In this blog series, the photographer Lynn Gilbert takes us on a journey through Turkish homes.
Traditional homes in Turkey exude a warmth and charm that is inviting; they are unlike any other place in the world that I've visited. Each house is an expression of its owner's creativity, which you can see in the way possessions are grouped together and where they are placed. And while each region of Turkey has its own style, no two homes are alike, a fact that I still find surprising after spending almost a decade looking at traditional homes all over Turkey.
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It's rare for public places to be as inviting. But somehow Zeki'nin Yeri, a rundown coffee shop on the outskirts of Milas, has the ability to make you feel at home as soon as you walk through the door. A small hangout away from the dirt passageways and the old stone houses that are being torn down, this is a place where men with tired eyes, bent bodies and worn clothes wander in for tea. Some buy a sandwich – the only one on offer -– while others read the newspapers that are strewn across the tables. Young office girls bursting with energy and wearing tight skirts, leather jackets and boots pop in and order tea to take away.
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It is the older man and young woman running the shop who make it feel like a home-from-home. Not only are they welcoming and attentive, but they put out an excellent product. The tea is always piping hot. And don't get me started on the sandwich – how could anyone resist it? The huge chunk of pita filled with salami, melted cheese and tomato paste is slathered with butter and pressed on a grill that has been perfectly seasoned by years of cooking the same thing over and over. It is a little piece of heaven when you're on the road and famished.
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Lynn Gilbert, an established photographer, has been fascinated with people’s living environments since her early teens. Visiting 60 countries in six decades, she has seen more than 3,000 houses and 20,000 rooms. In her nine extended trips to Turkey, Gilbert became fascinated with the unique quality of the Turkish home. Her photographic study documents – for the first time – the beautiful old houses, both humble and affluent, that form part of Turkey’s cultural heritage. Please visit her website for more photographs.
Istanbul is gearing up for the start of another film festival season, and first on the docket is the 14th edition of Filmekimi, which runs in Istanbul from October 2 to 11. Screening critically acclaimed films fresh off the major festival circuit, Filmekimi is a cinephile’s dream. The festival, organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV), also features a large number of foreign-language films (of which there is a paucity at any other time of the year) and works by Turkish filmmakers, some of which will be screened with English subtitles – another rarity. All in all, viewers will have their choice of films ranging from critical darlings to more experimental works.
A huge hit at this year’s Cannes, Carol is one of the major draws of Filmekimi. Simply put, it is an exquisite film; centered around the brilliant lead performance of the radiant and impeccable Cate Blanchett, it tells the story of two women falling in love in the 1950s. The director Todd Haynes has created a film that is sophisticated yet accessible by utilising a realistic look and texture.
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Still from ‘Me and Earl and the Dying Girl’
Another favourite is sure to be Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, an adaptation of the bestselling novel by Jesse Andrews. Winner of the 2015 Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Drama, this film handles the difficult topic of death at a young age with aplomb. It steers clear of clichés to create a touching and humourous look at friendship in all of its highs and lows.
Two other films tackle the subject of friendship and the ways in which our lives can be irrevocably changed by our ties to others. Mistress America, the latest collaboration between Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig, follows the hijinks of Brooke (Gerwig), an eccentric force who is living the glamorous life in New York City, and Tracy (Lola Kirke), a lonely college freshman. Meanwhile, Anton Corbijn portrays the initimate friendship of James Dean (Dane Dehaan) and the Magnum photographer Dennis Stock (Robert Pattinson) in Life, a film that manages to go beyond a standard celebrity bio and deftly captures the complexities of the relationship between these two men.
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Still from ‘Tale of Tales’
The festival also has an element of the fantastical. Tale of Tales is a loose interpretation of Giambattista Basile’s celebrated fairy tales and weaves together the grotesque with the glamorous in a highly stylised fashion. Looking to the future as opposed to the past, Ex Machina explores the boundaries of artificial intelligence when a programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is chosen by his boss, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac), to evaluate the consciousness of his latest experiment in AI, the sophisticated and deceptive Ava.
While English-speaking audiences may flock to these indie darlings, the number and quality of foreign films being screened is truly outstanding. The director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s debut film Mustang has been receiving rave reviews (and was selected as France’s entry for the 2016 Oscars) for its portrayal of five young sisters living in a conservative village in northern Turkey and their struggle for freedom. This meditation on relationships between teenage girls has an ethereal quality to it, and manages to be both sweet and sad without being overly sentimental.
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Still from ‘Mustang’
Other foreign films of note are The Second Mother, a fast-moving and fresh look at class in Brazil, and Dheepan, the winner of the 2015 Cannes Palme d’Or focusing on the lives of Sri Lankan refugees in Paris.Though these films will be screened with only Turkish subtitles, non-Turkish speakers can jump onto the foreign-film bandwagon with From Afar, winner of the 2015 Venice Golden Lion. This film, which tells the story of a rich denture-maker’s sexual relationship with a young man from one of Caracas’s gangs, will be screened with both Turkish and English subtitles.
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Still from ‘Baskın’
Finally, showing the depth of the festival’s selection, there are three highly anticipated films that are sure to make your hair stand on end. Baskın, the debut feature from the director Can Evrenol, has its Turkish premiere at the festival. This horror film follows a group of unsuspecting cops who get called to the middle of nowhere as backup and are subsequently plunged into hell. Evrenol has so thoroughly created a bloody world full of violent madness that even a quick watch of the film’s trailer will keep you awake for hours. Likewise The Witch, winner of the 2015 Sundance Directing Award and called the ‘most terrifying film’ at that festival, and Son of Saul, Hungary’s submission for the 2016 Oscars and an extraordinary look at evil during the Holocaust, will both frighten and devastate you.
The difficulty with a festival of this scope is that you only have so much time and can only attend so many screenings. I’ve just skimmed the surface of what’s on at Filmekimi – neglecting enticing films such as Slow West and Hasret, among others – so it’s best to study the full programme before purchasing your tickets. But act quickly! Tickets often sell out for these festival film screenings.
Disappointed that the preferred screening of your film of choice is sold out? Try visiting the cinema right before the scheduled screening, as they often sell uncollected tickets in the 15 minutes before the film.
Keeping up with the reshaping of Turkey is not for the faint of heart. Those who are paying attention are forced to digest the ramifications of the actions taken by a growing number of opportunists. In the midst of it all, there are a number of peaceful activists who seek to encourage awareness and facilitate dialogue. One such person is Murat Germen, an architecturally trained artist, photographer and professor, who focuses on the ongoing development and redevelopment taking place in Turkey and its consequences for urban and rural landscapes, the environment and its inhabitants.
As a resident of Istanbul, Germen has seen first-hand the widespread destruction of entire neighbourhoods being made ‘earthquake safe’. The chamber of architects is active in trying to keep heritage alive, but they only have so much power and are unable to keep up with the magnitude of development in Turkey. Germen comments, ‘Nobody builds on top of what has already been built. A wall is a totality of bricks, and in order to sustain a peaceful existence of old and new architecture you do not destroy and then rebuild.’ He recalls being in Salzburg and the sadness he felt upon seeing a patisserie that dates from the late 18th century, a perfect example of the value placed on the preservation of culture in other countries. He later reflects on the coherence of the streets of Edinburgh, where massive historic stone buildings sit side by side with modern, lighter counterparts – the old is old and the new is new, and integrity is maintained. In places such as these, it's unlikely that the old would be demolished or that fake veneers would be used to transform the old into the new.
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‘TOKI from the air’, one of Murat Germen's photographs on display at the Erimtan Archaeology and Art Museum
One consequence of the rampant changes to the urban and rural landscape in Turkey is what Germen calls ‘erasing memory’ – how we are losing our references in our own communities. As if demolishing landmarks weren’t enough, some municipalities have been busy changing street names, making it impossible to give directions. He mentions how the name of Tandoğan Square in Ankara was changed to Anadolu Square, but that reference to the original name is still required when giving directions because the new name is relatively unknown.
Having recently acquired a drone, what he gleefully calls a ‘new toy’, Germen is delighted that he's now able to capture large-scale aerial visuals – perhaps alluding to a future project? In the meantime do not miss his ongoing solo exhibition Ankara: From Pioneering Modernism to Revivalist Mimicry and Fake Futurism at the Erimtan Archaeology and Art Museum in Ankara, which has been extended until the end of October. Expect to see over 200 photos documenting how Ankara has changed through the decades. The feedback, especially from locals, is that it is an eye-opening experience.
Germen is also part of the group photography exhibition Individual Ground at the ÇokÇok Gallery in Istanbul.
Given the inextricable link between Istanbul and the Bosphorus, as well as the seas that lie on either side of the enduring strait, the theme of this year’s Biennial – ‘Saltwater: A Theory of Thought Forms’ – seems especially apt. Salt water and the contrasting image-forms of knots and waves can be related in so many ways to Istanbul’s past and present. With such a broad base to jump off from, this sprawling, all-encompassing Biennial – not unlike Mother Ginger and her massive skirt – has room for a wide range of subjects under its conceptual umbrella.
