Transitional Territories: Confluence of Art and Anthropology in the Practices of Contemporary Artists from Turkey 9783839460313

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Ayşe Güngör Transitional Territories

Image   |  Volume 204

To my grandfather, Mehmet Akalin, who passed away before the completion of my research.

Ayşe Güngör, born in 1985, completed her PhD in Art History at Technische Universität Berlin. In 2020, she worked as a Postdoc Fellow at Kunsthistorisches Institut Florenz – Max Planck Institut. She organized several workshops on “Art and Anthropology” and has teaching experience from various universities, including Technische Universität Berlin, where she is still working as a lecturer. In addition to her research, she is also working as a freelance curator in Berlin. Her research interests include the relation between art and anthropology, politics of aesthetics, and visual anthropology.

Ayşe Güngör

Transitional Territories Confluence of Art and Anthropology in the Practices of Contemporary Artists from Turkey

Thesis: Technische Universität Berlin, Institut für Kunstwissenschaft und Historische Urbanistik Examiners: Prof. Dr. Bärbel Küster, Prof. Dr. Kerstin Wittmann-Englert, Assoc. Prof. Levent Soysal.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http:// dnb.d-nb.de © 2022 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Maria Arndt, Bielefeld (based on a design by Ayşe Güngör) Cover illustration: Nil Yalter, “Rahime, Kurdisch Woman from Turkey.”, 1979, Photos: Lewis Bush Copy-editing: Hannah Froehle Proofread: Hannah Froehle Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-6031-9 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-6031-3 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839460313 ISSN of series: 2365-1806 eISSN of series: 2702-9557 Printed on permanent acid-free text paper.

Contents

Table of Figures .................................................................... 7 INTRODUCTION...................................................................... 11 1. Key Concepts.................................................................. 16 2. Scope of the Research........................................................ 20 3. Research Questions ........................................................... 21 4. Methodology.................................................................. 22 5. Theoretical Significance of the Research ...................................... 24 6. Research Structure ........................................................... 26 CHAPTER I – ON THE RELATION BETWEEN ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY ................ 29 1. An Introduction to the Relationship Between Art and Anthropology ............. 29 2. Critiques of Ethnographic Practices and Representation ........................ 31 3. Experimental Strategies in Anthropology and Aesthetic Implications of the Anthropological Research .............................................. 43 CHAPTER II – AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CONTEMPORARY ART ........... 1. Questioning Hal Foster’s Concept ‘Ethnographic Turn in Arts’ ................... 2. Ethnographic Fieldwork as an Artistic Practice ................................ 3. Art, Anthropology and Socially Engaged Art Practices .......................... 4. Practices Between Art and Anthropology ...................................... 5. New Genealogies and Representation Strategies...............................

47 47 49 52 64 74

CHAPTER III - THE EMERGENCE OF CONTEMPORARY ART IN TURKEY................. 77 1. The Recognition of “Contemporary” in the Art Scene of Turkey ................. 77 2. Breaking Points in the Contemporary Art in Turkey ............................ 84 3. Impacts of Globalization in Contemporary Art Scene in Turkey ................. 94 4. From Socially Engaged Art to Ethnographic Practices .......................... 117

CHAPTER IV – ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICES OF CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS FROM TURKEY ............................................................... 123 I. An Introduction to Art and Anthropology Practices in the Context of Turkey ... 123 1. Approaching Immigrant Communities Through Art: Nil Yalter.................. 126 2. Unveiling Hybrid Identities: Gülsün Karamustafa .............................. 137 3. Social Engagement Strategies: Esra Ersen..................................... 147 4. Construction of Identity: Kutluğ Ataman ...................................... 163 5. Doing Archival Ethnography: Tayfun Serttaş ................................... 177 6. Doing Fieldwork as an Artist: Köken Ergun.................................... 189 7. Situationist Strategies in Everyday Life: Dilek Winchester..................... 202 8. A Critical Approach to Documentation: Artıkişler Video Collective ............. 209 CONCLUSION...................................................................... 223 Evaluation of the Theoretical Discussions.......................................... 223 Overview of the Case .............................................................. 226 Discussion of the Works in Context ................................................ 230 General Evaluation ................................................................ 238 Concluding Remarks .............................................................. 240 Acknowledgments................................................................ 243 Bibliography...................................................................... 245

