Istanbul revealed at international video and art event

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Visual and video artists as well as photographers from 22 countries will take part in the Hidden Cities in Istanbul.

Hidden Cities, an international video art festival and photography exhibition, will be held in Istanbul this month. The Koza Visual Culture and Arts Association will today open its doors for the show, organized by International ArtExpo, through May 12. Sixty-one visual artists, 38 video artists and 23 photographers from 22 different countries have been selected to take part in the project.

The pieces included in the show reflect the main concept of “Hidden Cities,” analyzing the hybridization of physical and social identities in contemporary cities.

“It is a sociological and urban topic rather than an architectural one: hidden cities, without being hyperbolic, whether in negative terms, regarding their size, their population, their infrastructural problems, their tendency to criminality, or in positive terms, regarding their dynamism, their variegated street life, the sheer originality of so much culture on any level, the intensity of their artistic production,” read a written statement from the event’s organizers.

Hidden realities urban dwellers are facing

Beyond mere documentation, the basic idea is for Hidden Cities to be an international confrontation, which should reflect the hidden realities urban dwellers are facing, and highlight the need for concerted action. Urban averages often mask hidden pockets of ill-health and overlooked populations. By unmasking hidden cities the most deprived populations can be identified and practical measures can be taken to improve their precarious existence.

“Hidden cities also host a magical treasure which has become lost in the new ‘well-designed’ anonymous skyscraper geometries. The mechanism of uncontrolled and unpredictable situations and the struggle for life brings people together, unlocks doors, and orients their gaze towards neighbors or casual passers-by, ready to talk, ready to smile.

“Hidden cities refer to those places that provide a slice of hidden urban life, where inhabitants enjoy their relationship with the city. What matters is not whether the city itself becomes a protagonist in photography or video art, but how the city becomes a place for human lives to be lived, and how those lives necessarily involve interaction with the dimensions, parameters, and convolutions of the city. Of course there is something like a real city. But that real city has no real meaning in and of itself. … There is a quote by Julio Cortazar, speaking of Buenos Aires: ‘It is, like all the cities, a metaphor,’” said landscape architect Elis Saint-Juste Gluckstein.