It also makes sense that, based on its focus, the Biennial is staged in venues all over the city. As the curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev writes in her introduction, ‘You will spend quite a bit of time on salt water. There is a slowing down of the experience of art due to the travel between venues, especially on ferries.’ Imagine it: just as you’re contemplating the myriad conceptual offshoots of salt water on a ferry ride over to the Princes Islands, you will also be experiencing a very physical, very tangible interaction with this same material. See what I mean by all-encompassing?
While I have yet to experience the physical act of moving across waterways to different Biennial locations, I was able to visit two of the largest venues: Istanbul Modern and ARTER. There was definitely a tilt toward the scientific at both locations, especially ARTER, where the works on display form a cohesive narrative revolving around waves as they relate to time and space. As for Istanbul Modern, the pieces I found the most captivating were those that delved into the memory and structure of communities, especially minority communities, and how they’ve changed over time.
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Marwan Rechmaoui’s ‘Pillar’ series (2015)
Istanbul Modern
Two of the most striking installations, which just so happen to be prominently exhibited in the central area of the museum floor, consist of sculptural works that speak to the cycle of construction and destruction.
Marwan Rechmaoui, a Lebanese artist, was inspired by the geography and history of Beirut to create a series of more than ten concrete pillars, the basic structures of urban architecture. With pieces of rebar jutting out and pockmarked concrete, these pillars look as if they have been battered to the point of exposing their innards. Yet although they may seem like bombed-out, crumbled ruins, there are traces of residential buildings embedded in these pillars, such as plants and wicker baskets. There is an element of life and growth in the carnage.
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Sonia Balassanian’s ‘Silence of Stones’ (2015)
Another installation that spoke of both decay and the stubborn will to remain is Sonia Balassanian’s work Silence of Stones (2015). Consisting of 12 large, roughly hewn sculptures with the shape of severed heads, the work speaks foremost of decapitation. Some of the abstract heads, made of Tufa stone from quarries found on the Armenian side of the border with Turkey, lie on their sides, some stand tall; all are a silent statement on bodies of land and rock and flesh. According to the artist, these sculptures refer to those Armenian intellectuals who were arrested and murdered in April 1915. Yet at first glance, they are reminiscent of the heads at Nemrut Dağı that stand in remembrance of and dedication to a lost ancient kingdom – not unlike Balassanian's heavy sculptures.
Questions of memory and remembrance of the violence perpetrated against the Armenians in 1915 feature prominently at Istanbul Modern. Aslı Cavuşoğlu’s installation Red / Red (2015, main featured image) – so far one of my favourite pieces of the Biennial – focuses on two different red pigments as a way to explore how cultural and historical facts are represented and transformed. One of the pigments, a lighter red, is traditionally made from an insect known as the Ararat cochineal (Porphyrophora hamelii). This red represents a lost history in Armenia, where the formula for extracting the colour remains a secret. In Cavuşoğlu's paintings and sculptural books, this carmine pigment is juxtaposed with another, more enduring red, the brighter one of the Turkish flag and a common colour in Turkey. It’s interesting to note that she uses the fading red pigment, which seems doomed to vanish, to paint mainly flora and fauna, an action which reinforces her attempts to hold onto and document that which is subject to the recurring cycle of life and death, rise and fall.
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Paul Guiragossian’s ‘Hiver’ (1991)
The Armenian-Lebanese painter Paul Guiragossian’s 14 modernist abstract paintings, while more an exploration of colour and form, evoke the grief and mourning of exile. A child of survivors of the Armenian genocide, Guiragossian paints bands of colour in such a way that each brushstroke becomes a pillar of humanity, and the adjacent bands and strips clearly represent a cohesive group or family.
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Seven of the 16 drawings done by the Yirrkala people in 1947
While the plight of the Armenians is a significant part of Turkey’s past and present, and thus an obvious topic for Istanbul’s Biennial, issues of communal memory are further elucidated by the series of works related to the Yirrkala aboriginal community in northern Australia. The drawings of the Yirrkala people, made in 1947 with crayons and graphite on brown paper at the behest of a visiting anthropologist, show the geography of their land and waterways, as well as their community’s laws. At first glance they appear as simple patterns, almost like something a child would draw. But once you understand that they are mapping out their land, its coastlines and maritime passages, you see them for what they are: sophisticated narratives of ancestral creation and everyday life. Just as captivating are the paintings of Djambawa Marawili, who is of the Madarrpa people and lives three hours by road from Yirrkala. The colourful creations painted on large pieces of bark tell tales of the sea, tides and currents, which come together in fluid forms.
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Vernon Ah Kee’s ‘Tall Man’ (2010)
These paintings and drawings made by aboriginal communities in Australia are juxtaposed with Vernon Ah Kee’s video installation Tall Man (2010), which uses found footage to examine race relations in that country and beyond. The subject of the video is the 2004 Palm Island riot, which erupted after an indigenous man was killed by white police officers stationed on the island. The structure of the four-channel video installation, with its short, quick shots from different perspectives, flawlessly recreates the tension that quickly mounts in the lead-up to violence. It’s interesting to note that while conducting a site visit for this installation, Ah Kee became aware of the memories surrounding the past trauma in eastern Anatolia. As a result, he created a series of five new paintings entitled Brutalities (2014–2015), which are both portraits and investigations of those who perpetrate violence and ethnic cleansing. While up close the paintings appear to be abstract, violent splatters of paint, faces emerge when viewed at a distance.
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One of Vernon Ah Kee’s paintings from the ‘Brutalities’ series (2014–2015)
ARTER
The Biennial works on display at ARTER were very much informed by space and time. Each floor featured a work of Fredrik Carl Mulertz Stormer, a Norwegian scientist and photographer who studied the aurora borealis. Stormer’s scientific work – he developed a camera that could capture photos of the Northern Lights, which allowed him to determine that they are a solar phenomenon – is fascinating, but it is the objects and photographs on the first floor which tell the most interesting story: one of a man both determined and thorough, who was not just a scientist, but an artist with a keen eye and an interest in documenting life as he saw it.
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Christine Taylor Patten’s ‘micro / macro: 1001 drawings’ (1998–2015)
The real gem of ARTER, though, is found on the second floor. Christine Taylor Patten’s installation micro / macro: 1001 drawings (1998–2015) fills the room with one massive 7 x 24 foot drawing and 1,000 1 x 1 inch drawings made by black ink on paper. Exploring the infinite possibilities of the line, Patten’s drawings unfold from an initial dot or point, and grow into irregular, organic wave patterns. The vast scale of the work speaks to the expanse of the universe, and the way in which it is built on the smallest particles. Following the almost completely straight, unbroken row of tiny drawings on the wall, I was mesmerised by the way the humble line could have such massive consequences.
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Bracha L. Ettinger’s ‘St John the Baptist’ (2009)
While it may be tempting to spend your entire visit getting stuck into Patten’s work, the paintings of Bracha L Ettinger on the third floor should not be missed. More compelling than her journals or audio installation, the paintings on display feature layers upon layers, almost as if Ettinger is trying to obfuscate. With each slight shift in position, something new presents itself. Just when you think you’ve teased out all the layers, you catch a glimpse from a new perspective and you’re drawn right back in.
Stay tuned for more instalments of our Biennial review as we cross the seas (and the street) to see the installations on the Princes Islands and at the Galata Greek Primary School.
Considering the popularity of Filmekimi, it was nothing short of a miracle that I could secure a ticket toYearning (Hasret in Turkish). Many of the festival’s film screenings are sold out within hours of tickets going on sale, to the point that extra screenings of the most popular films – Mustang, anyone? – are added in haste. I was especially surprised to find seats available for this particular film, a meta-documentary of sorts directed by Ben Hopkins that follows him in his efforts to shoot a television documentary about Istanbul. In the sea of foreign films at Filmekimi, those made by Turkish directors or on the subject of Turkey are a rare and precious few.
The city of Istanbul is a popular subject, and it's not difficult to see why. Time-lapse shots of Istiklal Caddesi and the Bosphorus, aerial footage of the Golden Horn, a lingering shot of the sun setting as the call to prayer echoes in the background – travel porn, for lack of a better word. It’s what sells. It’s also what brings the film crew in Yearning to the city: a small television station in Germany has hired Hopkins and his crew to make a touristic piece on Istanbul, or so we are told.
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This is our entrance to the film – there are the requisite time-lapse videos of the crowds and the glittering Bosphorus – but it soon becomes clear that the interests of Hopkins, who is leading the film crew and is also our narrator, lie elsewhere: rubbish, cats, resistance, urban development, Alevis in the neighbourhoods of Küçük Armutlu and Gazi. These subjects, which often capture the interest and attention of the international and local media, are presented as tangents. Hopkins admits that he has only taken this job because he couldn’t find anything else after a long period of depression. While he can shoot Istanbul in the way the television station wants, he prefers to document a different side of the city.
At this point, as we begin to follow the director on these alternative paths, it’s not clear where the film is heading. Each new subject of interest is separated from the others with a title slide, giving the narrative a disjointed feeling. There are both serious inquiries and irreverent asides that elicit laughter from the audience, making it difficult to discern the tone. It seems like we’re at the mercy of our intrepid director; yet whatever the film lacks in focus and tone is more than made up by the clean and crisp camerawork that makes Istanbul, warts and all, shine without being overly stylised.