Table of Figures

  Figure

Title

Page

Figure 1

Susan Hiller, From the Freud Museum (1991-96), Glass, 50 cardboard boxes, paper, video, slide, light bulbs and other materials, Tate London

p. 69

Figure 2

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965), Wood folding chair, mounted photograph of a chair, and mounted photographic enlargement of the dictionary definition of "chair"

p. 73

Figure 3

Altan Gürman, Montaj 4 (1967), cellulose paint and barbed wire on wood, 123x140x9 cm

p. 81

Figure 4

Füsun Onur’s 1982 installation “Çiçekli Kontrpuan” exhibited in Arter (2014)

p. 82

Figure 5

Catalogue cover for the 4th Istanbul Biennial in 1995 curated by René Block

p. 100

Figure 6

We're Papermen", he said. 2003, Installation: 2 DVD projections, 1 slide projection, texts and photos on used paper, 8th Istanbul Biennial, 2003

p. 102

Figure 7

Invitation for the opening of "Yerleşmek", Proje4L, 2001 – "Becoming a Place"

p. 110

Figure 8

Nil Yalter, Installation view of Topak Ev / A Nomad’s Tent: A Study of Private, Public, and Feminine Spaces (1973)

p. 127

Figure 9

Nil Yalter, Temporary Dwellings (1974), 12 collages with polaroids, objects and drawings on temporary dwellings of immigrants in Paris, New York and Istanbul

p. 130

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  Figure

Title

Page

Figure 10

Nil Yalter, Turkish Immigrants (1977), installation consisting of photographs and drawings on Turkish immigrant workers and their families in Paris

p. 131

Figure 11

Nil Yalter, Snapshot from Ris-Orangis (1979), black and white video (24’)

p. 132

Figure 12

Nil Yalter, Rahime, a Kurdish woman from Turkey (1979), mixed media installation, Video 55’, photographs and drawings on the story of Rahime

p. 134

Figure 13

A Playground in the Net of Gendered Relations (1996), mixed media and video installation. Kültür–Shedhalle, Zurich

p. 140

Figure 14

Gülsün Karamustafa, Unawarded Performances (2005), video stills

p. 143

Figure 15

Gülsün Karamustafa, Unawarded Performances (2005), video stills

p. 145

Figure 16

Esra Ersen, Installation View from I am Turkish, I am Diligent, I am Honest (1998), mixed media, Realschule Velen, Münster, Germany

p. 149

Figure 17

Esra Ersen, Installation view from “Brothers and Sisters” (2008), Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Anandale-on-Hudson, NY

p. 152

Figure 18

Esra Ersen, This is the Disney World (2000), video stills, 9’15”

p. 153

Figure 19

Esra Ersen, Installation view from Brothers and Sisters (2003), from “Exciting Europe” Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig

p. 154

Figure 20

Esra Ersen’s, Brothers and Sisters (2003), video stills, 23’20’’

p. 156

Figure 21

Esra Ersen, Passengers (2009), stills from multi-channel video installation, I. channel: 28’10“, II. channel: 21’16“

p. 158

Figure 22

Kutluğ Ataman, Installation view from semiha b. unplugged (2005), MCA, Sydney, Australia

p. 165

Figure 23

Kutluğ Ataman, Never My Soul (2001), video still

p. 167

Figure 24

Kutluğ Ataman, Installation view from Küba (2005), Carnegie International, Pittsburg, USA

p. 169

Figure 25

Kutluğ Ataman, Paradise (2006), video stills

p. 172

Table of Figures

  Figure

Title

Page

Figure 26

Tayfun Serttaş, exhibition view from his archival work Stüdyo Osep (2009)

p. 179

Figure 27

Tayfun Serttaş’s, photos from his archival work Studyo Osep (2009)

p. 180

Figure 28

Tayfun Serttaş, photos from his archival work Foto Galatasaray – Studio Practice by Maryam Şahinyan (2011)

p. 181

Figure 29

Tayfun Serttaş, photos from his archival work Foto Galatasaray – Studio Practice by Maryam Şahinyan (2011)

p. 183

Figure 30

Stills from Köken Ergun, “Wedding” (2009), Three-channel video installation

p. 193

Figure 31

Video Still from Köken Ergun’s Ashura (2011), Three-channel video installation

p. 195

Figure 32

Köken Ergun's video installation Ashura (2011) from the first screening of the video at an exhibition in Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland

p. 197

Figure 33

The first issue of Dilek Winchester’s 2010 fanzine project Kayısı Kent A4 and one of mobile photocopiers as one this projects distributor at Osmanbey, Istanbul

p. 205

Figure 34

A still (06’08”) from Artıkişler Collective's video Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara (2007), 70’

p. 213

Figure 35

A still (3’12”) from Artıkişler Collective's video Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara (2007), 70’

p. 214

9

INTRODUCTION “A reconnection of art and life has occurred, but under the terms of the culture industry, not the avant-garde, some devices of which were long age assimilated into the operations of spectacular culture.” 1 Hal Foster

