as excuse for engaging the world. At the core of their works they intends to question how the desire for visibility can be transmuted into a different experience one of equality and accountability as to evoke a feminist practices that functions as a ‘counter-hegemonic intervention’ in the arts in particular and in society in general?

http://amiw-vbkoe.blogspot.com/

and

http://allmyindependentwomen.blogspot.com/

about London riots

"A capitalism that is no longer accompanied by an increase in the standard of living, especially of the poorest, loses its credibility." (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005:513)