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We are introduced to undocumented Afghan and Kurdish workers who are looking for construction work under the table, and there are hints that the film may focus on unregistered aliens in Istanbul, those people who manage to live under the radar but still in plain view. But then, in a clunky transition, we are introduced to out of work theatre workers, one of whom is Faruk Korkmaz, an artist, actor and self-proclaimed historian.
It's the eccentric Korkmaz, with his big halo of white hair framed by swirling pipe smoke, who becomes the lodestar for our slowly unravelling narrator. Korkmaz asks Hopkins what the film is about, and our narrator cuts to tell us that he’s asking himself the same thing. He tells Korkmaz that the film is about Istanbul, to which Korkmaz replies, ‘Istanbul is an infinite (sonsuz) subject.’ To really know Istanbul, according to Korkmaz, you must speak to its dead. He then hands an incredulous Hopkins a list of dead people and their telephone numbers.
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Up to this point, I was, like Korkmaz, curious about the nature of the film. Is it a documentary? A compilation of one individual’s obsessions with the city? Would we hear Istanbullular telling their own stories about the city? Judging by the crew’s footage and Hopkins’s conversations up to that point, I was hoping it would go that way. The straight-on shots of these individuals were beautifully composed and gripping. Even the cats were filmed in a way that seemed to bypass the cliched.
But after the meeting with Korkmaz, the film begins to delve into the fictional. Hopkins sees a woman in some of the footage they shot at one of the new developments on the city’s edge, and no one can recall her being there; she’s a ghost. He begins filming at night, and seems especially drawn to the city’s ‘melancholy’. Our director’s behaviour begins to inspire a mutiny of sorts in his crew. On a trip to the Princes Islands – intended to placate the other cameramen – Hopkins leads them to an abandoned Greek orphanage. He tells them to go down, eat fish, drink rakı and watch football, even though he plans on staying right there. Our narrator has become obsessed with the city’s dead, with its ghosts.
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Hopkins has thoroughly unravelled and his crew decides to leave; the final surreal shot of these others shows Hopkins locking them in a shipping container on the almost-empty docks in the middle of the night to be shipped back to Germany. Our director is left alone. The small television station has disappeared, and the money has dried up. He only goes out at night, and refers more and more to the dark and melancholic aspects of the city. In the film’s denouement, Hopkins opens a passageway between the city’s living population and its dead. It's here that he finds the ghostly girl who was in their footage, and she’s dancing at dawn on the Karaköy docks.
The film could be a larger statement about the ways in which cities and their structures are used to erase a history. On a personal level, it could be a story of an individual’s descent into his own darkness, an interpretation bolstered by the fact that the director mentions a dark, long depression from which he recently recovered. Yet the filmmaker’s obsession with melancholy, which he considers to be at the core of Istanbul, overshadows all else. Moreover, by combining documentary and fictional filmmaking, the move feels less like an honest exploration of Istanbul, and more like one person’s engagement with an imagined past.
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I was speaking the other day to an artist about nostalgia, and how it’s often a rejection of the living. Hopkins does that literally – an actual rejection of the living in favour of the city’s dead, its ghosts, who form the source of what he believes to be the city’s melancholy, its true character. The city’s ghosts surely deserve remembrance, yet Hopkins does so at the expense of Istanbul as it is now, of the voices that fill boats and bars, cafes and streets, and the film is poorer for it. There’s no room for this remembrance to be a lived experience, except by our narrator.
The 25th Akbank Jazz Festival is kicking off next week, and with it comes a flurry of concerts, workshops, seminars and children’s events. Unlike the annual IKSV Istanbul Jazz Festival, which sets up shop in the city during the quiet month of July, the Jazz Festival organised by Akbank is compact – it runs for just over one week – and takes place right smack in the middle of the fall festival season.While this means you’ll have to make some tough choices, what with so many other events on offer, the upside of the Akbank Jazz Festival is that it brings a truly wide range of performers to Istanbul, many of whom are not traditionally associated with jazz music, and also manages to highlight some of Turkey’s most accomplished and rising jazz musicians.
The Festival’s performers generally fall into two categories: jazz and other, for lack of a better word. I’ll first spotlight some of the jazz performances that look the most promising, and then highlight the more eclectic artists who are performing as part of the Festival.
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Lizz Wright
On the jazz side of things, there are two performances at Cemal Reşit Ray Concert Hall (CRR) on October 25 that are sure to delight. The vocalist Lizz Wright, whose music sets a mood similar to that of Norah Jones, will perform at 18.00. Her smooth, driving contralto voice is reminiscent of Toni Braxton. Yet rather than boxing herself into pop standards, Wright positively soars in jazz-influenced compositions, as can be seen in her single ‘My Heart’. Later on in the evening, the John Scofield & Joe Lovano Quartet will take the stage. This collaboration between Joe Lovano, a Grammy winning saxophonist, and the guitar virtuoso John Scofield, both of whom are giants in the jazz world, caused a buzz (and rightly so). It will be a treat to see them on stage together.
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David Murray
Saxophonist David Murray is putting together a one-of-a-kind programme for this year’s Festival. Titled ‘Flowers for Memo’, Murray’s concert will be a tribute to organiser Mehmet Uluğ, who first brought Murray to Turkey 25 years ago. The two became close, and after Uluğ’s death in 2013, Murray composed the ‘Mehmet Uluğ Suite’, which he performed at Babylon in March 2015. The music that came out during this performance was so powerful and meaningful that it became an album project. Murray is set to record the album in Istanbul in the week before the Festival, and this tribute work will feature prominently in his performance at Babylon Bomonti on October 27 at 21.30.
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Manu Katché (Copyright F BONIN)
It’s rare to see a drummer headlining a jazz group, but Manu Katché, known for combining African rhythms with classical drumming, certainly deserves the gig. Having played on the albums of stars such as Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel, Sting and Jan Garbarek, he’s uniformly recognized across musical disciplines for his talent. Accompanied by the Norwegian double bassist Ellen Andrea Wang and the crew from his last album, Katché will perform at CRR on October 22 at 20.30.
For something a little more stripped down, you’ll want to check out Kuára Duo, which consists of the drummer Markku Ounaskari and the pianist Samuli Mikkonen. These two Finnish musicians pour the cultural heritage of their country into contemporary jazz melodies, showing the beauty in simplicity. Their sound is perfectly captured in their single ‘Mediterranean Folk Song’. Kuára Duo will play at Akbank Sanat on October 21 at 19.00.
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Tingvall Trio
Those interested in fast-paced European jazz will enjoy two European jazz trios, each of which features piano, drums and double bass. Reis / Demuth / Wiltgen hail from Luxembourg and will play at Akbank Sanat on October 22 at 19.00, while the Hamburg-based Tingvall Trio will take the stage at the same venue and at the same time on October 31.
Two important Turkish jazz musicians who you’re sure to hear from for years to come are vocalist Şirin Soysal and pianist Ercüment Orkut. Both will be performing at Akbank Sanat, Soysal on October 23 at 19.00 and Orkut on October 24 at 19.00. Soysal, who is known for her unique style of singing that she dubs ‘black cabaret’, will perform her ‘Sings Kurt Weill’ project with pianist Adem Gülşen and Erdem Göymen on percussions. Orkut, meanwhile, will be playing from his first solo album Low Profile.
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Şirin Soysal
If you’re looking to listen to some up-and-coming jazz musicians, don’t miss the Istanbul Youth Jazz Orchestra. Established under the joint sponsorship of Akbank and Bahçeşehir University, the orchestra is formed as a big band and consists of 17 musicians between the ages of 19 and 25. Their first concert will be held at the Caddebostan Culture Centre on October 28 at 20.30 as part of the Jazz Festival.
Finally, some of the city’s best venues for jazz are hosting artists as part of the Festival. Nardis Jazz Club, one of the centres for jazz in Istanbul, is hosting two jazz groups in its intimate space: the Aaron Goldberg Trio and Standard A La Turc. Similar to Nardis, one of the best jazz venues (and best venues, period) in Istanbul is The Seed, and this year Carmen Lundy will be singing there under the purview of the Festival. The Seed, with its incredible acoustics, is a perfect spot to watch this strong vocalist perform.
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Poppy Ackroyd
The Akbank Jazz Festival is also known for drawing in artists whose feet are firmly planted in other musical disciplines, like rock or pop, but who sometimes dip their toes into jazz.
One such artist is Poppy Ackroyd, who will play at Akbank Sanat on October 30 at 19.00. She mainly plays the piano and violin on her albums, yet what differentiates Ackroyd is the way in which she draws inspiration from the noises and voices around her. Her use of looping sounds creates a mesmerising effect of echoes and repetition. Mix in the eerie sounds of early keyboard instruments, such as the clavichord, harpsichord and spinet, and you get an other-worldly sound.
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Belle and Sebastian
Another big draw will be Belle and Sebastian’s performance at the Volkswagen Arena on October 30 at 22.00. This Scottish band needs little introduction: the group is a leader in indie music and known for their impressive stage shows. For this concert, they will play music from their latest album Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance.
