Intermedia Class

Images from Happening Summer '07

2007-08-27T05:12:00.000-07:00

Intermedia Happening Summer '07

2007-08-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

August 2, Thursday

Mitat Alam Film Center

6:00 pm - 10:00 pm

Maya Deren and Experimental Work in Video

2007-07-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

"And what more could I possibly ask as an artist than that your most precious visions, however rare, assume sometimes the forms of my images.

Deren was a dancer, choreographer, poet, writer and photographer. In the cinema she was a director, writer, cinematographer, editor, performer, entrepreneur and pioneer in experimental filmmaking in the United States.

When she was born in Kiev in 1917 and was named Eleanora. In 1922 the Derenkowsky family fled to New York due to the threat of anti-semitism in the Ukraine. They contracted and Anglicized their name to Deren.

As a young woman Eleanora Deren studied journalism and political science and became active in student politics at Syracuse University. Deren transferred to New York University where she was awarded her undergraduate degree in 1936. At Smith College she completed a Masters Degree in English Literature and symbolist poetry in 1939. After college Deren began working as an assistant to the famous dancer and choreographer, Katherine Dunham. Deren found inspiration and nomadic adventure with the innovative Katherine Dunham Dance Company, touring and performing across the US. It was in Los Angeles in 1941 that Deren met Alexander Hammid, a Czechoslovakian filmmaker working in Hollywood. In collaboration with Hammid, Deren produced her first and most remarkable experimental film Meshes of the Afternoon (1943).

In 1943 she changed her name to Maya and shifted her focus from dance to film.

Rhythm is a defining element of all of Deren's films, it arises from the play of repetition and variation which is integral to her experiments in narrative. Meshes deploys an innovative style of cutting on action where the protagonist steps over such disparate terrains as the beach, soil, grass and concrete. The rhythmic drumbeat and the repeated movement highlight her deliberate progress across these discontinuous spaces. As the central, consistent element, Its soundtrack enables Deren's temporal and spatial experimentation."

from the article by Wendy Haslem:
Maya Deren: The High Priestess of Experimental Cinema
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/deren.html

for more information on the woman "who makes the world dance":
http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/deren9.html#text

"Some Metaphors For The Creative Process" by Maya Deren
http://www.wam.umd.edu/%7Emolouns/amst450/village/deren.html

Project Proposal

2007-07-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

before i talked about the way of my intermediatic job,i should say that it's really hard to me write a proposal,at least for a person like me.

since,as we talked about in the lecture,I always believe that my art understanding is composed of process of creating,sp i usually don't-almost never feel myself secure in saying that"ok.it's finished" and may be because of this reason i used to begin again and again to the same pieces.art becomes something alive for me,it's living ,growing and one day it would reach a conclusion,it died-just like an human being.Especially after coming of sufism influences into my life,i noticed more clearly the similarity of work of art and humans.That's why i explained all that,because these ideas creates the main story of my inermediatic work.

according to sufism and islamic mysticisim,cosmos is created again and again every simple day and there is a circle of creation,like all the circles of the life.and these occurance of "every new day is a new day"idea and every new step for reaching to the end,makes "the life" actually "the way".

and the interesting point is that,this way is going back to the basics,instead of images of future.more over,these journey to the basics is formed by minimal power of humans,as a nucleus which i mean this journey begins like back to the soul,which is really deep actually for explaining with my language restrictions.but i can say that the way of human,that is going to the himself again,just a spiritual way to the soul (kendine dönme).And it can just occur with rejecting and givinp up everything,even all the thing they have,even their personality.
at this point sufism begins to influence me and interacts with my intermedia project,as i explained until now,in three subject.

these are;
1.my work would be living,may be no one can witness that it reaches its end.
2.my work would be a journey which is going to the basics.
3.my work would be a symbol of giving up,leaving all the human kind emotional weaknesses,so the personality,especially the ambition.

and these three points creates my intermediatic idea "basic white,name-stamped t-shirts" which is totally not clear now,but symbolize leaving ourselves.

!Stop Motion Workshop!

2007-07-10T08:17:00.000-07:00

Intermedia Community proudly announces that a workshop on stop-motion animation will be given by Burak. It will take place someday after our regular class time, we can decide the exact date together with the participants.

Participation is strongly encouraged!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion

Example for Midterm Paper

2007-07-10T07:40:00.001-07:00

ART AS A SHAMAN RITUAL: Beuys and Walker

When he was asked by Michel Foucault, wether life itself could be approached as a work of art, Joseph Beuys answered with one word: absolutely! It was not only a challenge to a one sided understanding of materialism and bourgeois art, but also embracing a shamanistic persona.[1] Kara Walker, an African American artist well-known for her paper-cuts, though employing different media, has the same artistic responsibility and whollistic approach to her work. It can well be argued then that her paper-cuts hanged in the gallery is a shaman performance and very relevant to Beuys’ understanding of art. That is to say the two contemporary artists from different geographies have in common a traditional attitude.

Shamanism refers to a range of traditional beliefs and practices that claim the ability to diagnose and cure human suffering and, in some societies, the ability to cause suffering. The Shaman is perceived to be an intermediary between the material world and that of the spirits. On the one hand it is fiction, shaman is a performer with incredible talents who can make people believe in his deeds, which include even his body’s being cut into pieces and flying infront of the public. It, on the other hand, affectuates the healing –or desturbing- potential of art and creates facts, he does heal the pain and bring rain. He is an artist, whose art is embedded in his very life and his responsibility towards his community.

Beuys, in a similar manner, elaborated his artistic style with reference to the powerful potential of art and its fuctions in social, political and cultural issues. Human creativity is universal to him and its manifesting itself in the particular oeuvre is capable of bringing about revolutions. He articulates this argument and claims the the society as a whole is to be regarded as a work of art to which each person can contribute, striving for –on the top of everything- freedom. This is called Social Sculpture.

“Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build ‘A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART’… EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who – from his state of freedom – the position of freedom that he experiences at first-hand – learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL ART WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER.”[2]
Indeed art helped him carve out a space for freedom providing him with the social technologies of expression and discussion. “With his paintings of the early 1980s” writes Greg Masters, “of the raped landscape and funerary cellars (in effect, of the brutalized psyche), a dialog was finally opened.”[3] It was not only a shamanistic underlining of what was wrong in the society, ie. suppression of collective shame and blindness, but also an invitation to a public discussion.

As much as Beuys was claiming to make the science of freedom in his warious works, Kara Walker was also exploring the raw intersecion of race, gender and sexuality through her silhouetted figures cut out of paper. Hers was also a search of peace and freedom, and a harmonic social fabric when she creates that theatrical space in which her figures violate each other. Moreover, she avoids her work to be a meta and impose itself on the audience, on the contrary, very much like Beuys and even in the athmosphere of a gallery, she lets the viewers walk into the installation, their bodies cast shadows onto the walls, interacting with the silhouettes. “I project fiction into those facts” she says[4]; merging the fiction and the fact, making a rituelistic performance for the audience. Walker’s nightmarish fictions simultaneously seduce and implicate the audience, whenever they include themselves in, they face the nasty facts. The visibility and therefore reality of those facts make the audience responsible as well, who is now a part of that world.

The most “agreed upon” meaning of Shaman is “he knows” in Turkic-Mogol languages[5]. In fact, he both knows the reality, and the methods to ameliorate it. It is crucial for the responsibility of the artist: everybody is exposed to the world, but he has the tools to respond to it. Beuys and Walker do that employing different media, but creating the same effect of a shamanist rituelistic performance.

-------------------------------------------
[1] Joseph Beuys: Interviews, published by the Walker Art Center, p: 4
[2] Beuys statement dated 1973, first published in English in Caroline Tisdall: Art into Society, Society into Art (ICA, London, 1974), p.48. Capitals in original.
[3] Greg Masters, “Joseph Beuys: Past the Affable”, on web http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/beuys.html
[4] Kara Walker, in the documentary PBS Art:21
[5] Mihály Hoppál, “Sámánok Eurázsiában”, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2005, p:14

--------------------------------------------

Özge Uraz

Project Proposal

2007-07-09T16:25:00.000-07:00

Feyza Çeliktaş

For my project, I’d like to take the process of writing to a metaphorical level. This process of writing consists of the interaction between the writer and life. There’s a certain give and take relationship which is the basic idea for this project.

Since a writer takes something from life, manipulates it and gives it back I thought what I’ll be doing needs to be similar. The closest I can get to this is through physically taking something from life and manipulating it in a sense a writer would psychologically do. My plan is making collages with the quotes/paragraphs from writers/writers’ works (they’ll either be cut out from photocopies or typed by me). The background for all these collages will be some paper that I’ll have on floor (in stripes, maybe) that the audience will step on and stain consciously or unconsciously. Through this, I hope to achieve some collage-work that still belongs to the writer but is made by me and the audience.This physical process will be my performance and it’ll be done during the happening. The collages may be displayed or given out to the audience.

Project Proposal

2007-07-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

Sevecen Karadağ / 2002100190
CET

My Project includes:
Concept : Music music music, what feel when you listen to music, what music is for you…
How I will design the concept:
Slide show in Flash : I will design a slide show which includes the types of music like rock, pop, blues, classic etc. and at the same time a music will be playing (I haven’t decide the music yet). The slide show will be sliding during the presentation.
Poster: I will design a poster about music, how a poster? Poster size A1 594 x 841, the poster only includes a big note will be aligned in the center of the paper, the rest of the paper will be designed by typography like singers’ names , musical instruments’ names , music types’ names, lyrics etc. in different types of font, color and font size. I will printed the two same posters, I will place the posters, one on the left side, the other on the right side and I will form note lines by using cassettes’ bands between the two posters and I will hang photos, cds, cassettes, lyrics etc. namely something about music on the note lines. And I will ask my friends and classmates to add about music whatever they want.

Project Proposal

2007-07-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

Çağlayan Saba Uğurerkan

Project Proposal: Fate of a love

This will be a performance on the scene. I will sing three songs, and there will be photographs in the background. The songs will tell about the fate of a love and the photographs will fulfill the story.

Before every song, there will be a slight show in the background which will underline the spirit and feeling of the songs.

I have not decided whether I should get the photographs from the internet or from someone who has already taken them, which might be the most difficult part of my project to collect them.

The intros of the songs will be in the background during the slight shows. The last photograph will freeze while singing. And, I will sing acapella.

The first will be an art of Turkish Classical Music, the second song will be from Turkish Folk Music and the last is from Turkish Pop Music; each describing the periods and giving the intense feelings in the story.

meeting

2007-07-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

anyone who wants to talk to each other about projects, some time next week we will meet after 17.00 around hisarustu or bebek. please post here when u wanna do it so we can arrange it.

project proposal

2007-07-05T13:55:00.000-07:00

umut yüksel

THE FİNAL PROJECT FOR THE INTERMEDİA COURSE that im thinking to prepare is a documentary film about "köy enstitüleri"(village institutes) that i will interview my grandfather.
My grandfather entered in a village ınstıtute at 1940s and he was educated by the village program that was determined by the government education program at the early Turkish republican era.He was borned into a village family with many sisters and brothers,it was determined for him to be a herdsman like all the village boys but luckily he got the chance to get into that education program and have the chance to become the first teachers of the developing Turkish system.The program aimed to educate the young village boys for the bevelonce of their own villages,in return they can supply agriculture and education to the village population.By that time only the ten percent of the village population was literated,so by this education program the goverment has planned to educate the fartest villages that they can not have access.So as a result,this education institutes that have named village institutes has played an important role in the educational and economical development of the village people that constitute eighty percent of that times turkish republic.Because of the major significance of this village institutes to early turkish republic i decided to prepare my project searching this institutes and as a living witness of this program i decided to interview my grandfather.after these researches and the interview ,I will create a media project such as a documentary film but a short version of course, including the interview.
ın the making process of that film , ı should have some equipments such as camera, tripod,editing programme with a computer of course,photographs,some money (my grandfather lives in izmir) to have the conversation with my grandfather, that ı have some of them and some ı don't but ı believe ı can do that business.ıf ı can ,there will be a media project that I created for the intermedia course,which will also be a memory from my grandfather I like very much,otherwise ı will say I've tried but I couldn't ,also ı will probably get an F which is not important for me because I've got many of that:)

Project Proposal

2007-07-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

SCULPTURE FROM RUBBISH WHICH IS INSURED FOR 1000000000$ !!!