Along with the transformation of artistic representation approaches across time, spanning from Dada to postmodernism, the objective of integrating art and life has always been a source of debate, notably during the avant-garde era. Following the development of politicized contemporary art in the 1990s, the avant-garde era’s experimental techniques that transformed the concept of art gained widespread acceptance with Bourriaud’s concept of relational aesthetics. This new paradigm in art was defined by artistic practices that placed social interactions and their social contexts at the center of the production process. Concepts like “participation,” “collaboration,” and “engagement” with communities become objectives for social art practices when considered in the framework of relational art practice. These conceptions, on the other hand, have long been a topic of discussion in anthropology. The conceptual connections between art and anthropology, as well as the social practices of art, make the relationship between the two fields evident. Methodologies and practices of anthropological and artistic research entered the transdisciplinary complex in recent years within academia as well as in art institutions that center on research practices. This merging has mainly resulted from overlapping objectives of engaging with human experience—despite approaching it perspectives that are at times different and at others, 1

Hal Foster, The Return of the Real (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 1996), p. 21, Cambridge, London.

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more similar than different. This transitional confluence has become a prominent subject of inquiry among many scholars, curators, artists. Therefore, anthropological approaches have become increasingly activated in understanding the shifting dynamics of the globalization of art world expanding from Eurocentric center, which has seen the proliferation of biennials, art museums, and art fairs over the past decade. One only need to look to the key example of Documenta 11 in 2002 which not only illustrates and broadcasts anthropology’s colonial enterprise, but also demonstrates the implications and possibilities of anthropology in artistic practices. The artistic director of Documenta 11, Okwui Enwezor, was the first art director of Documenta from Nigeria, and this Documenta exhibition was the first categorically postcolonial approach to Eurocentric contemporary exhibition making at the beginning of the 21st century.2 1990s provides a backdrop for the contemporary art practice to emerge, which is built on collaboration and participation. It has given rise to a growing number of artistic practices that bear striking resemblances to anthropology, particularly in terms of approach for exploring the dynamics of communities. Until that time, many artists began to define their works as social processes, which encouraged them to engage with anthropological theory. When Hal Foster published the essay The Artist as Ethnographer? (1995), he articulated a critical approach to what he calls an ethnographic turn in art which he revealed the context of this transformation by providing a rich vocabulary for analyzing the increasing number of ethnographic practices in the contemporary art world. In most cases, these particular artistic practices were accompanied by dialogue and interaction with members of selected communities, as well as direct intervention in social processes. Drawing on current social scientific theories has become vital in order to contextualize these practices and their consequences. Along with the shifting of social dynamics, the way in which the social sciences are adopted and comprehended is also transforming respectively. For instance, Latour addresses the issues regarding the underlying meaning of the term “social,” as well as the way of social scientific consideration of it as if it were a sort of material in the research process itself. He defines “social” as “not a special domain, not a specific realm, or not a particular sort of thing, 2

In general, it is possible to notice a growing interest in social engagement in art in the art world that has been supported by well-known curators such as Charles Esche, Hou Hanru, Maria Lind, Mary Jane Jacob, and Nicolas Bourriaud.

INTRODUCTION

but only as a very peculiar movement of re-association and reassembling”3 in order to reach towards a more broad and inclusive definition of “social.” Rather than insisting on a framework that seeks to explain the full extent of experience and reducing the roles of actors to those of informers, he proposes that a social scientific method would reconstruct social connections as they exist among the actors themselves.4 In this context, Latour’s theory on the conceptualization of social is particularly useful in terms of questioning the politics of representation in these practices.5 Anthropology not only provides the methodology such as participant observation that can be regarded as a core approach of ethnographic research, but it also became an instrument for scrutinizing the methodologies and approaches that are also questioned in the field of cultural anthropology since the 1990s. When it comes to ethnographic research, the parameters of participation and observation come to the forefront as procedures that needed to be questioned. In addition to actively participating and observing the communities, a process of recording and documentation is required as part of the research process. Considering the growing debates on participant observation, it nevertheless forms the foundation for many techniques employed in ethnographic fieldwork. Musante and DeWalt mention that participant observation offers context for sampling, open-ended interviews, creating interview guidelines and questionnaires, and other more structured and quantitative data collection methods. They define it specifically “as a way of approaching the fieldwork experience and gaining an understanding of the most fundamental processes of social life.”6 However, the scope, the requirements and application of participant observation are not necessarily made clear in many cases leading