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Susanne Sundfør
Susanne Sundfør, who will play at Zorlu Performing Arts Centre on October 31 at 19.00, may be a new name to many (or at least to me), but is she ever the performer. While her sound is synth-heavy and can veer into 80s pop music, her voice, which can be both haunting and commanding, is never drowned out – it’s always front and centre. I’d recommend listening to her single ‘White Foxes’ to get a sense of her most pop-like sound, while the song ‘Silencer’ from her latest album Ten Love Songs shows off her more delicate, ethereal and dreamy sounds, even if the subject is still heavy.
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Sinkane (Copyright Martine Carlson)
Another new-to-me artist is Sinkane, but man am I glad that I found him. This London-born singer expertly combines jazz with funk rock and Sudanese pop, writing melodic compositions over hypnotizing bass sounds and rhythms. His single ‘How We Be’ is catchy and shows the playfulness in his music. Sinkane will be performing songs from his latest album Mean Love at Babylon Bomonti on October 23 at 22.30.
Finally, for those who are looking for something a little more low-key and folksy, Bill Frisell Music for Strings (main featured photo) will perform at the Zorlu Performing Arts Centre on October 23 at 20.30. A very important name in the jazz world, Frisell’s latest group focuses on stringed instruments and produces a bluesy sound. The group consists of Frisell on electric guitar, Jenny Scheinman on violin, Eyvind Kang on viola and Hank Roberts on cello.
A full programme is available on Akbank Sanat’s website and tickets can be purchased from Biletix.
Reading about The Tiger Lillies, a postmodern vaudeville musical trio known for their macabre cabaret, I'm ashamed to admit that images of clownish circus performers ran through my head. So when I walked into their performance of Hamlet at the Zorlu Performing Arts Centre last night, I was expecting camp and frivolity. Yet the musicians and actors delivered a tight performance with more depth and razor-sharp wit than I could have hoped for.
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The success of this unique adaptation of Shakespeare's classic Hamlet relies in large part on the original music of The Tiger Lillies. The play itself has been shortened and rearranged at points, which allows for the original music to set the tone and pace. The songs, which are mostly sung in a falsetto by accordion- and piano-player Martyn Jacques, ruminate on the themes running through the play – sin, family, murder, suicide – and create a haunting repetitive loop that underlines the work’s more sardonic aspects. But more than that, the music calls it like it is: there is no good, there is no bad, only desolation.
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While the creativity of The Tiger Lillies was impressive and set the tone for the performance, it was Theatre Republique’s staging that tied it all together. Led by artistic director Martin Tulinius, Theatre Republique devised a wooden backdrop with multiple windows and doors that created a unique framing. This somewhat bare background allowed for the sparing yet effective use of video. It also made it possible for the physicality of the show to shine. The actors, led by the irrepressible Caspar Phillipson as Hamlet, tumbled and danced, floated and fought, and moved together as one cohesive unit. At one point, four of the cast members wore puppet strings, and one could hardly tell the difference between them and proper marionettes. And, in a testimony to their talent, the cast did all of this without veering into Cirque du Soleil territory.
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English-language theatre in Istanbul has, for a long time, been practically non-existent. Local troupes made up of foreigners would stage performances in the city's smaller venues and back rooms. But in the past few years, there's been a marked improvement in quantity and quality of English-language and foreign-language theatre performances. One of the big players behind this movement is the Istanbul Arts and Culture Foundation (IKSV), which organised The Tiger Lillies Perform Hamlet. If they can continue to bring experimental and engrossing theatre such as this to Istanbul, the city will be better for it.
A highlight of autumn entertainment in London is Hussein Chalayan’s dance production Gravity Fatigue at Sadler’s Wells. Fashion designer, filmmaker, artist and now choreographer, Chalayan is a man from whom creativity constantly flows. Born in Cyprus, he went to Central Saint Martins art school in London and was honoured with an MBE for his work in 2006. But he remains close to the land of his birth with films such as Temporal Meditations (2003), which presents his collection of the same name within a broader exploration of identity, mass movement and migration as related to Cyprus.
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A still from ‘Temporal Meditations’ (2003)
He is a constant innovator. At Paris Fashion Week, which just ended, the highlight was as much performance as couture when water was poured over two of his models, making their dresses disappear and revealing delicate garments underneath.
Last month, Chalayan celebrated 21 years in the business by opening his first retail shop on Bourdon Street in Mayfair. ‘For me London is the most important metropole in the world, where I grew up and to which I owe my development as a designer,’ he told Wallpaper magazine.
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Watching Chalayan’s evolution as both a designer and an artist over the years, it’s no surprise that he has moved into the realms of performance and dance. In Gravity Fatigue, which he designed and directed while working with choreographer Damien Jalet, Chalayan explores ideas that he has been collecting for many years on themes such as identity and displacement. By building narratives around and with the body, in a way that is often visually reminiscent of Martha Graham’s early work Lamentation, Chalayan is able to experiment with a new form of expression that incorporates the creativity of his designs while at the same time moving beyond the constraints of fashion. As Chalayan noted, ‘Fashion for me is a very important part of culture, however, in many cases clothes can limit the expression of certain ideas.’
Sadler’s Wells’ Artistic Director and CEO Alistair Spalding said it best: ‘Both dance and fashion deal with the moving body and one’s sense of identity, and in Gravity Fatigue the two art forms don’t just enhance each other, but are truly complementary in their delivery of the show’s concepts and, ultimately, of Chalayan’s distinctive aesthetic vision.’
Chalayan has proven to have an extraordinary imagination, and we can’t wait to see what new ground he breaks in Gravity Fatigue. Visit our event listing for more information on the performance.
While it’s not exactly as evil as it sounds, this literary festival in honour of Agatha Christie (it would have been her 125th birthday on September 15) does celebrate the murders, the crimes, the twisted plots that make mystery writing one of the most popular and beloved genres of fiction the world over. But it also celebrates the intricate plotting required to tell a story with so many twists and turns, and our love for these page-turning puzzles. Who did it? How? It’s always surprising how such simple questions can grab you, to the point that you can’t turn away until you have the answers.
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That is the genius of Christie and other writers of her ilk. They suck you in with their plot twists, false clues and colourful characters. The most famous star of Christie’s mysteries was the Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot, who figures in 33 of her 80 crime novels. Obsessed with order and symmetry, Poirot is the star of Murder on the Orient Express, arguably Christie’s most famous novel and certainly the most germane to Istanbul. It is this novel, together with Christie’s comings and goings through Istanbul that tie her so closely to the city.
When she was in Istanbul, Christie generally stayed in the Hotel Tokatlian – where Poirot was set to stay in Murder on the Orient Express before being called back to London – or the Pera Palace. While the former is unfortunately in a state of disrepair, the latter has been renovated to an entirely new state of splendour. The hotel, which maintains its 19th-century vibe, can no longer be described as having ‘faded grandeur’; after the extensive and careful renovation, it certainly earns its ‘luxury’ stripes.
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The Agatha Christie Room, Room 411 in the Pera Palace Hotel, Jumeirah
Which is why the Pera Palace is the perfect spot to honour Christie, one of its most famous guests. And I can’t imagine a better way to honour Christie than by sitting in this sumptuous setting and listening to crime writers discuss all things mystery.
Although the Black Week festival ostensibly begins on Thursday, October 22, the panels don’t begin until Friday, October 23. At 5 pm, we’ll hear Alexander McCall Smith, the man behind the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, and Esmahan Aykol, who is best known for her Kati Hirschel mystery novels, discuss female detectives. Next on the docket is a panel titled ‘Catch the Murderer’, followed by a discussion of Agatha Christie’s work. On Saturday, October 24, there are three more panels on crime: ‘Crime Fiction in Popular Culture’, ‘Crime Fiction as a City Story’ and ‘Detective as a Crime Fiction Character’. The last panel features the Turkish author Ahmet Ümit who is beloved for his thrillers. Click here for the full programme.
Even if you don’t care much about Agatha Christie or whodunnit, you should stop by just for the lavish setting. And maybe, just maybe, these masterful storytellers will reel you in.
The photographer and author Lynn Gilbert has been sharing her exquisite and captivating images of Turkish homes on the Cornucopia blog over the course of the past year. Each post feels like an insider’s peek into her travels across Turkey and presents vivid, unstaged photographs of traditional Turkish interiors and exteriors. Whether in the remote village of Camili or the bustling port of Bodrum, Lynn captures the beauty of the domestic realm, which is often overlooked in favour of more monumental architecture and design.
We are delighted to announce that Lynn’s photographs of Turkish homes are currently on display at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum in Flushing, NY, in an exhibition titled ‘Along the Silk Roads’. In celebration of this exhibition, which runs until December 15, Lynn has created a video documenting her inspiration as an artist and how her work evolved to focus on Turkey. It also features many of her photographs of Turkish interiors, a real treat for those of us who have been following her work on the blog.
Without further ado:
Please visit our event listing for more information on the exhibition, including visiting hours.