We are inspired a lot from the idea of creating art from our daily life materials or the things that we have thrown away, things in nature...

In today’s world we are all consuming almost everything around us. Supermarkets, shopping centers are the places that we spend many times of our lives, and the idea of such kind of consuming really disturbs us. Then we decided to create art from the packages of these materials.People consume these materials and then leave their packages to the nature carelessly.We thought to collect these packages from nature and use them in our project.Everything can be included in our project. Packages of chips, chocolate, biscuits,bottles,cans...We will collect them from the rubbish of markets,or from the streets...

We are planning to make a sculpture from all these things .We think of making a human body.We will make a model from wires and fill it with rubbish which we collected before.With wires, we will also use tree leaf and limb in the surface of our sculpture as a part of nature.

We are thinking of making sculpture of Venus. We think that from history to today, women always have been thought as an art object which could be exhibited. But the only thing about women is not her body. So we are planning to write as “My body is insured for 100000000$!” as a criticism to this idea. But we are not sure about this yet. Tugba - Caner

Project Proposal

2007-07-05T00:21:00.001-07:00

From the ancient history, humankind is addicted to learn about the future. Particularly his own future. Sometimes, in some civilisations, people are more concerned about "future" than "present". So that, they couldn't have utilized their "present" to bulid a satisfactory "past" for their "future"...

What was the reason behind it?
Leaving the metaphysical curiousities aside, those people were enough sane to realize; that there was no way to learn future...
Another reason may lie behind it; it is the human factor: deluding rhetorics and persuasion abilities of fortunetellers. This ability is unique as much as seeing future or being a cubist artist...

Once upon a time, some man made the canvas talk; and became a great painter; some made the wood sing; and became a great pianist; some man learnt about future from a coffee pot or tarot cards; and got burnt...

Can they be the first intermediatics?

I am going to try to investigate the moments that people face with their so-told future. Those moments through which a discrete isolation occurs between person and his own future. The dynamics beneath this isolation and the parameters such as “telling” and “abstract forms and shapes” will show me the path to reveal the answers.

Project Proposal

2007-07-04T14:56:00.000-07:00

FA 494 INTERMEDIA

TERM PROJECT PROPOSAL

Instructor: Jeffrey Baykal Rollins

Pınar Dumlu

Our aim is to try to show the resulting effects of changing or transforming the shapes positions, phases and deciding if this is deformation or renovation.

We know that light has different effect on objects. Light influences the appearance and perception of scenes in photography. Also we will try to widen the photographs by playing with the borders of objects by painting. In this part we will try to show that there is no limit of existence. Another modification we decided to perform is forming a puzzle by the parts of a whole or changing the arrangement of parts, for example cutting the arms and legs of a person and

interchanging these parts over the body of him/her. We will show that it is possible to walk by our hands and wave by legs just in phographical aspect and also recognize ourselves from another view.

Our idea is exhibiting our photographs on stairs of Mithat Alam. It would be visually impressive and interesting to hang the photographs on a rope if we can get the necessary permission.

Individually I want to have an experiment based on observing the ordinary objects or the usual things around me by an alternating perspective. Taking the the photographs of objects turned upside down or from unusual point of views, focusing on this view of them will arouse so different ideas and feelings over me, my group friends and the other people.

As an individual and also with my frends we desire to perform a satisfactory project and have many ideas in our brains.

Project Proposal

2007-07-04T13:44:00.000-07:00

In our project we intend to work with photographs and the modified versions of these photographs. We will take the photograps of buildings, nature , objects and the other ordinary things around us. We will evaluate them in a different way. We basicly want to play with the positions, phases and shapes of them. Time, light, reality and fluency will be the main concepts that will guide us.

Our aim is to try to show the resulting effects of changing or transforming the shapes positions, phases and deciding if this is deformation or renovation.
We know that light has different effect on objects. Light influences the appearance and perception of scenes in photography. Also we will try to widen the photographs by playing with the borders of objects by painting. In this part we will try to show that there is no limit of existence. Another modification we decided to perform is forming a puzzle by the parts of a whole or changing the arrangement of parts, for example cutting the arms and legs of a person interchanging these parts over the body of him/her. We will show that it is possible to walk by our hands and wave by legs just in photographical aspect and also recognize ourselves from another view.

I (Funda) will take photograps and I will try, by playing with the corners of these pictures, to widen them by painting the outside of the photograph with the same colour as the corner. By doing this I will try to show that there is no limit exists and that we can go as far away as we can. I wonder if the colours can remain the same as they continue to paint or they can be transformed, by changing to another colour. My intentions is on these way, I will try to work on this Project, and I hope to manage to create the visual images of my thougths, as I mentioned above there can be no limit of existence, especially for colours.

Funda Hüsayinoğlu

Project Proposal

2007-07-04T12:23:00.000-07:00

Fırat APAYDIN Nezir ÇAKIR

We will shot a documantery short movie about toilet writings in our country. This is a common attitude to write about anything on somewhere in toilets. Sometimes people confess something sometimes they blame somebody sometimes share their happiness or sadness or even they can declare their love by the help of toilets. shortly the confidential structure of toilets make people write about what they can not mention in usual life. They can be teacher worker doctor or somebody else. The point is all people have something to say to world. Some may do it by cinema some by music some by toilet writings. Even they write their thoughts on toilet doors, most of the time people choose the artistic language.

What we will do is looking around the toilets talking with assigned people in toliets and people in street. and we will search the reason of that toliet writings.We will do these project together ( Firat and Nezir) Firat will use the camera and will edit the short movie.In this project Nezir will prepare the music and will interview with people.And we will together try to find the toilet writngs and compare and contrast that writings. we will both try to find some images and videos about that toliet writings and compare them.

Project Proposal

2007-07-04T11:54:00.000-07:00

Ayşegül DOĞAN

Project: Short film
Name: Not defined yet.

The Description of the Project:
My short film will be mainly a representation of Lumiere Brothers’ first public film screening in Grand Cafe Paris. This particular event is important for me because it was the first time Lumiere Brothers showed a movie with their invention Cinematographe. This was actualy the birth of the cinema, we all know today. Another important point is I always found the reaction of the people funny towards this invention. Because when Lumiere brothers showed the 10 short films the audience, one of the short films which is about the train (coming closer)made the audience scared. “Their film sequence of a train pulling into the station reportedly had audiences screaming and ducking for cover as they believed that the train itself was about to plow into the theater.”*

The movie begins in a small theatre, Lumiere brothers present the “cinema” and the movie begins. All the audience (dressed acoordingly 1895) gets very surprised and curios about this invention. As the train comes closer, they got scared and as the train in the film gets closer, they start to run away from their seats. Then Lumiere Brothers tell that it is only a moving picture, they all laugh.

What I need for the project; the film of Lumiere Brothers borrowed from the Mithat Alam Film Center, arranging the Mithat Alam Film Center for shooting, lending the costumes of 1900s from a convenient shop, my classmates as actors on shooting day.

I will edit the movie black&white so it will reflect the old times. I will try to use some effects for the visuals to look old. I will use middle title between the scenes just like the old films.

It will be a film inside film so I will need to edit both films.
It will be a combination of documentary and fiction films, although they always compared.Because what Lumiere brothers did was to shoot the nature or events in natural courses without editing or interference. Hence, their style was considered as documentary.

It will be performance also since we actually animating a scene, representing and documenting the event. I will not record an event as it is, but I will prepare the set, costumes and events so it will be a fiction like a doctor sets an lab experiment. Then I will shoot the scenes and edit them. I will turn a documentary to a fiction film.
My purpose is to show what kind of an experience the invention of cinema was.
I will need extra tricks to put the audience of today to the audience of 1900s. I thought that maybe I could use some small posters expressing “Forget what cinema is” or “Consider that you have no idea of what a movie is” to the entrance of Mithat Alam Film Center. Although I will explain the situation with middle titles in the film but I think I might use the help of the posters too.

Bibliography:
1- http://holonet.khm.de/visual_alchemy/lumiere.html
2-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re

Lumiere Brothers; can we find 2 people and dress them like this for shooting?

The world’s first movie poster.

Project Proposal

2007-07-04T11:31:00.001-07:00

FA.494 PROJECT PROPOSAL

In our project we intend to work with photographs and the modified versions of these photographs. We will take the photographs of buildings, people, nature , objects, and the other ordinary things around us. We will evaluate them in a different way. We mainly want to play with the positions, phases and shapes of them. Timing, light, reality and fluency will be the main concepts that will guide us.

Our aim is try to show the resulting effects of changing or transforming the shapes positions and phases on reality. And deciding if this is a deformation or a renovation.

We know that the light has different effect on objects. Light influences the appearance and perception of scenes in photography. Also we will try to widen the photographs by playing with the borders of objects by painting. In this part we it will be shown that there is no limit of existence. Another modification we decided to perform is forming a puzzle by the parts of a whole or changing the arrangement of parts, for example cutting the arms and legs of a person interchanging these parts over the body of him/her. We will show that it is possible to walk by our hands and wave by legs just in photographical aspect and also to recognize ourselves from another view.

In the project I individually will takes photos of an object part by part. Mean that, for example Mithat Alam Building or a person. I will divide the building into several parts. And I will take the photos of each part separately at different times. For example one part will be taken in the morning, the other one in the night. With different colors and different angles. I will try to catch the time of light by this also the changes in color. Also one part will be with the original color and the other will be colorless or pale. Then I will put all these different parts into an integrity. They all will be placed on a block or on a different material. Finally, when we will bring our work together, the project will be shown on a rope by attaching or hanging these photos on it. I believe that this will include an art aspect also a creation aspect. The integrity at the end, I think that will show what I have in my mind now in a clear way.

Andy Goldsworthy and Workshop in Nature

2007-07-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

Today the intermediatics were out in the campus, working with site-specific materials.

Goldsworthy employed this method fantastically, for more information please click on the link below:

http://intermediaclass.blogspot.com/2006/10/class-on-oct3-andy-goldsworthy.html

Art-Ist Event: July in Akbank Sanat

2007-07-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

Exhibition

June 27 - July 28

Since its begining 1223 works of art were exhibited in this series. The aim of the exhibition is to support young artists.