3

4 5

6

Bruno Latour, “Introduction: How to Resume the Task of Tracing Associations*,” in Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 7. Latour, 11. Here the subject can be taken further in the context of Latour’s and his colleagues’ thoughts on ontology under the title of “Actor-Network-Theory” that can be summarized through the idea of the the world that is formed by human and non-human actors' interconnections. However, I refer to Latourian anthropology in terms of rethinking social scientific methodologies and ontology together. Kathleen Musante DeWalt, Participant Observation a Guide for Fieldworkers / Kathleen M. DeWalt and Billie R. DeWalt, Participant Observation a Guide for Fieldworkers, 2nd ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 1.

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to methodological ambiguity. Aside from being inherent in the practice, anthropology could present the distinctions between anthropological methodologies and those employed by other disciplines. Emblematic to this, the terminology required to comprehend the demarcation of the boundaries of participant observation continues to be quite limited. This provides an additional line of inquiry about complexities in relation to the social practice of art. Theoretical discussions in anthropology in terms of research design as well as ethical issues are therefore crucial for investigating the implications that arise from the engagement of art and anthropology. Furthermore, there has been a tendency in anthropology toward the reestablishment of visual and media anthropology and experimental methodologies as a tool for understanding social systems—roles in a way have been exchanged as anthropologists have adopted image-making. The inclination towards alternate modes of representation has caused anthropology to expand its own disciplinary boundaries in engagement with artistic methodologies. There have been multiple intersections of this relationship between contemporary art and the subject of anthropology in the previous two decades, and the potential of this interaction has long been recognized. As a result, recent debates in this area have prompted me as an art historian and anthropologist to interrogate the parts and parcels of the relationship between these two territories. While transformations and exchanges were taking place in both domains of art and anthropology since the 1990s, I have been witnessing a correlative shift in contemporary art in Turkey during the last two decades through biennials and contemporary art exhibitions. These have progressively centered on enacting an immersive political engagement that manifested itself in an increasing number of social art practices. Leading international curators have been invited more and more often to curate the Istanbul Biennials to promote a particular position of the art scene in Turkey from the position of an international arena of economy and culture. Simultaneously biennials themselves extended a politicized focus on local conditions in Turkey. The contemporary art scene in Turkey, particularly in Istanbul, had already begun to be institutionalized in the 1990s as a part of “integrating” culture as a means towards socio-economic development. In the early 2000s, urban culture appeared as a growing theme in the international art scene especially in the context of Istanbul and through the impact of Istanbul Biennials. These efforts of promoting cities through art events led some well-known curators to take part in the art scene in Istanbul by emphasizing the so-called multicul-

INTRODUCTION

turalism of the city through the context of locality that has resulted in what is claimed to be an increasing collaboration amongst residents of various local areas. Collaboration and participation with local communities that developed in the context of social art practices had direct links, overlapping inquiries, critical intersections with anthropological fieldwork practices. Because of the growing interest in social processes in art, there are strong connections between the practice and theory of contemporary anthropology. However, these linkages were not given much attention because their main focus was primarily on their position in the art world as well as the stated sociopolitical issues that they were addressing in their works. Considering these shifts through the lens of my anthropological background has allowed me to rethink the “ethnographic turn in contemporary art”7 as Foster refers, with the aim of investigating a broad approach to contemporary artworks that engages with anthropological subjects. In the following years, critical issues regarding the relation between art and anthropology significantly raised by Hal Foster increasingly expanded, in terms of both the discussion concerning the roles of anthropologists and artists as well as the intertwined and opposing perspective from which these discussions take place. Correspondingly, exchanges between these two disciplines have increased as a result of the premise of transcending representational politics and extending postcolonial concerns through transdisciplinary approaches. Along with these conceptual engagements, an increasing number of socially engaged art projects are implementing anthropology through fieldwork procedures. In terms of visual anthropology, there were also parallels with artistic practice that require further exploration. Within the context the hybridization of these practices, I have chosen to scrutinize the transformations in contemporary art practices tending toward the engagement with social practices that I have witnessed in Turkey, particularly since the beginning of the 2000s. For this research, I also hold the position of a interlocutor in gathering and discussing these practices with various production methods as they generally focus on local and regional issues. From an on the ground perspective, I attempt to lay the groundwork for a practical implementation of this research project. My witnessing motivated this form of engagement with the Turkish context in art-anthropology relationships, that has built on long-term, close research within the contemporary artists 7