The 14th Istanbul Biennial is winding down just as the cooler weather rolls in. It seems somehow appropriate. On my trip to the Princes Island last week the sea air blew cold and nipped at my neck to the point where I could barely contemplate anything beyond the icy breeze. While travelling across the salty sea is part of the Biennial experience, according to the curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, I eschewed the health benefits of salt water – the material that is the much-touted focus of this Biennial – and went inside the ferry to huddle up next to a heater with a warm tea in hand.
Yet the end of the Biennial is also bittersweet; it has been a truly incredible two months of art. After visiting more of the venues, I’ve compiled another list of my favourite works. The focus will be on the Galata Greek Primary School and Büyükada, both of which are host to some mammoth installations that are in close conversation with the site (and space) they occupy. This, to me, is the appeal of such a far-flung and large-scale biennial: site-specific works that would never feel at home in a gallery or even a museum.
Galata Greek Primary School
The Galata Greek Primary School houses a focused and concise collection of works, especially when compared to the 13th Istanbul Biennial for which the school was packed to the brim. Each floor is dedicated either to a single artist or to two artists whose works complement one another. Overall, the works touched on the subject of people who have disappeared or been made invisible.
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Anna Boghiguian, ‘The Salt Traders’ (2015)
Anna Boghiguian’s installation ‘The Salt Traders’ (2015) is the first piece you see upon entering the school, and it is one of the best in the Biennial. Two sails hang from the ceiling – one a dark red, the other featuring a map of the world – and salt is scattered in piles on the floor. In front of a line of windows there are what look like chalkboards, with frames from a beehive taking the place of the boards. The orderly placement of these frames is punctured by the very different materials inside them: there are coloured salts, decaying honeycomb, historic photographs, sketches and paintings of maps, Ottoman power structures, the sea and much more. As a whole, these structures create an interesting dialogue on nature, art and historical narratives. Boghiguian describes the work as a boat carrying salt in ancient times reappearing in a future, post-digital world. Yet the installation reminded me of the global shipping routes run by Armenian merchants in the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries, and the devastating political and social effects the rise and fall of economic networks such as these can have.
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Michael Rakowitz, ‘The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours’ (2015)
Another large-scale work that reflects on the Armenian past and present is Michael Rakowitz’s ‘The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours’ (2015). It seems appropriate, in the literal sense, that one room features a giant table strewn with dogs' bones from Sivriada, the island were Istanbul’s stray dogs were sent in 1911. Also on the table (and covering the floor of an entirely separate room) are plaster casts of mouldings and friezes designed by the Armenian artisan Gabaret Cezayirliyan for the city’s Art Nouveau buildings. Using an ancient tradition of mixing dogs' bones in plaster, Rakowitz is resurrecting both the dogs and the design knowledge of an Armenian community that has severely diminished in size over the past century. On display in another room are the rubbings of architectural motifs found on buildings in Istanbul that were designed by Armenians. As a whole, the installation reflects on the expulsion and erasure of certain populations, while also rebuilding what has been lost.
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Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, ‘From the Island of the Day Before’ (2015)
On the same floor as Rakowitz’s work is Hera Büyüktaşçıyan’s installation ‘From the Island of the Day Before’ (2015). Occupying what used to be the school’s library, the installation recreates this centre of learning by lining the walls with cupboards filled with books and educational items from the Galata Greek School’s archives. On a table in the centre of the room 668 notebooks are piled high in the shape of an island, and hidden in each one is the name of a known students of the school. The installation poses the question of where these students are now, while simultaneously creating an environment where we, as the audience, become the students. Sitting on one of the school’s old benches and contemplating the topography created by Büyüktaşçıyan, you can’t help but feel the school has come alive again.
Finally, the Mumbai-based artist Prabhakar Pachpute has created multiple works on the lives of coal miners and the trauma and psychological impact of working deep in the bowels of the earth. Though all the works fall under the title of ‘What We Have Left is the Blue Water’ (2015), the most striking is a classroom that Pachpute has transformed into a coal mine. With flashlight in hand, you can explore this underground world and the miners who populate it.
Princes Islands
Exploring the venues on Büyükada, the main Princes Islands venue – with the staging of works in old mansions no longer in use – felt like an escape into the past. The fact that the art on display, while both grand and captivating, does not critically engage with the island, Istanbul or any other broader regional issues furthered this idea of travelling to Büyükada as an escape of sorts.
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Adriàn Villar Rojas, ‘The Most Beautiful of All Mothers’ (2015)
You can’t go to Büyükada and not mention the artist Adrián Villar Rojas and his stunning installation ‘The Most Beautiful of All Mothers’ (2015). Staged in the sea at the foot of the Yanaros Mansion, more commonly known as Leon Trotsky’s house, are Villar Rojas's gigantic sculptures of animals. Composed of both organic and inorganic materials, each sculpture has one animal cast in white fibreglass which is burdened by another animal made of organic materials such as wood, pottery and cloth. As the de facto showpiece of the Biennial – a photograph of the installation is featured in just about every write-up I’ve seen – it certainly does impress.
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Marcos Lutyens, ‘Neurathian Boatstrap’ (2015)
Yet I found myself drawn to other works on the island. The two installations on the Kaptan Paşa Sea Bus heavily featured salt water and the sea. Marcos Lutyens’s installation ‘Neurathian Boatstrap’ (2015) has you enter into the centre of the ferry, which has been covered in a type of rough felt, through an increasingly narrow entryway made of old wooden planks. Once you’ve arrived, you find an overturned dinghy that has been stripped to its skeleton. There are many working parts in this installation (more than can be mentioned here), yet they come together to form an hypnotic space.
When you walk to the top of the Kaptan Paşa Sea Bus you'll find Pınar Yoldaş’s installation ‘Saltwater Heart’ (2015, main featured image). Salt water is pumped through a series of tubes reminiscent of blood vessels. Watching the water make its way through the structure, against a backdrop of an expanse of blue sky, is mesmerising.
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Merve Kılıçer, ‘Mater.ial’ (2014–2015)
Merve Kılıçer’s installation ‘Mater.ial’ (2014–2015) at the Büyükada Public Library is another favourite. Though not nearly as grand as the other installations on the island, Kılıçer’s drawings, etchings and prints are both delicate and powerful. I was particularly drawn to her two handmade books; they tell the creation stories of Tiamat and Inanna with intricate, colourful, other-worldly drawings.
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Susan Philipsz, ‘Elettra’ (2015)
One of the major draws of the Biennial exhibitions on Büyükada seems to be the venues themselves. In the Rizzo Palace, a traditional wooden house that has been unoccupied since 2010, the crowds were more interested in taking photographs of the decrepit building than watching Ed Atkins’s stirring video installation ‘Hisser’ (2015). The same was true, though to a lesser degree, for William Kentridge’s five-channel video installation, ‘O Sentimental Machine’, at the Hotel Splendid Palas, a stately, Art Nouveau-inspired building.
The work most in tune with its surroundings is Susan Philipsz’s ‘Elettra’ (2015) at the Mizzi Mansion. This installation focuses on the remains of the ship Elletra, which belonged to Guglielmo Marconi, the radio-telegraphy pioneer. Philipsz photographed the remaining segments of the ship, which had been cut up after falling into a state of disrepair. The photographic prints are paired with underwater recordings, ranging from radio signals to the sounds of boat engines. Influenced by Marconi's idea that every sound we ever make is still out there, Philipsz explores the spatial qualities of sound, and their relationship with architecture. As you sit listening to the sounds of the sea bouncing off the old mansion's walls, you'll begin to look at the space as a part of the installation – site-specific artwork at its best.
The Biennial runs until November 1, although the Biennial exhibition at Istanbul Modern has been extended to November 26.
Translators, your day in the sun has come. The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) has established the Talât Sait Halman Translation Award to be given out annually in support of outstanding translations of literary works into Turkish, including but not limited to poetry, short stories and novels. The application deadline is Friday, November 6.
Talât Sait Halman, who passed away last year, held a number of prestigious positions in government and international organizations. Not only was he Turkey’s first ever Minister of Culture and later its ambassador for Cultural Affairs, but he also held positions at the United Nations and UNESCO. Halman was no less accomplished in the academic realm. He taught at some of the world’s best universities: Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, where he also served as chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures for ten years. Halman also founded the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent University.
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Yet at the heart of it all, Halman was a writer, poet and translator. And a prolific one at that – he published 75 books and over 3,000 articles, studies, newspaper columns and essays in English and Turkish (he even found the time to write for Cornucopia). Halman is also well-known for his own poems and his translations of poetry. I first became acquainted with Halman’s work when I was gifted Nightingales and Pleasure Gardens: Turkish Love Poems, a treasured book that has accompanied me on many cross-continental moves. Most notably, Halman translated the complete sonnets of Shakespeare into Turkish, and his last book published before his death was William Shakespeare: Aşk ve Anlatı Şiirleri (Shakespeare’s Poems of Love and Narration). With this 4,000 verse book, all of Shakespeare’s works have been translated into the Turkish language.
Applications must be e-mailed to tshbasvuru@iksv.org or sent to IKSV (Nejat Eczacıbaşı Binası, Sadi Konuralp Cad. No: 5, 34433 Şişhane, Istanbul). Either publishers or translators themselves can submit a translation for consideration. Only literary works translated into Turkish are eligible for submission; the original language of the text is irrelevant. Books translated into Turkish in the same calendar year as the award are eligible.