Screening of Short Films

from the 2nd Short Film Festival

July 6, Friday, 6:00 pm

Bağım-sız – 10'48" Director: Esin Paça/ Her Güne Bir Bela (Rezonans) – 14'30" Director: Aytuğ Üngör/ Filmin İsmi Henüz Yok – 04'00" Director: Cenk Özakıncı/ Travesti Terörü – 18'12" Director: Aykut Atasay/ Posta – 14'00" Director: Görkem Özok/ Dedem Diye Söylemiyorum – 16'16" Director: Tayman Tekin

July 13, Friday, 6:00 pm

Zilzal – 14'00" Director: Mehmet Bahadır Er/ Çorap – 05'47" Director: Başak Doğa Temür/ Multiple Choice – 01'14" Director: Ebru Karaca /Raci'nin Peşinden – 17'32" Director: Levent Yılmazok /Yorgan – 09'30" Director: Caner Yalçın /Taksi Şöförü XL – 20'00"' Director: Kaan Şensoy

July 20, Friday, 6:00 pm

Teresa – 12'00" Director: Mengüç Tanrıseven /Çarpışma – 17'35" Director: Umut Aral/ Allah Kabul Etsin – 01'30" Director: Nesrin Cavadzade /Küçük Dünyalar – 09'08" Dir: Rıdvan Yavuz/ Ziyaretçi – 09'53" Dir: Mahir Birav /Simit Ustası – 29'00" Dir: Ahmet Soner

July 27, Friday, 6:00 pm

Diş İçin Göz Çıkarmak – 15'00" Dir: Murat Kebir /Çarpışma – 17'35" Dir: Umut Aral /Kesişme – 15'00" Dir: Devrim Erdoğan /01:42:06 – 01'42" Dir: Meral Efe /Üç – 10'30" Dir: Fatih Demir /Alihan'ın Eğitimi – 10'23" Dir: Taylan Bilal /Gökkuşağını Giyinen Kadınlar – 21'00" Dir: Deniz Sulan

from the 3rd Short Film Festival

July 7, Saturday, 3:00 pm

Poyraz - 13'25" Yön: Belma Baş /Hücre - 23' Yön: Kemal İleri /Diriliş - 5'00" Yön: Halit Aktı /Bisikletim – 12'37" Yön: Esra Var ,Seda Özdemir, Tolga Sert, Ercan Cof /Hayta-24'05" Yön: Kenan Özer

July 14, Saturday, 3:00 pm

Billy ve Willy - 09'44" Yön: Mustafa Dok /Bukalemun – 19' 00"Yön: Alper Çağlar /Çizik – 04'30" Yön: Levent Çetin /İp – 20'08" Yön: Cemil Ağacıkoğlu /Yürüyoruz – 29'18" Yön: Aykut Atasay

July 21, Saturday, 3:00 pm

Modern Sanat – 20'00" Yön: Ali Vatansever /Uzaya – 14'05" Yön: Şenol Doğar /Beyaz Yüzler – 20'28" Yön: Melih Altınok /Tek Duvarlı Şehir – 05'40" Yön: Sevgi Ortaç /Öyle Duruyorum – 21'26" Yön: Ateş Savaşeri, İrem Pasinligil, Onur Etiz

July 28, Saturday, 3:00 pm

Us'lu Durmak – 08'41" Yön: Tolga Karaçelik /Hüsnü – 20'00" Yön: Mert Atalar /Kuştepe Şans Park – 16'00" Yön: Alkım Özmen /Balığın Peşinde – 20'00" Yön: Deniz Başer /Hamam Tastamam – 15' 00"Yön: Mehmet Çam

Photography

July 5, Thursday, 6:30 pm BORA EŞİZ "MAVİDEKİ YEŞİL, KUZEY KIBRIS" (Green in Blue, North Cyprus)

July 12, Thursday, 6:30 pm SEVDİYE KURUCU "KIRIM’DA SON TANGO" (Last Tango in Crimean)

July 19, Thursday, 6:30 pm YÜKSEL ERSELTEL "ÇANAKKALE 2005"

July 26, Thursday, 6:30 pm HACER KARANLIK "İNKALARIN YOLUNDA"

Class on June 28: Conceptual Art

2007-07-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

art as an idea....

http://intermediaclass.blogspot.com/2006/10/conceptual-art-marcel-duchamp-and-sol.html

Class on June 27: Cai Guo-Qiang

2007-07-02T13:06:00.000-07:00

power of destruction & asthetics of decay
an everchanging work in which uncertainties are allowed to exist.

http://intermediaclass.blogspot.com/2006/10/class-on-sept-26-krzysztof-wodiczko.html

ART-IST EVENT: Contemporary Exhibitions @ Istanbul Modern

2007-06-27T00:44:00.000-07:00

Ahmet Polat
30 MAY 2007 - 26 AUGUST 2007

Within the framework of "Who Are You?" Ahmet Polat combines his search for identity and heritage with an autobiographical narrative, thus presenting to viewers samples from various series he produced in the near past. Ahmet Polat’s selection of 82 photographs blends diverse topics, ranging from immigrants in Transvaal to the homeless in Tilburg, from the 1999 Marmara earthquake to images of high-society.
Curator: Engin Özendes

in the news: http://www.radikal.com.tr/ek_haber.php?ek=cts&haberno=6747

Andreas Gursky
30 MAY 2007 - 26 AUGUST 2007

İstanbul Modern will be showing a retrospective exhibition of the globally renowned German photographer Andreas Gursky. Organized by the Haus der Kunst in Munich, it will reflect at length, Gursky’s 23-year-old career through 35 photographs.
It is the first comprehensive retrospective of a contemporary, international artist at İstanbul Modern.
The selection of works in the exhibition displays Gursky’s unique vision of the diverse geographies of the world. Of these photographs, thirty are recent works made after his highly acclaimed retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2001. In their breadth, audacity, colour and startling perspectives, these works give a comprehensive view of Gursky’s work extending from 1984 until today.
Curator: Thomas Weski

...and Dreams are Dreams
30 MAY 2007 - 26 AUGUST 2007

İstanbul Modern celebrates its 6th Video Program, presenting some of the most significant artists working in this vital contemporary medium. For centuries, canvas has been the classical support for painting, and painting, the classical means of framing the world. In the contemporary era, photography, film and video have become the most common devices to capture images and to project both experimental and mass messages.

Class on June 26: Krzysztof Wodiczko and Ann Hamilton

2007-06-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

http://intermediaclass.blogspot.com/2006/10/class-on-sept-26-krzysztof-wodiczko.html

Art-Ist Event: Transit Istanbul Improvization Days

2007-06-22T21:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.transit-istanbul.org/

Wednesday 27th - Video-dance screening - Tünel Art, Galata tower - 21:00

[Galata Kulesi çıkmazı, No.9]

free of charge

Friday 29th - Performances - Darphane-I Amire - 20:30

“Sound and light” duet Pascal Battus and Christophe Cardoën
“Globally yours” improvised dance, music and video
entrance fee 12 ytl - students / Cati members 8 ytl
free for workshop attendants

Saturday 30th - In Darphane-I Amire - starting at 13:00
open jam
“sound massage salon” with Pascal Battus and Olivier Germain Noureux
short forms - improvised music and dance
projections
performances:
19:30 Islack Köpek and guests
21:30 “Globally yours” improvised dance, music and video
free of charge

Sunday 1st - Gelisi Guzel Day in Darphane-i Amire - 13:00 to 19:00

Open jam for musicians and dancers
free of charge

Tuesday 3rd - performance - Darphane-i Amire - 20:30
“Mention Obligatoire” duet Julyen Hamilton & Barre phillips
entrance fee 12 ytl - students / Cati members 8 ytl
free for workshop attendants

Wednesday 4th - Video-dance screening Tünel Art, Galata tower 21:00
entrance fee 8 ytl - students / Cati members 5 ytl
free of charge

Friday 6th - Picnic panel - Darphane-i Amire - 19 :00

The occasion to talk with Barre Phillips and Julyen Hamilton about their work around a shared picnic. Bring food and drinks, specialities from all countries welcome.
Free of charge

Saturday 7th - End of workshop performance - Darphane-i Amire - 20:00
Closing party
Free of charge

FA 494.01 Summer Term!!!

2007-05-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

Intermedia Class proudly announces that Jeffrey Baykal Rollins is giving lectures on intermedia art at Boğaziçi University in the summer term.

schedule as follows:

FA494.01 : SP.TOP.:INTERMEDIA ( 3 Credits )Instructor : JEFFREY BAYKAL ROLLINS
Tuesday 13:00 - 13:50 14:00 - 14:50
Wednesday 13:00 - 13:50 14:00 - 14:50
Thursday 13:00 - 13:50 14:00 - 14:50

If you have not yet attended his classes, it is strongly adviced!!

Some Pictures From Babel

2007-04-27T09:04:00.000-07:00

ayca kubat presents:

Jeffrey-Şems-Güneş

Ayça "babel is on"

Özge "içine kapanık"

Post-Babel

2007-03-07T22:46:00.000-08:00

Dear Babyloneans,

For the first time we -as the intermedia community- made an event out of the South Campus, thanks to everyone who participated as artists, supporters, visiters and translators. The major criticism was the lack of rehearsals, which I cannot deny. However, many people, including our program director, said the whole night was great.

As soon as we get rid of our exhaustion, we will start planning the next happening, which will be THE INTERMEDIA BIENNIAL. Where would you prefer it to be? Guggenheim?

Babel!

2007-02-22T05:21:00.000-08:00

2nd meeting for Babel: 01.03.2007
Time & Place: TBA

PERFORMANCE TIME 07 @ GalataPerform

2007-02-21T09:18:00.000-08:00

For information, please visit the web page!!!

An Intermediatic Body Art'ist: Youri Messen-Jaschin

2007-02-09T23:57:00.000-08:00

"Body art is art made on, with, or consisting of, the human body. The most common forms of body art are tattoos and body piercings, but other types include scarification, branding, scalpelling, shaping (for example tight-lacing of corsets), full body tattoo and body painting.

More extreme body art can involve things such as mutilation or pushing the body to its physical limits. For example, one of Marina Abramovic's works involved dancing until she collapsed from exhaustion, while one of Dennis Oppenheim's better-known works saw him lying in the sunlight with a book on his chest, until his skin, excluding that covered by the book, was badly sunburned. It can even consist of the arrangement and dissection of preserved bodies in an artistic fashion, as in the case of the plastinated bodies used in the travelling Body Worlds exhibit. Important strategies that question the human body are: implants, body in symbiosis with the new technologies, virtual body etc. A special case of the body art strategies is the absence of body. The most important artists that performed the "absence" of body through their artwoks were: Keith Arnatt, Andy Warhol, Anthony Gormley and Davor Džalto."

Blogs he posts his work pretty often:
http://bodyartdefinition.blogspot.com/
http://yourimessenjaschinbodyart.blogspot.com/
http://bodyartpaintingvideosyouri.blogspot.com/

Destricted

2007-02-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

!f Istanbul seems to be great this year. This film ,Destricted,
described as

The films highlight controversial issues about the representation of sexuality in art; opening up the question of whether art can be disguised as pornography, pornography disguised as art, or something else altogether. The result is a collection of sexy, stimulating, challenging, provocative, strange and sometimes humourous scenarios that leave it up to the viewer/voyeur to decide.

And the other part that is worth-telling is that the people behind this film are the artists we write about on this blog.

Marina-or-Maria Abramovic, a performance artist from Balkans and Matthew Barney.
The director is Gaspar Noe, the director of Irreversible.

All other informations are here.

http://www.ifistanbul.com/Filmler_Detay.aspx?Kategori=7&Film=33#

!F Istanbul Film Fest 2007.

2007-02-08T07:36:00.000-08:00

Next: A Primer On Urban Painting

here is the link for the film that will be shown at !f Istanbul Film Fest,
It is about street art a.k.a urban painting...

http://www.ifistanbul.com/english/Filmler_Detay.aspx?Kategori=4&Film=17

Meeting for Babel

2007-02-05T07:10:00.000-08:00

It is time to start "babbling" about "Babel". There will be a meeting this Wednesday, February 7, from 17:30 to 19:00 at GalataPerfrom to begin our collaboration, and you are strongly encouraged to attend. GalataPerform is located at: Büyük Hendek Caddesi No:37/1 Galata Kuledibi, Beyoðlu Tel: 0090 212 2439991, 0090 535 880 3339 info@galataperform.com Because it can be hard to find the first time, we will meet directly in front of the Galata Tower at 17:25 and then walk to GalataPerform. See you then, Jeffrey

An Intermediatic Game: Kısa Met-Yaz

2007-02-04T14:06:00.000-08:00

How many people can tell a story? Or, rather how many stories can be told through a certain number of narratives?
Nothing much serious, we will play a game trying to tell a cite-specific short story.

Plan of the Game:
Some people -who look like a large group of friends- get on the metro at Taksim Station. They sit in separate places, surprisingly, and immediately take off a piece of paper and start writing. They write untill they reach The 4th Levent, which takes less than 15 minutes.
They write separate short stories that take place in the metro, or that are closely related to it.
Afterwards everyone will have a copy of each story and merge them all in a final one.
That is to say, in the very end we will have as many stories as the number participants. The other day we will read them all in the metro.
Just a game; nothing more, nothing less. Would you like to be participant authors? Contact me at ozgeuraz@hotmail.com

Vincent Price

2007-02-01T23:30:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I wanted to share this video with you.
Vincent Price is one of my favorites.