Hal Foster, “The Artist as Ethnographer,” in Return of the Real: Art and Theory at the End of the Century, 1st ed. (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 1996), 171–205.

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from Turkey. With the perspective acquired from the changing paradigms in anthropology, I seek to examine places of convergence between the two disciplines with a detailed examination of contemporary art from Turkey as a part of this research.

1.

Key Concepts

This research extensively explores and attempts to unpack the relationship between anthropology and artistic practices in Turkey that emerges more visibly in the 1990s. Through selected art practices, expanded perspectives are used to consider this dynamic encompassed in these works. This research-based project builds on which also seeks to contribute to five bodies of literature: Socially Engaged Art Practices By looking at first attempts of socially engaged art practices, this research will discuss histories of artistic engagements with social practices that trace back to the 1970s.8 The 1990s onward are marked by an increasing number of artistic practices that shift focus towards public dialogue with collaborative and participative works in communities, with specific reference to and tension with relational practices. Art historian Claire Bishop critically contributes to discussions of relational practices by describing “this expanded field of relational practices currently goes by a variety of names: socially engaged art, community-based art, experimental communities, dialogic art, littoral art, participatory, interventionist, research-based, or collaborative art—whether in the form of working with pre-existing communities or establishing one’s own interdisciplinary network.”9 Considering Bishop’s documentation and gathering of the many ways relational practices have been called, I use the term “socially engaged art” to encompass this throughout this book while also seeking to continue the work towards distinguishing the complexities these works and how they are specially engaged with (by whom, for whom, and so on).

8

9

For instance, considering the legacy of Beuys on art, with the concept of ‘social sculpture’, it is possible to trace the history of socially engaged practices in art through the growing number of artistic practices with a social agenda. Claire Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents,” Artforum, February 2006, 179.

INTRODUCTION

Departing from Bishop, I aim to consider how socially engaged art practices do not prioritize or rely on aesthetics, but rather seize the foreground for processes of social engagement specified by social struggles that shape them. Furthermore, with my focus on until 1990s, encountering such works in Turkey has been made possible by artists and art collective through their commitment to work on the grounds inside and outside of research. This forms the core of this project through various forms of social engagements by select artists. Socially engaged art in Turkey—as it confronts cultural issues, how diverse identities are constructed and contested, while also addressing what became an expanding scope of sociopolitical issues in Turkey—presents an immensity and intimacy embedded in the layers of this research. My research, which was gathered through an immediacy that I shared with the artistic projects I document in this text, aims to contribute towards a critically careful engagement about the ways in which socially engaged arts intervene in life. How to begin to understand what takes place in these engagements and their afterlives is the ongoing motivation and reflexive consideration of this project. Modes of Social Engagement Anthropologists have conventionally considered the concepts of engagement, collaboration with the communities to be significant to their research approach. Artists working with the communities had the similar concerns in terms of representing a specific site, a particular community. However, similarly as anthropological research practices, artistic production that is related on social interactions, as seen in the context of socially engaged art, brings to the fore questions of power relations, unequal relations between the researcher and the subject. Joseph Kosuth is a conceptual artist who made one of the early artistic contributions to this milieu with his article titled “The Artist as Anthropologist” in 1975. In the opinion of Kosuth, the distinction between an artist and an anthropologist lies in the fact that the latter has inherited a scientific approach to cultural inquiry that results in a detachment from society or the emergence of unequal power relations as a result. As stated in his article, anthropologists have always had the problem of being outside of the culture that they study, and he suggests the model of “artist-as-anthropologist” who may be able to accomplish what the anthropologist has always failed.10 10

For further reading: Joseph Kosuth, “The Artist as Anthropologist//1975,” in The Everyday: Documents of Contemporary Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008), 182–84.