The selection committee, which is headed by the author Doğan Hızlan and consists of the author, translator, and critic Sevin Okyay, the author and translator Ahmet Cemal, the author and translator Yiğit Bener and the author Kaya Genç, will determine the winning translation. The committee’s decision will be announced in December 2015, and the winning translator will be presented with a onetime award of 15,000 TL.
One of the major appeals of Istanbul is that there are always art exhibitions and cultural events right at your fingertips. Yet FotoIstanbul, Istanbul’s only comprehensive photography festival, has really taken this to a new meaning, at least for me. Organised by the Beşiktaş Belediyesi, this festival is staged at various venues in Beşiktaş and Ortaköy, one of which happens to be just down the street from my apartment.
Seeing the Orphanage in Ortaköy, a familiar sight on my walk home, from a new and different perspective proved to be transformative – it was no longer an empty, decrepit building, but rather a home and shelter for the lives of so many. Similarly, the site of a collapsed building close to the Beşiktaş ferry terminal was cleared of rubble and opened to the public as an open-air exhibition space. Taking a page out of the Biennial’s playbook, the organisers of this year’s FotoIstanbul have redefined and repurposed space. The resulting fracture between expectation and reality gives the viewer a chance to consider the works on display – in this case, photographs of others’ lives – when their defenses are down.
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The repurposed Orphanage in Ortaköy
A festival, though, is more than its exhibition space. What makes FotoIstanbul so compelling are the impressive photographers (and there are many) on display. I was particularly thrilled by the exhibition’s focus on the Middle East and Central Asia. While photographs of this area of the world often contain Orientalist undertones (or, in some cases, are overtly so), the projects included in FotoIstanbul generally don’t essentialise or exoticise, and in many cases the photographers themselves hail from the region. As a whole, the festival felt like an honest attempt to show the lives of others.
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Diana Markosian
In her project ‘1915’, the Armenian-American photographer Diana Markosian tells the stories of three survivors of the First World War, all over the age of 100 and living in Armenia. She travelled to Turkey to retrace their steps, bring back a piece of their memory and fulfil a wish for each one. The large-scale colour photographs of these three facing mementos from their past in Turkey are poignant without being exaggerated.
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Tanya Habjouqa
Tanya Habjouqa documents the more ludicrous aspects of everyday life that have come out of the 47-year occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Focusing on what may be considered the most mundane moments, Habjouqa demonstrates how Palestinians don’t allow their sorrow over the conflict to define their existence. After soaking in her images, it will come as no surprise that she won the World Press Award in 2014 for this series.
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Two of Stanley Greene’s photographs on display at the Orphanage
The accomplished photojournalist Stanley Greene takes us to the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh in his project ‘Chalk Lines’, which is a direct reference to the outlines made around dead bodies during a crime scene. Greene, who describes himself as ‘not of the digital school’, aims to share the untold stories, especially after the big story has died down. His black and white photographs show life in the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a region in Azerbaijan populated primarily by ethnic Armenians, during and after the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory, which ran from 1988 to 1994.
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One of Esa Ylijaasko’s photographs on display at the Orphanage
In his project ‘A Paradise Full of Song’, the Finnish photograph Esa Ylijaasko documents the Syrian Kurdish refugee community who settled into ruined houses in the district around Süleymaniye Mosque. The black and white photographs show lives that have stagnated, and the photographs' imperfections, which suggest that Ylijaasko shot on film, add a grittiness that is both literal and figurative.
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One of Lela Ahmadzai’s photographs of the singer Pary Kholamy
Perhaps the most engrossing series in this festival is ‘Undaunted: Four Women in Kabul – Their Struggles and Dreams’, a long-term project by the multimedia journalist Lela Ahmadzai. Housed in shipping containers near the Beşiktaş ferry terminal, this series documents the lives of four women in Kabul: Shinkai Karokhail is a member of parliament, Reza Guel operates her own bakery, Saba Sahar works as a police officer and producer of detective films and Pary Kholamy is a singer. The photographs of each woman are displayed with their own descriptions of their lives in Kabul, which together create a detailed narrative of their triumphs and trials.
While these were the highlights for me, almost all of the photographers I saw captured the lives of others from a unique perspective. There truly is something for everyone (really, I promise). You can find the festival at the historic Orphanage in Ortaköy, the Beşiktaş pier, Serencebey on Barbaros Boulevard and the Köyiçi Eagle in Beşiktaş. One of the joys of this particular festival is that it is public art at its finest – you can easily pop into most venues while going about your daily life.
‘The Lives of Others’ ends on Sunday, November 8. Visit the festival’s website for more detailed information.
Each November in Istanbul there is a flurry of action in anticipation of Contemporary Istanbul, the region’s premier art fair. Galleries ready themselves for one of the biggest events on the Istanbul art scene and the public eagerly anticipates opening day, when they can wander through some of the best contemporary art on offer in Turkey and beyond.
What is particularly exciting about the 10th edition of Contemporary Istanbul is the section with a specific focus on art from Tehran. Each year the fair showcases a cutting-edge selection of contemporary art from a specific geographic region or on a relevant subject. With the decision to highlight galleries from Tehran just as it looks like US sanctions against Iran will be lifted, Contemporary Istanbul is shrewdly positioning itself as a place for collectors and visitors to get a taste of the rich contemporary art scene in Iran, which up until now has remained out of reach for most. The works presented are by both emerging and established artists such as Nasser Bakhshi from Aaran Gallery, Babak Roshaninejad from Assar Gallery, Ali Akbar Sadeghi from Shirin Gallery, Moreshin Allahyari from Lajevardi Foundation and Houman Mortazavi from Dastan’s Basement.
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Ali Akbar Sadeghi, ‘Animal Hunt From the Unwritten Series’, 2010, ink, acrylic, gold and silver leaf on canvas, 126 x 237 m, Shirin Gallery
The fair will also be organising a Plugin New Media section for the third year running. Curated around the theme of ‘X-CHANGE’, which focuses on mutations and the processes and operations of transformation. If your interests lie in the intersection of contemporary art and technology, you should wind your way down to this display.
Even if you’re not a fan of new media and its use in contemporary art, you should still visit this basement lair as it’s where you’ll find the Cornucopia team. That’s right, we have a booth and will be selling our wares – both current and past issues, as well as selected book titles – and providing witty banter (although the latter depends on what time of day you catch us).
We’ll also provide our thoughts on the fair in real time, so watch this space for an update on this massive triumph of contemporary art.
Contemporary Istanbul runs from November 12–15. Visit their website to learn more information about the participating galleries and the fair’s full programme.
Disturbing headlines have dominated the news this past week, and my Facebook and Twitter feeds have been full of sorrow, anger and hopelessness. It can feel like too much hurt, too much grief; just too much. Yet I found some sort of relief, like so many do, in art. Visiting the Contemporary Istanbul art fair on Saturday, I was reminded of our capacity to create beauty, initiate dialog and challenge norms. The art on display didn’t magically make everything better, but it did provide a counterpoint to images of carnage and destruction in Beirut, Silvan, Baghdad and Paris.
As you enter the Istanbul Congress Centre, it’s at first easy to forget the outside world. With its lack of windows and maze-like set-up, the exhibition space is eerily reminiscent of a casino. Luckily I don’t particularly mind getting sucked into a labyrinth of art.
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Ramazan Bayrakoğlu, ‘Portrait of Stefan Clapczynski’, 2015, stitched fabric mounted on canvas, 143 x 250 cm, Galerie Lelong
Wandering through the displays, I notice that the fair has more of an Istanbul-centric focus, especially when compared to ArtInternational. If you’ve ever wanted to get a better handle on the established and emerging galleries and art initiatives in Istanbul, this is the perfect place and time to do it.
There are, of course, some of the big European names showing their wares. The Paris-based Galerie Lelong displayed two works, one plexiglass and one fabric, from Ramazan Bayrakoğlu, an artist who lives and works in Izmir and a favourite of mine from ArtInternational. Their booth also featured a number of blue-chip Modern Art works by artists such as Miró, Picasso and Chagall.
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Lang/Baumann, ‘Wave #2’, 2015, aluminium and lacquer, 40 x 187 x 29.7 (each panel), Galerie Loevenbruck
Galerie Loevenbruck, another Paris-based gallery, had some mesmerising works by Lang/Baumann. By painting lacquer on aluminium, the artists have created works that change colour depending on your perspective. Lang/Baumann, a Swiss duo, are known for their architectural installations – one of which you can see at the entrance to the fair – and these works manage to retain that architectural feel while also questioning human sense perception.
As for the Turkish galleries, there were too many highlights to mention. It’s no surprise that The Empire Project, owned and directed by the consistently excellent curator Kerimcan Güleryüz, had some outstanding works on display. My favourite was Burhan Kum’s ‘Once I was a Dictator II’ (main featured image), which shows a man in colourful royal garb reclining against the backdrop of an Istanbul that is falling to pieces; there are massive fires, explosions and sinking ships. As a friend noted, it uses 19th-century disasters as a way of considering the destruction of the city in the 21st century.