Vincent Tim Burton - Court métrage

William Kentridge - an Intermediatic Artist from the Venice Biennial

2007-01-29T01:34:00.000-08:00

"I have never tried to make illustrations of apartheid, but the drawings and films are certainly spawned by and feed off the brutalized society left in its wake. I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and certain endings; an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay." William Kentridge

William Kentridge was one of the artists whose pieces of art could be seen in İstanbul Modern "Venice-Istanbul" exhibition. His distictive animations reveal both a sense of humour and bitterness through a simple technique of successive charcoal drawings, always on the same sheet of paper, contrary to the traditional animation technique in which each movement is drawn on a separate sheet.
William Kentridge is undoubtedly the best known South African artist, currently in demand by major institutions all over the world. Working with what is in essence a very restricted technique - charcoal drawings with limited touches of pastel colour - Kentridge has deployed these drawings into an oeuvre of astounding depth. The drawings have been used as the basis for a series of animated films by the very simple technique of drawing, filming a few frames, erasing, then drawing some more and so on.

He works in theater and has so for many years, initially as set designer and actor, and more recently, director. Since 1992 he has collaborated with Handspring Puppet Company creating multi-media pieces using puppets, live actors and animation. Throughout his career he has moved between film, drawing and stage yet his primary focus remains drawing, seeing his theatre and film work as an expanded form of his drawing.
His work conceptually reflects Kentridge's Johannesburg experience, not only by colonial engravings, hospital paraphernalia, botanical drawings, maps and anatomical dissections, but also through his unique technique of charcoal drawing in which the previous drawings (which are on the same sheet) can be traced by his medium of video.

sources:
- ArtThrob: A feature on an artist in the public eye, William Kentridge
- Greg Kucera Gallery - William Kentrigde
- Wikipedia - William Kentridge

more:
- William Kentridge: Quite the Opposite of Cartoons, by Philippe Moins

An intermediatic poem.

2007-01-22T04:34:00.000-08:00

It just reminded me of the project of Meral. Not the one she did. The one she had thought of doing at the beginning of the semester. A poem with a tree. just click the phrases when they appear.

http://www.bornmagazine.org/projects/silhouette/project.html

btw, have a nice holiday <3

ART-IST EVENT: HAZAVUZU @ GALERIST

2007-01-18T12:53:00.000-08:00

BABEL @ GalataPerform, March 7, 2007

2007-01-18T05:22:00.000-08:00

Curated by Jeffrey Baykal Rollins, “Babel” is an evening of student performance works exploring issues of art and language, with an emphasis on the spoken-word. Over the course of the event individual works will evolve into a collaboration amongst all the participants, bridging differences in culture, language, media and a variety of art disciplines.

Performance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. It can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time. Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience. It is opposed to painting or sculpture, for example, where an object constitutes the work. Of course the lines are often blurred.

Although performance art could be said to include relatively mainstream activities such as theater, dance, music, and circus-related things like fire breathing, juggling, and gymnastics, these are normally instead known as the performing arts. Performance art is a term usually reserved to refer to a kind of usually avant-garde or conceptual art which grew out of the visual arts.

Spoken word is a form of literary art or artistic performance in which lyrics, poetry, or stories are spoken rather than sung. Spoken-word is often done with a musical background, but emphasis is kept on the speaker.

One of the most common sorts of spoken word performances is performance poetry, where a poet either reads previously-published poems, or reads poems specifically written to be performed aloud. Another kind that has gained popularity in recent years is political and social commentary, done in such a way that it is, while still prose, somewhat more artistic than a typical speech. Spoken word artists are often poets and musicians. Spoken word gained notoriety in the late 1980s and early 1990s through the emergence of "poetry slams," where spoken word artists would square off in cabaret-style duels.

Babel (Hebrew: בָּבֶל; Bavel) is the name used in the Hebrew Bible for the city of Babylon (Akkadian Babilu), notable in Genesis as the supposed location of the Tower of Babel.
In Gen. 11:9, the name of Babel is etymologized by association with the Hebrew verb balal, "to confuse or confound": Balal is regarded as a contraction of earlier *balbal. The name bab-ilu in Akkadian means "gate of god" (from bab "gate" + ilu "god"). The word "bab-el" can also be seen to mean "gate of god" (from bab "gate" + el "god").

According to Genesis 11:1-9, mankind, after the deluge, traveled from the mountain where the ark had rested, and settled in 'a plain in the land of Shinar' (or Senaar). Here, they attempted to build a city and a tower whose top might reach unto Heaven, the Tower of Babel.
The attempt to build the Tower of Babel had angered God who, in his anger, made each person involved speak a different language which ultimately halted the project and scattered and disconnected the people across the planet.

Guidelines for Work
For this event, student works are invited that explore issues of language and visual culture. This can include, but is not limited to foreign language, multi-language, text-based, poetry, spoken-word, translation, and the ways language unites or disconnects humanity. Intermedia works are encouraged but not required, and can include virtually any art form.

While developing your works, you are encouraged to consider the site where the event will take place: not only is GalataPerform next to the Galata Tower, it is also in the heart of what is probably the most multi-ethnic part of the city.

www.galataperform.com

Proposals must be given or e-mailed to Jeffrey by January 30, 2007 for full consideration at: baykalrollins@gmail.com

A GREAT FEST...

2007-01-11T13:30:00.000-08:00

http://www.dogaclamafestivali.info/dogaclama/festival.html

it sounds great to be there. but unfortunately I won't be here @ Istanbul.
but for those who will be here.

A Radical Performance Artist: Orlan

2007-01-03T23:46:00.000-08:00

Do our self- representations conform to an inner reality or are they actually carefully contrived falsehoods fabricated for marketing purposes--in the media or in society at large?

Orlan is the French intermediatic performance artist, the creator of "Carnal Art", and a first person who used plastic surgery as a medium of artistic expression.

Born in 1947 in Saint-Etienne, France as Linda Moreno. In 1980 she moved toParis. After experimenting with a variety of media, painting, writing poetry, dance, theatre and photography, in 1964 she started her first street action-performances called "Slow-motion Walks" during which she took the town’s rush-hour routes in an extremely slow pace. In 1971, she performed "I am a Man, I am a Woman"

Orlan's main medium of art is her own body. In the '70s she did performance pieces in Lyons and, later,outside the Guggenheim Museum in New York. These consisted of abstract measuring actions relating her body to a medieval convent and to a modern art museum. Her subsequent work then came to relate religious iconography to structures of the art world. She challenged both religious traditions and art- world assumptions, the former through blasphemous imagery, the latter with real time/real place actions identifying art with life. High contrast color photographs of Saint Orlan, both living doll and living sculpture, were integrated into photo- collages, videos and films tracing a fictive hagiography.

Convinced that with its exaggerated emotionalism Bernini's St. Teresa in Ecstasy was the first postmodernist sculpture, Orlan found relationships between the forced pathos of Counter- Reformation esthetics and the historical references of contemporary artistic practice. The prototype image of Saint Orlan was a marble sculpture she carved and then, in the tradition of academic sculpture since the Renaissance, sent to be enlarged or "pointed up" to full scale. Her incarnation as Saint Orlan focused on the hypocrisy of the way society has traditionally split the female image into madonna and whore. She played off this long- entrenched dichotomy by exposing only one breast (as the nursing Virgin Mary is depicted), to differentiate Saint Orlan from a topless pinup. (The single exposed breast also referred to the Amazons of ancient mythology, represented as having only one breast to be free to sling warriors' quivers over exposed chests.)

Like many artists of her generation both in France and in the U.S., Orlan was influenced by Duchamp. Her response was an extreme one: to consider her own body a "readymade." For more than a decade she has organized performances during which she undergoes plastic surgeries changing her face. Some of them are transmitted live to many places around the world. During the performance the artist talks to the audience, answers the questions, music is played and poetry read.

In 1990, Orlan shed her saintly robes and decided to be "reincarnated" by altering her face and body through a series of carefully planned and documented operations. The idea of turning surgical interventions into performance art occurred to her when she was operated on for an extra- uterine pregnancy under a local anesthetic which permitted her to play the role of detached observer as well as patient.

"I can observe my own body cut open, without suf

fering!... I see myself all the way down to my entrails; a new mirror stage. "I can see to the heart of my lover; his splendid design has nothing to do with sickly sentimentalities"- Darling, I love your spleen; I love your liver; I adore your pancreas, and the line of your femur excites me." (Orlan from Carnal Art Manifesto)

In the course The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, the artist started to resemble some of the most well known paintings and sculptures including Mona Lisa. With self- transformation in mind, and proceeding with a cold, Cartesian logic buttressed by her considerable knowledge of esthetics and art history, Orlan began to deconstruct mythological images of women. Recalling that the ancient Greek artist Zeuxis made a practice of choosing the best parts from different models and combining them to produce the ideal woman, Orlan selected features -fetishized body parts- from famous Renaissance and post- Renaissance representations of idealized feminine beauty.

Orlan acknowledges a specific debt to Herman

Nitsch and the Viennese "Aktionismus" group that developed in the '60s--artists who startled spectators with their ritualistic staged imitations of blood sacrifices. Of all the Viennese artists, she is perhaps closest to Rudolf Schwarzkogler, who had himself photographed (supposedly) slicing off pieces of his penis as if it were so much salami.

However, there is a crucial difference between the Viennese actions and Orlan's peformances: with them as with many examples of Body art, there was an element of theatrical fakery. The barnyard and the abattoir, not the operating room, provided blood for the Viennese performance artists. "Documentary" photographs were frequently staged: Schwarzkogler did not bleed to death any more than Schwarzenegger's on-screen blood is real. (Nor did Yves Klein jump out a window.)

She aims to exorcise society's program to deprive women of aggressive instincts of any kind. During the process of planning, enacting and documenting the surgical steps of her transformation, Orlan remains in control of her own destiny. Orlan the artist and the woman will never play the victim: she is both subject and object, actress and director, passive patient and active organizer.

The new image after the plastic surgery is to be seen. However, Orlan radically changes this and shows what is to be hidden. The blood, tissues... all the materiality of human body. This way she refutes the devinely, perfect image attributed to women.

For more information on Orlan:

Orlan: Is this art? by Barbara Rose
Orlan's web site

Warm pictures from the SupportJeffrey tent:

2006-12-28T12:27:00.000-08:00

özden, me and the dog:)

ayça with the photos

voss's version of cave allegory, by inalcan:)

it is a crowded day in tent;)

outside? it is not different

our work...
For the rest of it:
http://supportjeffrey.blogspot.com

Heart Made of Sound/ a stop motion video

2006-12-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

Dailymotion blogged video
Heart Made of Sound
Video sent by Cay

The Softlightes - Heart Made of Sound

A nice stop motion short movie by Kris Moye

i am realizing that there is a stop motion society growing between intermediatics. so i hope you will enjoy this video guys./ stop motion gücü adına!

Happening shots - part 3

2006-12-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

Meral and Deniz- after all of the projects were done succesfully.

cocktail foods and drinks.

close-up from my project. love exists.

Ozge

The poster of Meral's project

the film-set of Burak's stop-motion. Nightmare Before Kurban Bayrami :)

Alp's project

Happening shots - part 2

2006-12-27T10:07:00.000-08:00

my piece of art.

Deniz's.
Again Deniz's art.

a lovely moment from happening

hehe. it is me with my geek glasses:)

Deniz and Jeffrey's son- he went and asked for a permission from his father for taking his photo.

Here is Pelin - the great cocktail drink maker.

Deniz in the kitchen, before the "happ"ening we were talking "happ"ily

Jeffrey and his family- the other son is missing in this picture.

