Istanbul Modern screens artists' films
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
The program of Istanbul Modern Museum, ‘Artists’ Film International’ showcases many masterpieces from multiple artists. such as Sefer Memişoğlu, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Aleksandar Jestrovic Jamesdin and Alejandro Cesarco.
Showcasing contemporary video, animation and short film works from artists across the globe, Istanbul Modern Cinema presents a special program titled Artists’ Film International to run from Nov. 20 and 25.The project was initiated in 2008 with the title “Art in the Auditorium” by established London art institution Whitechapel Gallery. For “Artists’ Film International” each partner selects one video, film, or animation by an artist from their country. The international pool of videos is then screened throughout the year in programs or exhibitions held at partner institutions. Istanbul Modern has been a part of the program in years past with the works of İnci Eviner and Ergin Çavuşoğlu. The museum is participating in this year’s program with twelve partner art institutions from around the world.
This year Istanbul Modern has selected Sefer Memişoğlu’s 2011 video “BREEZE” and, in addition to the works selected by program partners, is also including videos by other Turkish artists in the program. The museum has thus created a special screening program under three separate headings for a comprehensive Artists’ Film International event. The museum is also holding a retrospective of Memişoğlu videos and a talk with the artist on Nov. 24.
The program will showcase many masterpieces from multiple artists. The 2012 partners are San Art, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Para Site, Hong Kong, China; Belgrade Cultural Centre, Belgrade, Serbia; Cinémathèque de Tanger, Tangier, Morocco; New Media Center, Haifa, Israel; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein Video-Forum, Berlin, Germany; Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey; Whitechapel Gallery, London, England; GAMeC /Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Bergamo, Italy; Fundacion Proa, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, Texas, USA; City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand.
The Artists’ Film International has been divided into three main programs.
The first program, titled “Refractions of Memory,” focuses on the social, individual, and political implications of issues pertaining to memory, including retention of a fact, situation, or event in one’s memory, and to calling it up later. Memİşoğlu’s work “Breeze” will be shown in this section, while Alejandro Cesarco’s Zeide Isaac, CorIn Sworn’s “Lens Prism.” Nguyen TrInh ThI’s “Song to the Front’ from ‘Vietnamese Classics Re-cut’ series,” LIu Chuang’s Untitled (Festival) will be shown in this section.
Following the program “Refractions in Memory,” which looks at memory on a macro level, the second program, “Relational Memory,” focuses on the individual. The program includes works that interpret the ways in which individuals remember their relationships with the people around them and the personal ties they establish.
Sriwhana Spong’s “Costume for a Mourner,” AlejandroCesarc’s “Evereness 2008,” Liu Chuang’s, “Untitled (Dancing Partner),” Aleksandar Jestrovic Jamesdin’s, “Last Tango” will be shown in this section.
This year’s Full Art Prize winner Aslı Çavuşoğlu’s “The Petty Travel Show for a Dear Audience,” from 2009 will also be also in this section. Camila Rocha. The third part of the program “Uniformisation” looks at memory’s relationship with politics and power, and questions situations that are not noticed at first by the individual or society but make their way into the mind, forming a certain point of view.
The program’s guests
Turkish artist Memişoğlu is the guest of this year’s program. He lives and works in Amsterdam and Istanbul. His works are based on the aesthetics of photography and video. His art practice took shape through experimentation in related media such as software drawing, photographic scanning, and computer graphics. In his works, the image is concretized into an object that represents the ‘information-object,’ which becomes a communication tool to convey information derived from complex concepts. In asking himself which rules art applies itself to in order to become political, the artist aims to show a reality that is not visual, or reality’s fourth dimension. In his mobile painting project BREEZE he expresses in a constructed manner social memory and popular culture’s reality of consumption thanks to images of a documentary nature and the pixel-based structure of digital media.