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Arzu Eş, ‘couldn’tspeakawordinpain’, 2015, handwriting and acrylic on fabric,182 x 100 cm, Kare Art Gallery
There were some familiar artists being shown by Turkish galleries. I was delighted to see Emin Mete Erdoğan’s acrylic-on-aluminium work ‘Terraforming 2’ at x-ist’s booth, as the gallery just recently hosted a show titled Entroforming featuring similar work from Erdoğan. Kare Art Gallery, meanwhile, had an art kilim by the artist Belkıs Balpınar, who is also the subject of a solo show currently being held at the gallery.
But some new-to-me names also caught my eye, like Arzu Eş, also from Kare Art Gallery, whose work ‘couldn’tspeakawordinpain’ features a woman lying almost in repose with what look to be dead doves scattered around her. The outlines of the doves and the contours of the garment covering the woman’s body are made up of tightly-packed handwriting, a choice that adds an aspect of storytelling to the piece. I was also drawn to two of the rare photography pieces at the fair. These were by Ahmet Elhan of Galeri Zilberman, and both – titled ‘Old Mosque’ and ‘Patriarchate’ respectively – used the layering of multiple photographic images to create gaps that demand extra study and attention from the viewer.
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Ali Akbar Sadeghi, ‘Animal Hunt From the Unwritten Series’, 2010, ink, acrylic, gold and silver leaf on canvas, 126 x 237 m, Shirin Gallery
This year the fair had a special focus on galleries from Tehran. While the number of participating galleries was a bit smaller than I had anticipated, those who came are some of the highlights of the fair. In particular I was drawn to Shirin Gallery and Ali Akbar Sadeghi’s work, which incorporates materials like gold and silver leaf that are not often seen in European contemporary art. Moreover, his animation series looked to me like a play on Persian miniatures. This new perspective on traditional materials and forms is one of many reasons why the Tehran galleries deserve extra attention this year.
Having had my fill of the galleries, I headed down to the curated Plugin New Media section, which I was told would be exceptional. I fully admit, though, that I was sceptical about this segment, which was curated around the theme of ‘X-CHANGE’. I was expecting an assortment of experimental and potentially esoteric video installations, admittedly not my favourite form of contemporary art. Instead I was treated to some unimaginable works: 3D visualisations, kinetic sculptures creating new forms through the use of lights and mirrors, and a machine named Franz that allows mushrooms to grow until the mutual interaction between the fungi and the machine is inevitably terminated.
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One of the poems composed by Deniz Yılmaz, part of Bager Akbay’s ‘The Pitiful Story of Deniz Yılmaz’, 2015, software and installation
I was particularly enamoured of Bager Akbay’s poetry-writing robot, whom he named Deniz Yılmaz. According to Akbay (represented at Contemporary Istanbul by Blok Art Space), the project is ‘research as an art practice’. Deniz represents Akbay’s attempt to turn a human into a ‘stone’ as a means to experiment with human perception and address the issue of robot rights. The poems written by Deniz, which were submitted to a newspaper for publication, are on display, as is the machine itself, alongside a video with English subtitles, which can also be watched here.
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Morehshin Allahyari, ‘Material Speculation: ISIS, Lamassu’, 2015, Lajevardi Foundation
It was only as I was making my way out of the Plugin section that I stumbled upon Morehshin Allahyari’s work ‘Material Speculation: ISIS’. Represented by the Lajevardi Foundation at Contemporary Istanbul, Allahyari presents this in-progress 3D-modelling and 3D-printing project that focuses on the reconstruction of artifacts destroyed by ISIS in 2015. She has so far recreated statues from the Roman city of Hatra, and Assyrian artifacts from Nineveh using 3D printing, which she views as a tool and process for repairing history and memory. What is most fascinating about the project is that each 3D model is a time capsule – inside each body is a memory card with images, maps, PDF files and videos on the artefact, and instructions for accessing the memory card without destroying the object itself. It was the perfect piece to end on, before making the transition back to the outside world, as it acutely demonstrated the ways in which art can respond to and engage with the political realities of our time.
Today (November 15) is the last day to check out Contemporary Istanbul. Don’t miss your chance!
It’s almost that time of year to deck the halls with boughs of kokina (butcher’s broom) and gaze in amazement at the ornament-adorned trees and Santa Clauses that flood Istanbul’s shopping centres each year – all in the name of celebrating the New Year, mind you.
While it can be disorienting to see all the accoutrements of Christmas in a country with a majority Muslim population (even though St Nicholas is Turkish-born), there’s no denying that it creates a festive atmosphere. This seasonal spirit is further bolstered by the many holiday and Christmas markets that set up shop at the end of November and early December.
There is the annual International Women of Istanbul (IWI) Christmas Charity Festival, which will be held on Sunday, November 29. This festival has expanded over the years and is now one of the biggest in the city, with a portion of the funds earned going to IWI-supported charities. People rave about the international food on offer – IWI members are a diverse bunch and, as a result, women from all over the world will be sharing their national cuisines. The organisers have also added theatre, dance and choir performances to the roster this year, in addition to the traditional stalls selling Christmas gifts, which range from the handmade to the more generic.
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One of the DOBAG carpets mid-production
Another annual winter event is the DOBAG carpet sale. DOBAG, a Turkish acronym for ‘Natural Dye Research and Development Project’, was started in 1982 by Dr Harald and Ranata Böhmer as a way to revitalise carpet production in Turkey. By reconstructing old dye recipes and teaching these techniques to female weavers in areas with a long weaving tradition, Dr Böhmer and his wife were able to establish the first women’s rug-weaving cooperative in the region. The project, which is also supported by Marmara University in Istanbul, continues to empower women while also preserving the ancient folk art of weaving carpets by hand. Their annual sale, which will take place on November 28–29, is the best chance to purchase carpets that are superior in colour, construction and overall design directly from the women who make them. It’s a win-win situation.
A newcomer to this year’s winter festival lineup is the Holiday Craft Bazaar at Closet Circuit on December 4–6. (Full disclosure: I am one of the organisers of the bazaar.) The aim behind this event is to create an opportunity for local artists to sell their wares directly to the public. The host of the bazaar, Closet Circuit, is a gallery and event venue focused on sustainability in art, and the bazaar is part of their attempt to foster a more thoughtful and environmentally aware approach to holiday shopping. The participating artists are from a variety of fields, ranging from graphic design to painting, jewellery-making to ceramics. Each artist will donate a percentage of their income to HADD (Hisar Anadolu Destek Derneği), a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching children, particularly girls from low-income migrant families, skills to improve their lives.
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The photographer Noemie Deveaux will be participating in the Holiday Craft Bazaar at Closet Circuit
While these three events are heavily publicised, there are others that will certainly materialise in the next two months. It has been announced that Circolo Romo in Tepebaşı will host the Portobello Charity Bazaar on Wednesday, December 9, from 10:30 am until 7 pm, although the exact size and scope is unknown. This is rumoured to be the best place in the city for purchasing Italian wine and cheese, in addition to other traditional Italian products. The Private German High School (Özel Alman Lisesi) has also scheduled their annual Christmas fair for Saturday, November 28, from noon until 4 pm, but at the moment there is not much in the way of details.
Frankly, it’s surprising to see so many holiday fairs and markets in Istanbul of all places. Even more interesting is that they are not about jumping head first into rampant consumerism, but instead provide the chance to gather together, enjoy some holiday cheer and lend support to worthy causes. The season’s merry atmosphere – whether in celebration of Christmas or New Year’s, it doesn’t matter – has made itself at home in the city.
A work by Deborah Wargon at her recent Istanbul exhibition. Photograph: Monica Fritz
In a house in Balat on a quiet street just past St Mary of the Mongols, a fish is pinned to the wall above a bed. ‘My friend, the owner of this house, tells me this house belonged to a fisherman, so I’ve left it for her as a thank you,’ explains paper artist Deborah Wargon. The fish is a flounder, holding a snake in its mouth and like all of Wargon’s work in this remarkable exhibition, Expansions in Black – from The Paper Diaries 2015, it has been deftly ‘extracted’ from one piece of black paper. Nearby, a free-hanging piece cascades down the wall of the stairwell, looking like a worm frolicking with a ball, or from another angle, like an elegant virus under a microscope.
Downstairs, a whole wall is taken up with specimen box frames from Berlin’s Natural History Museum, in which Wargon has displayed a series of floating symmetrical pieces. Some shapes look like ‘hat’ or calligraphy fashioned into hands of Fatima or pears, but Wargon points out that some of them depict women. The entomological needles she has used to pin each paper sculpture to its box enhances their fragility, and in some specimen boxes, a real insect’s leg and handwritten labels remind the viewer of the boxes’ past function. This series looks dramatic as a set, but each piece is mesmerising in its own way.
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Mesmerising Expansions in Black. Photograph: Charlotte Schmitz
Unlike her paper creations, Wargon is hard to pin down to one place or label. An Australian-born composer and actress based in Berlin, she only began to cut paper five years ago when a Scandinavian friend brought her Christmas biscuits in paper that inspired them to start cutting shapes out. A warm, expansive personality, Wargon is the personality opposite of her precious, fragile work; one can imagine her playing the violin as well as she can liberate exquisite shapes from paper. This is her first exhibition in Turkey.