Happening shots - part 1

2006-12-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

the team mates of Ozge.

trying to prepare the cocktail table

our teacher- Jeffrey

Burak and his girlfriend

Meral with her project poster

Meral and Burak

Meral, Ozge and Jeffrey

again the moments before event

Ozge and her team mate.

Post-happening

2006-12-27T04:53:00.000-08:00

Entr'acte

2006-12-21T09:40:00.000-08:00


"An absolute dada movie. Somebody gets killed, his coffin gets out of control and after a chase it stops. The person gets out of it and let everybody who followed the coffin dissapear." A must see avant-garde film. Directed by René Clair in 1924, you can see the modernists Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud and others in the film.

a poster by Burak Kurt

2006-12-20T12:07:00.000-08:00

a poster by Alp Alkaş- second version

2006-12-20T08:27:00.000-08:00

a poster by Alp Alkaş

2006-12-18T10:04:00.000-08:00

CONTEMPORARY ISTANBUL FAIR @ LUTFI KIRDAR EXHIBITION CENTER, 21-24 ARALIK 2006

2006-12-14T07:37:00.000-08:00

I thought it'd be very nice to visit this fair which will be held just 2 days before our happening.
For the interested, its site is

http://www.contemporaryistanbul.com/HTML/ENG/

IT IS REALLY HAPPENING!!!

2006-12-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

Everyone is cordially invited to our Intermedia Happening- 2006, fall. In this special occasion Jeffrey Rollins' intermedia students will have the chance to exhibit their separate projects, including short films, stop motion animations, performances, installations and more...

December 26, Tuesday
Boğaziçi University, Albert Long Hall cocktail saloon
4-7 pm

Marina Abramovic - A Yugoslavian performance artist.

2006-12-01T13:27:00.000-08:00

Biography that is a blend of realism and the imaginary to retell the life of a Yugoslav performer, Marina Abramovic. With rituals, based on the use of her own body, she explores the bounds of her physical and psychological resistance. This is not, however, mere reproduction of Abramovic's presentations, but rather of building a new reality: the performances are translated into cinema images and built into the fictional context of the film. Marina Abramovic plays herself, and assumes different forms that repeatedly distort or obscure her real identity. Memories blend with fantasy, dreams, artistic rituals, and day-to-day life - as if she were trying to look both ways at the same time, like a head with two faces, one turned towards the past and the other towards the future. This is an endeavor to discover herself and also to lend form to the creative process, with a narrative that frees itself from chronology and follows along with only image and sound. (source ubuweb)

EXPANSION IN SPACE

RELATION IN TIME

Richard Chartier - an ultra-minimalist sound artist

2006-12-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

Digital minimal composer, sound installation artist and graphic designer Richard Chartier has made a career of exploring the relationships between the spatial nature of sound, silence, focus, and the act of listening. As an artist, Chartier has been responsible for critically acclaimed releases on 12k/LINE (USA), Trente Oiseaux (Germany), Spekk (Japan), Mutek_rec (Canada), and Fallt (Ireland), including collaborations with artists Taylor Deupree, William Basinski, COH and *0, and has appeared on numerous international compilations.
Jumping into the scene in 1998 with the lauded debut "direct.incidental.consequential," Chartier followed with a series of releases culminating in the release of "Series," the premiere release on his LINE label that was awarded digital music honorable mention by the prestigious Prix Ars Electronica in 2001. Since then, he has released a string of acclaimed solo releases and collaborative works. He’s performed his works internationally at MUTEK (Montreal, Canada), GRM/Maison de Radio France (Paris, France), Observatori (Valencia, Spain), DEAF (Dublin, Ireland), Transmediale (Berlin, Germany), Lovebytes (Sheffield, UK), The Leeds International Film Festival (Leeds, UK), The Rotterdam International Film Festival (Netherlands), Garage (Stralsund, Germany), La Batie (Geneva, switzerland), and other noted digital art/music festivals and at exhibits such as Frequenzen [Hz] at the Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt) and "A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968" and "Visual Music: Syneasthesia in Art and Music Since 1900" at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles).

His music is near-silent. He comments on his own art on his website --> http://www.3particles.com

A significant element of my work over the past several years has been the use of digitally rendered sounds that necessitate a focused engagement on the part of the auditor. Soft and hushed--almost imperceptible--fragments, high frequencies, bursts, static and quiet, low, shifting tones create a complex textural field. Idealized as an asymtotic process of composition which approaches an unattainable paradigm of formalism, the evidence left of the work's creation speaks to an incremental and meticulous process of reduction. Sonic moments placed under a microscope for consideration and eventual emaciation; a cutting away or a deepening within and into an isolated microsecond. Compositional focus often occurs in the space between the sounds....

IN PERFORMANCE
My live performance differs perhaps most significantly from my recorded work by virtue of an increased audibility and activity. The sounds used are selected from a collection of predesigned sounds, culled from past compositions and unreleased work but chosen with attention to the space and situation in which they will be presented as part of a new performative composition.......

(I cut them short, there are the remaining parts in his website)

In one of his interview he told his inspirations:

i have noticed that the things that influence my sound compositions the most have been visual. i think of sound in visual terms which stems from my education as a painter/designer. (and vice versa.. i often describe visual works with sound terms)
harry bertoia has interested me for a long time... his monoprints, his sound sculptures, his recordings, his design. i have collected mid century furniture since 1990 so thats where his work first entered my life.
marcel duchamp... because of the complete interrelationship between his works and his life, and the different mediums he explored.
other visual artists: gyorgy kepes, william baziotes, agnes martin, donald judd... off the top of my head.

For one of his installations with Taylor Deupree click ----> http://www.gfineartdc.com/chartier/chartier.htm

-a comment on his art by Bret McCabe ---> http://www.citypaper.com/special/story.asp?id=5997

and I Promise it will be my last link,

/(^_^)\

downloadable clickie---->

http://rapidshare.com/files/5639597/richard_chartier_-_direct__incidental__consequental_-_01.digisc.mp3

istanbul-venedik

2006-12-01T03:00:00.000-08:00

Regina José Galindo(Who can erase the traces?)

http://www.istanbulmodern.org/tr/f_index.html

it feels like you are getting out of the town .
the exhibition is open until 28th of January.
the entrance to the museum is free on thursdays.
the weather is quite cloudy these days.

Some babblings about Sound Art.

2006-11-30T11:34:00.000-08:00

I have been planning to write a post about sound art and it is a perfect time to write it. Thanks to Ozge, she put the nice events of Galata Perform.
So let's see.

I have been digging the late electronic music pieces since last year and lately i have found myself trying to learn how it evolved from the very first beginning to today. I felt very surprised when i noticed that every electronic musician that I love to listen are also sound artists when i clicked their personal sites. They say their music has the inspirations of the avant-garde backgrounds of music and they have been doing installations.

So what is sound art?

Over the past century, an artform has emerged between the realms of visual art and music. Created by both composers and sculptors, 'sound art' challenges fundamental divisions between these two sister arts and may be found in museums, festivals, or public sites. Works of sound art play on the fringes of our often-unconscious aural experience of a world dominated by the visual. This work addresses our ears in surprising ways: it is not strictly music, or noise, or speech, or any sound found in nature, but often includes, combines, and transforms elements of all of these. Sound art sculpts sound in space and time, reacts to environments and reshapes them, and frames ambient "found" sound, altering our concepts of space, time, music, and noise.Sound art’s redefinition of artistic space and time -- focusing our attention and changing our perception of particular moments through sound -- is often accomplished through the incorporation of new technologies. Technological advances at the turn of the 20th century provided both the fundamental tools of sound art (such as the radio and phonograph) and the modern concept of noise, which arose in tandem with the machine age. Indeed, the roots of sound art can be traced to that time, when new sounds and mechanical devices radically expanded possibilities in the visual arts and music.(Mass MoCA)

I have downloaded some composers that may be tagged as early electronic musicians, experimentalists, avantgardeners, minimalists, and concrete music is another tag for their genre.

Karlheinz Stockhausen (b.1928)

http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/stockhauseninterview.html

I won't write musical background of Karlheinz Stockhausen since it can be found anywhere, I want to share music of him.

http://rapidshare.com/files/5501164/01.etude__1952_.mp3

Iannis Xenakis,
who said
"with the aid of electronic computers, the composer becomes a sort of pilot: pressing buttons, introducing coordinates, and supervising the controls of a cosmic vessel sailing in the space of sound, across sonic constellations and galaxies that could formerly be glimpsed only in a distant dream"
http://rapidshare.com/files/5507192/iannis_xenakis_-_chamber_music__1955-1990__disc1_-_01_tetras.mp3

There are more than the above two for sure but I have seen their names many times when i searched so decided to introduce them. For the interested people,

http://www.ubu.com/sound/ has a great source of sound artists(not only sound but all intermedia disciplines.)

And lastly, last year I had a chance to watch a film called MODULATIONS (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139468/), which tries to introduce the root of electronic music. Full of interviews, impressive visual support and music for sure, if you ever have a chance to see it, you will be more satisfied.

So have a good weekend.

ART-IST EVENT: Yeno Ceno Music Program @ GalataPerform

2006-11-30T06:34:00.000-08:00

La Jetee

2006-11-29T10:18:00.000-08:00


photo-romans of Chris Marker La Jetee 1962

A graffiti artist - Blek Le Rat

2006-11-24T12:55:00.000-08:00

Since it is the first contribution from someone apart from Ozge, i hope this bloggie to become more informative and up-to-date, so let's try to be much more intermediatic :)

From the time i set up my mind to do my project in a graffiti art form, I have been searching for well-known graffiti artists, I have come up with good results and wanted to share one of them with you.

Blek Le Rat is a graffiti artist who started to paint the streets in 1981. His first graffitis were rats, when he was asked why he chose rats, he replies

"I began to spray some small rats in the streets of Paris because rats are the only wild living animals in cities and only rats will survive when the human race will have disappeared and died out"

I'm gonna put some of his words on stencilry and his art, also an interview with Blek le rat. For more information just click this link http://bleklerat.free.fr

1983 the fisrt large figure in the life size I have make in the street. This is an old Irish man yelling against English soldiers in Belfast in the seventie's.The man is very brave because the soldiers are very nervous trying to shoot with their guns some guys from the IRA.The photo was incredible strong.I always been fascinated by the people at the risk of one's life do not hesitate to say what they think. I still use this image in this time and it is the image I have done the most in a lot of different countries.The man took many differebt aspect to the people sometimes he is an old man , sometimes people think he is Buster Keaton or Chaplin or a tramp or an anarchist.I like when my images take different aspect by the place where they are pasted

1991 Joseph Beuys in Paris and Koln in Germany

*sorry for the huuuge sizes of the images, i have just formatted my pc and I haven't got any image editting program.

For more works you can visit his site that is mentioned above.

Interview with Blek Le Rat :

In executing your paintings inside the frame of daily life, you somehow force you art onto by passers. Do you think its necessary to get outside the frame of conventional art to make people think ? Or did you choosed this media in order to reach peoples who usually access the places were art is exhibited ?
Yes, urban art is really a new way for an artist to express himself, as for example when I leave an image in the street I know that the next morning thousands of people will have seen this image. I don’t know if people think more but they are confronted to a form of artistic expression they are not used to. Its changing their way to approach « artistic » images they usually see in galleries or museums. In the case of urban art, it’s the image itself which goes straight to them, and I think that it’s also erasing a bit of the concept of the myth of sacred art! And this is a good thing.
How do you choose the right context for each of your pieces ?
I noticed during those years of work in the streets that the same image, for example the sheep, can take complete different dimensions, depending on the place I will put it. If I place it under the street sign of the Rue Saint Exupery, there will instantly be a Little Prince connotation, if I place it in front of a restaurant the connotation of the sheep can be linked with food for exemple. I mean the great strength of urban art is that it is not static, its changing all the time depending on the place where its made and of the image which is left on the wall. I’m keen on playing with my images and the place were I leave the image.
Also, people who see my image on the wall have the possibility to create their own story of the image they see. For exemple, the old guy shouting in the streets I was doing during the 80’, for some people, was Buster Keaton, for some others he was a homeless, and for others he was an old anarchist shouting against society. I like to leave the possibility to the spectators to use their own imagination while watching my images.
Do you consider to « embellish » the places where you execute your pieces ?
To embellish, I don’t know, anyway we can as much say that the city in general is awfully ugly or wonderfully beautiful. It all depends of your point of view to say so. I don’t have the feeling to embellish the city, I just have the feeling to make the city live, to belong to the city and to leave my trace there.
Can we see a political dimension in your art ?
Social dimension, yes, political I don’t think so as I don’t believe in politics anymore
Do you perceive graffiti as part of a counter culture ?
Yes, certainly at this time but I don’t know if this counterculture will stay one for long as the society love to absorb all counter-culture soon or late. We will be a counter-culture as long as we wont be in the museums, the day we will, we will belong to the culture with a big C.
Finally, which artists inspire you, in graphic arts but also in music or in art in general ?
Today I enjoy rap a lot, I used to like rock a lot. I listen to a lot of rap that my son Alex give me, while I work. I always loved English cinema, I also like a lot English painting of the XXth century, the American and English pop art, and the Greek and Roman antiquity

And finally I wanna share a quotation about graffiti that was appeared on the famous alternative culture magazine, Dazed and Confused magazine --->http://www.dazeddigital.com/

“When you do something for society,even illegal things, people will support you as long as they understand why you’re doing it. When you are negative or attack things , this support disappears.”

see you <3>

PUBLIC LECTURE: Jérôme Game

2006-11-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

Department of Western Languages & Literatures cordially invites you to a lecture by Dr. Jérôme Game of American University of Paris. This public lecture examines the recent developments, in the last twenty years, of poetic experimentation in French culture : How do contemporary writers negotiate the legacy of one hundred years of avant-gardist literary practice ? How to they introduce new procedures and media, such as sound and video recording, in their work ? What is the esthetic status of multi-media performances given today ? What is the role played by the voice and the body in poetic readings ? All these questions, and others, will be addressed from a theoretical and critical point of view so as to present a wide panorama of the profuse and very rich poetic production taking place in France today. Excerpts of various recordings and videos will be heard and shown. Jérôme Game will also give a reading of his work.
Friday, November 24, 16:00
Rektörlük Konferans Salonu

Class on Nov. 14: Artifacts & Buckminster Fuller

2006-11-23T09:01:00.000-08:00

An artifact is an object that can produce a social change.

Buckminster Fuller was probably one of the first futurists and global thinkers. He is the one who coined the term "Spaceship Earth", "artist-scientist", "desing science"and "synergetics" and his work has inspired and paved the way for many who came after him.

Throughout his life, Fuller was concerned with the question "Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?"

Buckminster Fuller strove to inspire humanity to take a comprehensive view of the finite world we live in and the infinite possibilities for an ever-increasing standard of living within it. Deploring waste, he advocated a principle that he termed "ephemeralization" — which in essence Fuller coined to mean "doing more with less." Wealth can be increased by recycling resources into newer, higher value products whose more technically sophisticated design requires less material. In practice, it has often meant miniaturization, for example, as when table-model calculating machines were succeeded over time by smaller ones, until the calculator of today fits in one's hand. Fuller also introduced synergetics which explores holistic engineering structures in nature.

Fuller was one of the first to propagate a systematic worldview and explored principles of energy and material efficiency in the fields of architecture, engineering and design.
He dedicated himself to advancing the success and fulfillment of humanity and lived by a set of self disciplines; he was deeply concerned about sustainability and about human survival under the existing socio-economic system, yet was profoundly optimistic about humanity's prospects. Defining wealth in terms of knowledge, as the "technological ability to protect, nurture, support, and accommodate all growth needs of life", his analysis of the condition of "Spaceship Earth" led him to conclude that at a certain point in the 1970s humanity had crossed an unprecedented watershed.

What might otherwise sound like an article of faith in some spiritual or philosophical system had for Fuller become an objective fact — that the accumulation of relevant knowledge, combined with the quantities of key recyclable resources that had already been extracted from the earth, had reached a critical level, such that competition for necessities was no longer necessary. Cooperation had became the optimum survival strategy. "Selfishness", he declared, "is unnecessary and...unrationalizable...War is obsolete..."

By considering historical comparisons like the fact that even relatively poor people today are able to travel at speeds and with a degree of comfort which were unobtainable at any price in earlier times, and that illnesses that were fatal even to kings in the past can now be cured with affordable drugs, he concluded that everyone alive today can potentially live like a "billionaire." Hence he described the human race as "four billion billionaires."

Besides important comprehensiveness of thought and his philosophical concepts, Fuller's most lasting insights may be geometric. He claimed that the natural analytical geometry of the universe was based on arrays of tethedra. He developed this in several ways, from the close-packing of spheres and the number of compressive or tensile members required to stabilize an object in space. Some deep confirming results were that the strongest possible homogeneous truss is cyclically tetrahedral.

for more information:

Buckminster Fuller Institution
Buckminster Fuller on PBS

Art-Ist Place: GalataPerform

2006-11-12T00:08:00.000-08:00

I want to introduce this intermediatic place, in a second floor apartment, in the historical district of Galata. It has been the production space and main stage of Ve Diğer Şeyler Theatre Company, founded by the playwright and theatre director Yeşim Özsoy Gülan, and has been open to artists and audiences of different disiplines.

The program has contemporary theatre, performance art, dance, video, internet art and new music, as its main ax. It provides an alternative venue for artists where audiences meet marginal and experimental art productions, with a mission is to create a platform for the production of free, authentic, contemporary thoughts and actions, debating prejudices to activate a peaceful project of the future.

The space of GalataPerform, composed of an informal cafe and a performing studio, is not a white cube gallery, neither a hi-tec concert hall. In this respect, it is a space of intensified living or possibilities to spring out among the art work, the venue and the participant. In this space, the performances and the presented images are open to the incidental impact of the venue and of the visitor; in this chaotic order, the art works can't impose themselves, as they can't turn into object-products. The work of art is an energy which serves to create signs, forms, acts or objects, sometimes, in daily ambiences. Consequently, the borders between art and daily life, and the borders between different disciplines disappear. In GalataPerform, the process that the artists and participants live and create all together, becomes a collective work; an organism that keeps on evolving. The elements that form the organism focused on process and not on object, are individual and common thoughts, relations and acts that arise through the presentation or absence of the artistic processes, objects and acts. In this space, nothing remains of the fetish conventional art forms. Artistic processes beyond time and category are perceived.

(taken from their web-site)

There are two events taking place until the end of November.

16 November, Thursday 7.00 pm- Theatre: In the context of "New Text New Theatre" Project there is a talk with Sibel Arslan Yeşilay who is a faculty member of Haliç University Conservatory Theatre Department.
For more information on the Project: www.newtextnewtheatre.org

25 November, Saturday 9.30 pm- Electronic Music: Islak Köpek, free emprovization of five musicians of five different approach.
fee: 10YTL; student: 7.5 YTL

Class on Nov. 7: Intermedia Painting

2006-11-08T12:26:00.000-08:00

Stan Brakhage (1933 - 2003) is regarded as one of the most important American filmmakers of the 20th century.

Brakhage was born as Robert Sanders in an orphanage in Kansas City, Missouri. Three weeks after his birth, he was adopted by Ludwig and Clara Brakhage, and he was given the name James Stanley Brakhage.

As a child, he appeared on radio as a boy soprano before going to high school and then dropping out of Dartmouth College after several months to make films. He was influenced by the writings of Sergei Eisenstein and the films of Jean Cocteau as well as the Italian neorealism movement.

In 1953, Brakhage moved to San Francisco where he associated with poets such as Robert Duncan and Kenneth Rexroth. In late 1954, he moved to New York City where he associated with a number of contemporary artists, such as abstract expressionist painters and beat generation poets, among them Maya Deren, Marie Menken, Joseph Cornell and John Cage.

In a time, 1950s, when film id rooted in Hollywood cinema and large productions Stanley Brakhage made his films by himself and one camera. Brakhage's films are usually silent and lack a traditional story, being more analogous to visual poetry than to prose story-telling. He often referred to them as "visual music." His films range in length from just a few seconds to several hours, but most last between two or three minutes and one hour. For him the film itself was also a material. Most of his work was done in 8 mm or 16 mm film, and he frequently hand-painted the film or scratched the image directly into the film emulsion, baked the film in the owen and sometimes used collage techniques. For Monthlight(1963), for example, he stuck moth wings, twigs, and leaves onto tape and made prints from it. He called his style as "closed eye vision" in which painting and cinema work in a totally different way.

Brakhage's work covers a variety of subjects and techniques. Window Water Baby Moving (1959) is a record of the birth of his first child, while 23rd Psalm Branch (1966-67) is a meditation on war that intercuts footage of Colorado, where he lived, with shots of World War II. Dog Star Man (1961-64), perhaps his most famous work, features a man climbing a mountain, shots of stellar objects and more footage of his wife giving birth. It is usually read as addressing the unity of creation. Works from his later periods include the four-part "Faust Series" (1987-89), the four-part "Visions in Meditation" (1989-90), "Passage Through: A Ritual" (1991), and "The Vancouver Island Quartet" (1991-2002). He also completed several more collaborations with musicians, including two more works with music by James Tenney, "Christ Mass Sex Dance" (1991), and "Ellipses #5" (1998). For Marilyn, which was made in 1992 was about his wife and her embodying his concept of God.

Brakhage wrote a number of books, including Metaphors on Vision (1963) and the posthumously published "Telling Time: Essays of a Visionary Filmmaker" (2003). He often gave lectures at universities, museums, galleries, film festivals and so on.

It is believed that the coal-tar dyes he used to paint his films contributed to the cancer.

His work has had some small impact on contemporary art, music videos, mainstream cinema. The credits of the film Seven, with their scratched emulsion, rapid cutaways and bursts of light are very much in Brakhage's style.

Stanley Brakhage: a short information b y Fred Camper

Barry McGee
A lauded and much-respected cult figure in a bi-coastal subculture that comprises skaters, graffiti artists, and West Coast surfers, Barry McGee was born in 1966 in California, where he continues to live and work. In 1991 he receiv ed a BFA in painting and printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute. His drawings, paintings, and mixed-media installations take their inspiration from contemporary urban culture, incorporating elements such as empty liquor bottles and spray-paint cans, tagged signs, wrenches, and scrap wood or metal. McGee is also a graffiti artist, working on the streets of America’s cities since the 1980s, where he is known by the tag name “Twist.” He views graffiti as a vital method of communication, one that keeps him in touch with a larger, more diverse audience than can be reached through the traditional spaces of a gallery or museum. His trademark icon, a caricatured male figure with sagging eyes and a bemused expression, recalls the homeless people and transients who call the streets their home. “Compelling art to me is a name carved into a tree,” says McGee. His work has been shown at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the UCLA/Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and on streets and trains all over the United States. He and his daughter, Asha, live in San Francisco.

Matthew Ritchie was born in London, England in 1964, and lives and works in New York. He received a BFA from Camberwell School of Art, London, and attended Boston University. His artistic mission has been no less ambitious than an attempt to represent the entire universe and the structures of knowledge and belief that we use to understand and visualize it. Ritchie’s encyclopedic project (continually expanding and evolving like the universe itself) stems from his imagination, and is catalogued in a conceptual chart replete with allusions drawn from Judaeo-Christian religion, occult pract

ices, Gnostic traditions, and scientific elements and principles. Ritchie’s paintings, installations, and narrative threads delineate the universe’s formation as well as the attempts and limits of human consciousness to comprehend its vastness. Ritchie’s work deals explicitly with the idea of information being ‘on the surface’, and information is also the subject of his work. Although often described as a painter, Ritchie creates works on paper, prints, light-box drawings, floor-to-wall installations, freestanding sculpture, web sites, and short stories which tie his sprawling works together into a narrative structure. Drawing is central to his work, he doesn't think that there are boundries between drawing, sculpture and computer games, though. He perceives it as information. He scans his drawings into the computer so that images can be blown up, taken apart, made smaller or three-dimensional, re-shaped, transformed into digital games, or given to someone else to execute. One ongoing work that Ritchie calls an endless drawing contains everything he has drawn before. Ritchie’s work has been shown in one-person exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; MASS MoCA; SFMoMA; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, among others. His work was also exhibited at the Whitney Biennial (1997), Sydney Biennale (2002), and São Paulo Bienale (2004).