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Framed ‘Expansions’ available from Hiç Contemporary Crafts. Photographs: Charlotte Schmitz
If you missed the show in Balat, you can still see the eleven framed pieces – all for sale – at Hiç Contemporary Crafts at Lüleci Hendek Caddesi 35 in Galata, from Thursday, November 26 onwards. Cornucopia readers familiar with the Ibrahim Pasha Hotel’s elegant decor might recognise the hand of Emel Güntaş, owner of Hiç; she is married to the owner Mehmet Umur.
‘This is the notebook used by J.G. on his last trip in Turkey in 1951. I was wondering whether to throw it away, but it occurred to me that you might conceivably find some use for it in the Institute, so here it is. If you think it is no use, just throw it away. But there might be some odd bits of interesting information in it...’ So begins a letter from Oliver Gurney, the nephew of John Garstang (J.G.), to the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA). Clearly his contact found the book to be of use, for today it sits tucked beneath the letter in a display case at the Koç Research Centre for Anatolian Civilisations (RCAC) and not, fortunately, at the bottom of a landfill site. Opened at the last page, the notebook will look familiar to anyone who has wrestled with the Turkish language, a beautiful, orderly beast that somehow manages to be both consistent and complex: it contains a vocabulary list. In his neat cursive script, Garstang has jotted down English words and their Turkish translations on such subjects as the weather (‘Wind: Rüzgâr’), metals (‘Gold: Altın’) and geographical features (‘Hill: Tepe’). Seeing a man of his stature toil away at Turkish vocabulary is both endearing and riveting, and taken with the many other snippets of interesting information on display at the RCAC, a captivating portrait of the archaeologist John Garstang emerges from this compact exhibition.
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The aim of John Garstang’s Footsteps Across Anatolia, an exhibition curated by Alan M Greaves of Liverpool University, is to highlight the contribution of Garstang – a man who wore many hats – to the study of archaeology in Turkey and the Near East. Garstang’s archives of delicate glass photographic negatives, many dating from his survey of Anatolia and northern Syria in 1907, have been digitised over the course of five years by a team of technicians at the university and form the basis of the exhibition.
These images rightly deserve their day in the sun, for, as the very readable accompanying catalogue explains, they ‘established for the first time the full extent of the ancient Hittite Empire and effectively laid the foundation for Hittite historical geography as we know it today’.
The photographs and other objects in the exhibition are grouped thematiclly and tell the story of Garstang's 1907 journey across Anatolia and of his involvement in the region until his death in 1956. Their value lies not just in what they record – a vast network of Hittite monuments in Turkey and Syria, as well as the landscapes and people of the late Ottoman period – but also in what they tell us about the funding of archaeological research in the early 20th century.
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Garstang, seen here in a charming photograph taken in Egypt in 1901, was a lacklustre student of maths at Oxford and more or less stumbled into the study of archaeology. His interest in the subject, and specifically in the Hittites, was sparked by Archibald Sayce, Professor of Assyriology during his university years (1885–89). Sayce suspected that a pre-Hellenic empire was waiting to be discovered in Anatolia and encouraged Garstang to go in search of it. It was also Sayce who landed Garstang his first job in 1900 as an apprentice archaeologist on Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie’s excavations at Abydos in Egypt. Garstang eventually worked on 20 different sites across Egypt and Nubia for Petrie, and was influenced greatly by the eminent archaeologist's field practices, especially his use of photography as an archaeological recording method. Meanwhile, in 1902, during one of his breaks from fieldwork, Garstang – all of 26 years old – secured a position at the University of Liverpool, where he would work until 1941. Today, Liverpool's museum of archaeology is named after the man who came to be considered nothing less than a local hero for his work in popularising archaeology by writing and speaking on the subject often.
For all the relative ease of archaeological excavation in Egypt and Sudan, which were under British rule at the time, the Hittites remained an object of fascination for Garstang.In 1904 he travelled on foot across Anatolia searching for Hittite sites and recording his travels with his cameras. After identifying Boğazköy-Hattuša as a potential site on this initial journey, he applied to the Ottoman authorities, specifically Osman Hamdi Bey, for a permit to excavate it.
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HIT-TY-004
The permit was duly granted in 1907, but on his arrival in Anatolia Garstang learned that it had been revoked and issued instead to the German archaeologist Hugo Winckler – a change of heart that appeared to be political in nature. Disappointed but not discouraged, the young scholar hired horses in Ankara and set off on a second reconnaissance mission to find and record more Hittite sites, this time venturing into what is now central and southeastern Turkey and northern Syria. Early on in the journey he would pass the ruins of a Roman aqueduct arch at Tyana near Kemerhisar, Niğde (photographed above). But little did he know that the journey would lead to the biggest discovery of his academic career: the true extent of the Hittite Empire, as documented in numerous exquisite photographs.
It is this particular journey, undertaken in 1907, which the exhibition explores in detail. We also learn about Garstang’s field work in Sakçagözü, a site near Gaziantep where he had seen evidence of Hittite sculptures on his 1907 survey. During excavations in 1907–08 and 1911–12, Garstang uncovered a Hittite palace with carved stone relief slabs which are now the pride and joy of Ankara's Museum of Anatolian Civilisations. After much negotiation over many years, his plaster-cast copies of these massive slabs were eventually sent to Liverpool and displayed in the Hittite Gallery at the Liverpool Public Museum, only to be bombed and completely destroyed in the blitz of May 1941. It was also at Sakçagözü that Garstang toiled away, using photographs, maps, illustrations and drawings, at his masterpiece The Land of the Hittites (1910), which proved Sayce’s theory that the Hittite Empire had indeed been one of the great civilisations of the ancient Near East. What had only been speculation up to this point was finally proven with conclusive archaeological evidence. His book, with its maps of the Hittite Empire, also significantly contributed to the Turkish position during the negotiations for the Treaty of Lausanne and undoubtedly raised his esteem in Turkish political circles. Such a position was likely to have come in useful later when applying for excavation permits in Mersin in the late 1930s, and in setting up the British Institute at Ankara in 1948, one of Garstang’s most important legacies.
While two world wars and all the upheaval accompanying this period saw the nature of archaeological patronage shift away from artefact-driven excavations funded by industrialists towards academic institutions with a particular agenda, Garstang managed to maintain his relevance. He was nothing if not an exceptional fundraiser – one reason he was drawn to photography, for there was no more effective way to whet his sponsors’ appetites. The exhibition offers a close reading of two particular photographs that show how certain images were carefully crafted with British sponsors in mind.
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Symbols of the British Empire, including a pith helmet, canvas tent, British-style enamel teapot and mosquito nets, are prominently placed in this 1908 image of the archaeologists' camp at Sakçagözü.
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A 1907 photograph of Garstang sitting on the ground with locals shows a more relaxed atmosphere, without all the trappings of empire. The dichotomy between these two images shows two sides of Garstang: the clever marketer who knew how to raise funds, and the invested academic who cared deeply about documenting Hittite civilisation.
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Excavation trench in Sakçagözü, with Garstang supervising work, 1908 (SG-212)
Garstang recognised the importance of the way those in power perceived his work, and also seems to have been skilled in acquiring political capital. Yet he was still the devoted academic – even something of an absent-minded professor at times. The Australian archaeologist Veronica Seton-Williams recalls how Garstang cancelled a meeting with Atatürk under the pretense that he was ill – the real reason being that he had misplaced his suit trousers. It is the juxtaposition of details such as these with Garstang’s impressive archaeological discoveries that makes the exhibition so engrossing. John Garstang’s Footsteps Across Anatolia not only chronicles Garstang’s accomplishments – and judging by his work, he should be a household name by now – it also paints a comprehensive portrait of a man who was at once so extraordinary and so human.
Main featured image: the gate of a ruined palace at Sakçagözü, a late-Hittite site near Gaziantep, now in Ankara’s Museum of Anatolian Civilizations (all photographs courtesy of the Garstang Museum of Archaeology, University of Liverpool)
Ancient Ways, a three-part radio programme by Bettany Hughes, begins on BBC Radio 4 today. The historian traces the Via Egnatia from Rome to Istanbul to show how this vital artery helped shape Europe and the Middle East, spanning the Ancient, Byzantine, Ottoman and modern worlds. This, says the programme notes, is where the forces of the Roman republic lost to the heirs of Julius Caesar, and the route where St Paul brought Christianity to Europe. Later, it was the path the Crusaders took to the holy land, a vital Byzantine communication link and the base from which the Ottoman Turks controlled their vast European holdings.The author of Helen of Troy and The Hemlock Cup, about Socrates and Athens, Hughes has covered a broad range of topics on radio and television. Her two-part series Caucasian Roots, broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in September, was an entertaining and enlightening account of a journey through the Caucasus that, among other things, searched for the reason why Caucasian is a word chosen in the West to describe white people, and why it was once thought to be the height of beauty, while in Russia the opposite was the case.
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