An interview by Owen Drolet

Class on Oct 31: Traditional art vs. Contemporary Art

2006-11-06T10:31:00.000-08:00

Does originality goes back to the origin? Three artists we have studied last week (a miniature painter, a naturalist painter and an artist well known for her paper-cuts), all have in common expertise in a traditional form of art and technical ability required. However, the content of their work differs from the traditional themes.

Shanzia Sikander

She was born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan. Educated as an undergraduate at the National College of Arts in Lahore, she received her MFA in 1995 from the Rhode Island School of Design. Sikander specializes in Indian and Persian miniature painting, a traditional style that is disciplined. While becoming an expert in this technique-driven, often impersonal art form, she imbued it with a personal context and history, blending the Eastern focus on precision and methodology with a Western emphasis on creative, subjective expression. Sometimes working several years for one single piece, arranging everything to be near and precise, self expression comes later, she says. As opposed to her miniatures, her installation pieces are huge and consumes much less time. Reared as a Muslim, Sikander is also interested in exploring both sides of the Hindu and Muslim “border,” often combining imagery from both—such as the Muslim veil and the Hindu multi-armed goddess—in a single painting. Sikander has received many awards and honors for her work, including the honorary artist award from the Pakistan Ministry of Culture and National Council of the Arts. Sikander resides in New York and Texas.

Walton Ford

He was born in 1960 in Larchmont, New York. Ford graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with the intention of becoming a filmmaker, but later adapted his talents as a storyteller to his unique style of large-scale watercolor. Blending depictions of natural history with political commentary, Ford’s meticulous paintings satirize the history of colonialism and the continuing impact of slavery and other forms of political oppression on today’s social and environmental landscape. Each painting is as much a tutorial in flora and fauna as it is as a scathing indictment of the wrongs committed by nineteenth-century industrialists or, locating the work in the present, contemporary American consumer society. An enthusiast of the watercolors of John James Audubon, the most famous naturalist painter from the 19th century, Ford celebrates themyth surrounding the renowned naturalist-painter while simultaneously repositioning him as an infamous anti-hero who, in reality, killed more animals than he ever painted. He is playing that role in a conscious way: he reinevents the ruined tradition.

Each of Ford’s animal portraits doubles as a complex, symbolic system, which the artist layers with clues, jokes, and erudite lessons in colonial literature and folktales. Walton Ford is the recipient of several national awards and honors including a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Ford’s work has been featured at Bowdoin College Museum of Art, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, and the Forum for Contemporary Art in St. Louis. After living in New York City for more than a decade, Walton Ford relocated his studio to Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Ford and his family reside in upstate New York.

For his works of art, please click here!

Kara Walker

She was born in Stockton, California in 1969. She received a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991 and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. The artist is best known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender, and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures. Walker unleashes the traditionally proper Victorian medium of the silhouette directly onto the walls of the gallery, creating a theatrical space in which her unruly cut-paper characters fornicate and inflict violence on one another. Her technique is extremely cinematic but rooted in drawing. In recent works like "Darkytown Rebellion" (2000), the artist uses overhead projectors to throw colored light onto the ceiling, walls, and floor of the exhibition space. When the viewer walks into the installation, his or her body casts a shadow onto the walls where it mingles with Walker’s black-paper figures and landscapes: she projects fiction into those facts. With one foot in the historical realism of slavery and the other in the fantastical space of the romance novel, Walker’s nightmarish fictions simultaneously seduce and implicate the audience. Thus fact and fiction, black and white go together in her work. Walker’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. A 1997 recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Achievement Award, Walker was the United States representative to the 2002 São Paolo Bienal in Brazil. Walker currently lives in New York where she is on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University.

for the article on Kara Walker, Cut it Out, by Hilarie M. Sheets please click here!

2006-10-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

once an intermediatic, always an intermediatic!

First intermedia event. Video by Ali İhsan Uğurlu.

STOMP!

2006-10-21T05:57:00.000-07:00

I want to announce a group of very successful intermediatics:Stomp, a unique combination of percussion, movement and visual comedy. Below is the information gathered from their web page, www.stomponline.com There are also downloadable video and audio clips. Enjoy!

What does the word STOMP make you think of?

Music, Dance, Theatre, Choreography or Performance Art? All of the above! Or is it none of the above. Well, both are sort of right...In a way. Confused? read on...

STOMP is a movement, of bodies, objects, sounds - even abstract ideas. But what makes it so appealing is that the cast uses everyday objects, but in non-traditional ways.

There's no speech, no dialogue, not even a plot.

So why go see STOMP? Well, have you ever composed a symphony using only matchbooks as instruments? Or created a dance routine based around sweeping? You may have done this a little, but get a group of rhythmically gifted, extremely coordinated bodies with definitive personalities, and you have the makings for STOMP.

STOMP started stomping on the streets of Brighton, England. Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas the creators of STOMP were a group of street performers commonly know as "buskers" trying to grab people's attention.

And attention is what they received

Busking is an old custom in the UK, dating back to booth theatres erected at village fairs in the Middle Ages. Luke and Steve updated this historical custom and created a modern symbiotic marriage between movement and music.

You're mistaken if you look for a hidden message in STOMP. There are no political connotations, no pretentious techniques, and no dialogue to misconstrue. Instead, you're bombarded by noises that you usually try to block out. STOMP takes the everyday sounds of pipes and brooms, lighters and garbage pail lids, and creates the extraordinary.

So how do you describe STOMP? If you ask one of the creators, Luke Cresswell, he would simply say, "at the end of the day, STOMP is what it is."

Class on Oct. 17: experimental works in video

2006-10-21T03:16:00.000-07:00

Jan Svankmayer

Czechoslovak animator extraordinaire, Jan has been making intensely bizarre films since the mid-'60s. Most of his work is a mix between 3-D stop-motion animation, puppets and live-action, but it can involve any mix of the above. His stories are eerie, delightful, dreamlike and surreal. His actors include real people, machines, socks, clay figures, antique dolls, pencil sharpeners, and skeletons or stuffed corpses of animals, among other things. His sets are usually decaying Czech buildings or landscapes, decorated with waste of the industrial age: rotting furniture, rusty nails, sawdust, oily screws, and the like.

for A Jan Svankmayer filmography/videography page, please click here!

Svankmayer definetely influenced many others like Tim Burton. Brothers Quay took his ideas much further and even dedicated "The Cabinet of Jan Svankmayer" to him.

Brothers Quay

Identical twins born in Norristown, Pennsylvania, Stephen and Timothy Quay studied at the Philadelphia College of Art until they transferred to London's Royal College of Art, where they started producing animated shorts in the early 70s.

The Quay's films are influenced by those of Jan Svankmajer: a harsh, grimy world where decay is the primary decor, but they add a sharp neo-gothic edge to and maintain a thoroughly personal hand-on approach to their film-making, where Svankmajer designs his films and lets others animate them. Not only their materails and political ideas are striking, but also their editing techniques: the rythym created by the movement of the camera. The Quay's puppets are also of the same ilk (creepy antiquated-looking toys, bones, meat, etc.), but have a more polished look. The Quay's plots are minimal and dark, their films surreal, stream-of-consciousness nightmares with a definite edge of humor.

Some of the Quay's actual sets and puppets are on permanent exhibition at The Museum of the Moving Image in London.

Since they don't want their images on web, we cannot include any. Yet, for the filmography you can click here.

Bill Viola
Born in January 25, 1951, he is today known for his work in video art. His exhibition profile, which includes the Guggenheim Berlin, Guggenheim New York, Getty Los Angeles, California, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York marks him as a major artist, at least by standards of public fame and repute. His work has also received extensive critical praise from both within the video art community and in the culture at large, which is unusual for an artist whose work often challenges the narrative conventions of the television screen.

His early work established his fascination with issues that continue to inform his work today. In particular, Viola's obession with capturing the essence of emotion through recording of its extreme display began at least as early as his 1976 work, "The Space Between the Teeth", a video of himself screaming, and continues to this day with such works as the 45-second "Silent Mountain" (2001), which shows two actors in states of anguish.

If Viola's depictions of emotional states with no objective correlative -- emotional states for which the viewer has no external object or event to understand them by -- are one striking feature of many of his works, another, which has come to the forefront, is his reference to medieval and classical depictions of emotion. Most immediately, his subdued "Catherine's Room" 2001, has many scene by scene parallels with Andrea di Bartolo's 1393 "St. Catherine of Siena Praying".

While many video artists have been quick to adopt new technologies to their medium, Viola relies little, if at all, on computer editing and modification of his video. Perhaps the most technically challenging part of his work -- and that which has benefitted most from the advances since his earliest pieces -- is his use of extreme slow motion. "The Quintet Series" 2000 is one such piece (actually a set of four separate videos), that shows the unfolding expressions of the five actors in such slow motion that the expressions become almost unrecognizable. The series is a challenging one for the viewer, because the concentration required to follow the facial expressions over time must last for minutes or more. In general, the distortion of time, along with the lack of sound or voice over, form the most immediately ""new"" aspects of Viola's work for the first-time viewer.

One remarkable piece by Viola is his "Observance" 2002, which may be taken partly as a response to the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks. "Observance" places the camera at eye level facing the head of a line of people of a wide variety of ages. As "Observance" unfolds, the line slowly advances, with each person pausing at the front of the line in a state of intense -- though quiet -- grief, before ceding their place to the next person in line.

In 2004, Viola embarked on "The Tristan Project". At the invitation of opera director Peter Sellars, he created video sequences to be shown as a backdrop to the action on stage during the performance (directed by Sellars) of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde. Using his trademark extreme slow motion, Viola's pieces used actors to portray the metaphorical story behind Wagner's story, seeing for example the first act as an extended ritual of purification in which the characters disrobe and wash themselves before finally plunging headlong into water together (in Wagner's story, the two characters maintain the facade of being indifferent to each other (necessary because Isolde is betrothed to Tristan's uncle) before, mistakenly believing they are going to die anyway, they reveal their true feelings). Viola trademarks such as fire and water are much in evidence here. The piece was first performed in Los Angeles at Disney Hall on 3 separate evenings in 2004, one act at a time, then given complete performances at the Bastille Opera in Paris in April and November 2005. The video pieces were later shown in London without Wagner's music in June to September 2006, at the Haunch of Venison Gallery and St Olave's College.

Viola's work has received many critical accolades. Marjorie Perloff, best known for her poetry criticism and her promotion of avant-garde writers and styles, singles him out for praise. Perloff, who has written at length about the necessity of poetic works responding to and taking advantage of contemporary computer technologies, has written of Viola as an example of how new technology -- in his case, the video camera -- can create entirely new aesthetic criteria and possibilities that did not exist in previous incarnations of the genre -- in this case, theater.

For Bill Viola's official web site, please click here!

Conceptual Art, Marcel Duchamp and Sol Lewitt

2006-10-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

Conceptual art, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. All of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execusion is a perfunctory affair. In some cases, Conceptual art may not entail any art object per se, but instead manifest solely as documentary evidence for an "art idea". In other, less extreme cases, Conceptual art may involve the construction of images and objects in a manner that frees the artist from their traditional role as a maker of aesthetic decisions.

Many of the works of the artist Sol Lewitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions. This method was fundamental to Lewitt's definition of Conceptual art, the first to appear in print "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art", Art Forum, 1967.

The movement began in the early 20th century, but was based on the European Dada movement, its father Marcel Duchamp, and the writings of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The French artist Marcel Duchamp paved the way for the conceptualists, providing them with examples of prototypically conceptual works (the readymades, for instance) that defied conventional categorisation. The most famous of Duchamp's readymades was Fountain (1917), a standard urinal basin signed by the artist with the pseudonym "R.Mutt", and submitted for inclusion in the annual, un-juried exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists in New York--it was rejected. In traditional terms, a commonplace object such as a urinal cannot be said to be art because it is not made by an artist or with any intention of being art, it is not unique, and it possesses few of the expected visual properties of the traditional, hand-crafted art object. Duchamp's relevance and theoretical importance for future "conceptualists" was later acknowledged by US artist Joseph Kosuth in his 1969 essay, "Art after Philosophy," when he wrote: "All art (after Duchamp) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually."
(For more information: Making sense of Marcel Duchamp and Marcel Duchamp World Community )

Conceptual art was the forerunner for installation, digital, and performance art, more generally art that can be experienced.

Sol LeWitt (born 1928 in Hartford, Connecticut) is an artist linked to various movements including conceptual art and minimalism. His mediums are predominantly painting, drawing, and structures (a term he prefers in opposition to sculpture).

LeWitt's most characteristic sculpture works are based on connected open cubes and have titles like "Modular Wall Structure" and "Double Modular Cube." Because he works with modules and systems, and his early wall drawings are based on grids, he is sometimes described as a Minimal artist, but his work, especially his recent work, is usually colorful and often quite complex. It is also optimistic and beautiful.

In his writings "Sentences on Conceptual Art" and "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art" he puts down the characteristics of conceptual art. He distinguishes the new art form from the formal art by claiming that the former is mystical while the latter is rational. He says that irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically. For him banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution, on the contrary his understanding of the process is machine-like. Also, he makes a distinction between conceptional and perceptional art. Perceptional art is for the sensation of the eye, like optical, kinetic, light and color art.

The rules Lewitt manifested in his writings contradict with the works of Turrell and Orozco. Turrell uses light predominantly, and the way his works actually seen is important, on the other hand, his ideas behind his body of work do matter a lot as well. Should he be considered as a perceptional or conceptional artist?
Orozco, on the other hand found the art making process very important, as opposed to Lewitt.

Can we ever reach a consensus about what distinguishes conceptual art; or what is art and what is not at the first place? The fountain was a joke for Duchamp, but was taken very seriously by critics. Can we produce art by solely placing objects in the museum, by altering their message? How much does the final look of the work matter; and how about the concept of it?
What should be our criteria?

The Class on Oct.10- screenings: James Turrell, Gabriel Orozco

2006-10-10T09:27:00.000-07:00

James Turrell

Turrell’s work involves explorations in light and space that speak to viewers without words, impacting the eye, body, and mind with the force of a spiritual awakening. “I want to create an atmosphere that can be consciously plumbed with seeing,” says the artist, “like the wordless thought that comes from looking in a fire.” Informed by his studies in perceptual psychology and optical illusions, Turrell’s work allows us to see ourselves “seeing.” In a sense his main media is the light itself and involve the active participation of the viewers.
Roden Crater, which is near the Grand Canyon in Arizona, is an extinct volcano the artist has been transforming into a celestial observatory for the past thirty years. Its curved shape provides him with the opportunity of losing the horizontal sense.
His fascination with the phenomena of light is ultimately connected to a very personal, inward search for mankind’s place in the universe.

For an interview with Turrell (made in 1996) please click here!
For more information, biography and works please click here!

Gabriel Orozco

An avid traveler, Gabriel Orozco uses the urban landscape and the everyday objects found within it to twist conventional notions of reality and engage the imagination of the viewer. He is interested in complex geometry and mapping, it is expressed in his works "Oval Billard Table".
He defines camera as a way of experience, giving way to intimate relationship with the world. He even approaches sculpture in his work "La D.S." Car sculpture, in such a way that he distorts the perspective.
Matching his passion for political engagement with the poetry of chance encounters, Orozco’s photographs, sculptures, and installations propose a distinctive model for the ways in which artists can affect the world with their work.

For more information, biography and works please click here!

ART-IST EVENTS

2006-10-08T00:34:00.000-07:00

We all laughed at Cristopher Columbus
Platfrom Garanti Contemporary Art Center
Sept.14 - Oct.21

Roderick Buchanan, Jeremiah Day, Omer Fast, Runo Lagomarsino, Deimantas Narkevicius, Amalia Pica, Florian Wüst

Much artistic and curatorial practice today aims at exploring the truthfulness of historical representation, or the problematic dialectic between collective memory and factual source. Of late, there has been a great deal of attention on artistic practices that focus on reconstructions of historical events - from reenactments to documentary videos, the aim is often to question, investigate or reconsider social attitudes of interpretation. Opposed to these tendencies the exhibition We all laughed at Christopher Columbus deals primarily with subjective, artistic interpretations of specific historical events.

http://www.platform.garanti.com.tr/plat_pop.html

Right Place, Right Time
İstanbul Modern
Sept.7 - Nov.12

Gökşin Sipahioğlu’s photograph exhibition entitled "Right Place, Right Time" opened on 7th September in İstanbul Modern. Realized with the contributions of Fortis and curated by Engin Özendes, the exhibition will host 119 photographs of Gökşin Sipahioğlu, a prominent name of Turkish and global photojournalism for more than half a century.

http://www.istanbulmodern.org/en/f_index.html

IFSAK 1st International Istanbul Biennial of Photography
Sept.15 - Oct 31

The event is aiming to highlight the value of photographic art with its approach to open up new horizons and to organize a photography feast lasting for 6 weeks for national and international visitors.

IFSAK 1st International Istanbul Biennial of Photography, will focus on the theme “City: Chaos and Charm” while including other brilliant works not so closely related with the theme.

http://www.ifsak.org/bienal/eng/index.html

The Class on Oct.3: Andy Goldsworthy

2006-10-04T12:42:00.000-07:00

Andy Goldsworthy (born 1956, in Cheshire) is an English artist and photographer living in Scotland who produces site specific sculpture and land art situated in natural settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects to create temporary sculptural pieces which both appear naturalistic and create stark contrasts with their surroundings.

His media often include twigs, thorns, stone, mud, snow, icicles, brightly coloured flowers and leaves. He often uses only his bare hands, teeth, and found tools to prepare and arrange the materials, although more recent works like Moonlit Path and Chalk Stones (Petworth, West Sussex - 2002) have also used heavy machinery.

Goldsworthy is a subject of a 2001 documentary feature film Rivers and Tides directed by Thomas Riedelsheimer. (ASIN: B0002JL9N6). He received an honorary degree from the University of Bradford in 1993, and was appointed OBE in 2000. He is the son of F. Allin Goldsworthy, 1929-2001, professor of applied mathematics at the University of Leeds.
(wikipedia)

He makes transient sculptures as opposed to the permenance of more conventional art forms. "I am still with it" says he talking about one of his works, and adds "but I can't see it... It is given to the sea as a gift. Sea made more out of it." He is by no means the final authority of his work. Nature is unpredictable. The material he is given, the way his work is destroyed... all is determined by the nature itself.
Therefore, he makes use of photography to document "the essense of his work".
How should we call him: a sculptor, an environmental sculptor’ or a ‘sculptor/photographer’? He forces us to reconsider what art is primarily, and how do we (or should we at all) locate the borders between different branches of art. Lastly, as soon or later most of his (final)work disappears, does the "idea" of his work matter more than its physical identity?

for more information about Andy Goldsworthy:
Artcyclopedia, Andy Goldsworthy
What is Art? What is an Artist?
Andy Goldsworhty: Tbe Beauty of Creation

The Class on Sept. 26: Krzysztof Wodiczko, Ann Hamilton, Cai Guo-Qiang

2006-10-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

Wodiczko is internationally renowned for his large-scale slide and video projections on architectural facades and monuments. Since the late eighties, he has developed a series of nomadic instruments for both homeless and immigrant operators that function as implements for survival, communication, empowerment, and healing. He creates art by projecting images upon the monumental architecture found in large cities. The image of a homeless person materializes on a Boston war monument. The message of his medium adds to/edits that of the monument.
The artist spent half his life behind "the Iron Curtain" and the other half in Canada and the United States, so he has a well developed critique of power and it's abuses. Wodiczko's art is profoundly democratic. It forces the viewer to reexamine the function of architecture and to reconsider the political nature of the steel and concrete caverns of commerce that make up large cities.

For more information please click here!

Hamilton was born in 1956 in Lima, Ohio. She trained in textile design at the University of Kansas, and later received an MFA from Yale University. While her degree is in sculpture, textiles and fabric have continued to be an important part of her work, which includes installations, photographs, videos, performances, and objects. She also questions the space around the art piece and ends up using the whole space. She is an important name of installation art.

For more information please click here!

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, and lives and works in New York. He studied stage design at the Shanghai Drama Institute from 1981 to 1985 and attended the Institute for Contemporary Art: The National and International Studio Program at P.S. 1, New York. His work is both scholarly and politically charged.
He combines installation and traditional forms of Chinese art. His most prominent element od his body of work is called "gun powder drawings". He draws a comparison between drawing and love making; thus puts the emphasis on performance rather than the final image.
He says: "Art is not about what it is saying."

For more information please click here!

RELATED BOOKS

2006-10-02T12:52:00.000-07:00

-all available in the Boğaziçi Library-

Installation Art in the New Millennium - Jonathan Crary
Body Art and Performance - Linda Wintraub, et al.
L'Ombra Della Regione: Shadow of Reason - Exploring the Sipiritual in European Identity in the 20th Century - Danilo Escher
Vitamin P - Barry Schwabsky
Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object 1949-1979 - Paul Schimmel
Assemblage, Environments & Happenings
Performance: Live Art Since 1960 - Rosalee Goldberg
Overlay: Contemporary Art and the Art of Prehistory - Lucy R. Lippard
Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion - Oliver Grau
Art in America Magazine

ASSIGNMENT

2006-10-02T12:42:00.000-07:00

The assignment consists of a paper and/or a media-based project. Projects done for this class will be determined entirely by each student, and will grow out of a process of research and exploration guided by the instructor. Because conceptual art is based on the concept that art may exist solely as an idea, this process of research and its documentation may in fact become more important than the final result of the project. By being involved all the way through this process the instructor will be able to grade the project all the way through its development.

Everyone in this class will write a paper that discusses one of the readings in relation to one or more of the artists covered in this course. Students who choose to do only the paper are required to write a minimum of eight pages that investigates the chosen topic in detail. Students who choose to create a media-based project will write a shorter version of the paper one to two pages in length.

The media-based project needs to be approved by the instructor, and should use media that the student has previous knowledge about and access to all necessary equipment.

INTRODUCTION: The Intermediatics

2006-10-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

This community is composed of Boğaziçi University (İstanbul- Turkey) students and graduates, who have taken the Intermedia course, led by their teacher Jeffrey Baykal Rollins. He is a photographer, painter and installation artist. However, neither his work, nor his teaching mentality distinguishes betweem different disciplines of art. Since 2005 he has been giving intermedia course.

Intermedia is an interdisciplinary course which brings together students working with a variety of media in a shared conceptual framework. This theory-based course offers students the opportunity to create conceptual art projects that grow out of research in their chosen areas of interest. Furthermore, Intermedia provides an area for students to work across disciplines, whether it be a filmmaker using installation art, a poet using performance, or a physics student using video and digital media. Through lectures, screenings, guest artists, and readings, students is exposed to a wide range of working methods that will help them to bring a work of art from idea to completion.

Each term the course has a happening in the campus where the students can show their videos, perform their pieces, have their installations exhibited. In every two years we are planing to arrange an Intermedia Biennial which would expand out of our campus.