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Kosuth argues that artists are more engaged with the society compared to anthropologists, considering the objective distance of scientists to the communities. The question is whether or not this distinction is maintained, or is anthropology still regarded negatively as a “science” when viewed through the perspective of art? In this regard, the goal of this corpus of literature is to provide answers to the aforementioned concerns. Therefore, the various approaches of artists towards participation with the communities become a critical issue to understand the development of new practices in arts. Experimentation with Visual Methods Recent anthropological approaches tend to be critical in the sense that anthropology must go beyond traditional representational practices, especially in terms of activating methods transcending the text-based models. These new approaches attempt to overcome the ethnographic authority problem and develop new strategies of representation, by reconsidering how ethnographers represent themselves and informers in their research. As a result of this criticism, anthropologists began to adopt approaches such as polyvocality, reflexivity along with mixed methods, and accordingly visual representation practices become more of an issue for anthropologists to broaden their perspectives. Thus, visual anthropology as a sub-discipline of anthropology, is now more engaged with contemporary art practices. Correspondingly, an increasing number of artists employ visual ethnography as the basic method of their artistic process to strengthen the potentialities of representation. In other respects, alongside novel creativity methods within visual anthropological practice, while giving rise to new possibilities of representation, new theoretical debates and transdisciplinary perspectives have emerged. With this research, I aim to contribute to the existing literature with these debates on visual representation by addressing how artists engage with this concept in their artistic practice. Institutionalization One of the most significant issues to consider is the implications of institutionalization in evaluating the role and impact of anthropology in the arts. This research explores the institutional development of Turkish contemporary art as a whole, as well as how it is represented in the global art scene, which will serve as another focal point. This corpus of literature entails examining the institutions of patronage or sponsorship and explaining the reasons for institutional support for cultural research in the arts through

INTRODUCTION

the consideration of curatorial strategies, as well as the variations between patronage and sponsorship. As part of this examination, my research will also look into the function of institutionalization and how institutions and the political agency of art become intertwined in Turkey. The approaches and social practices of artists who have been influenced by anthropology and who use art to represent their local sociopolitical conditions or concerns will be examined in order to determine the potential of art in generating discourses about cultural diversity. Ethnographic Practices in Art Today, artists are increasingly adopting ethnographic methods such as participant observation or key informant interviews. In terms of practice, there are different artistic approaches and influences for artists engaged with ethnographic practices. They occasionally collaborate with anthropologists, or they conduct research directly with the members of the communities themselves. In other words, their motivations and approaches may differ from one another. As a result, research methods of artists are examined in light of ethnographic research and fieldwork perspectives and consequences, such as duration of stays, modes of interaction, repeated visits, language proficiency, communication skills, ethics, and the researcher’s role. I approach anthropology and art relationship from an ethnographic perspective as anthropology’s distinctive methodology, as my focus lies in practice-based research in the arts. This methodological viewpoint directs my research toward conceptualizing ethnographic methodologies through examination of pertinent literature both in art and anthropology. Rather than focusing on the ‘ethnographic art’ or ‘anthropology of art’11 concept, I will approach the notion ’anthropological’ in art through a methodological perspective. This methodological perspective emphasizes collaboration and participation of the researcher in a field setting in order to comprehend the social structure, social and cultural processes, and the significance ascribed to them by the community.

11

The theoretical literature on anthropology of art builds on a different premise. Gell’s Art and Agency (1998) is a seminal work in this area which replaces the aesthetic and art theoretical concerns in anthropology of art with more anthropological interpretations. For further reading: Alfred Gell, Art and Agency, Oxford, 1998.

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2.

Scope of the Research

In general, the research focuses on the emergence of contemporary art in Turkey via the intersection of artistic and social concerns. To highlight the mechanisms behind the establishment of social practices, this study discusses their development and recognition of these concepts via the lens of contemporary art since the 1970s. In the context of Turkey’s intense setting of social and political transformation, this research investigates the shifting practices in the arts and how they have evolved throughout the time. This transformation saw a moment towards globalist, neo-liberal economic and political structures. Correspondingly, by looking at the cases from the art scene, it is aimed to trace the impacts of the social issues through the tendency towards socially engaged practices in the changing cultural atmosphere. The emergence of the cultural policies in the 1990s, especially with the effects of Turkey’s EU-accession process, form an essential basis to understanding the impacts of globalization of art and its connection with the identity politics. In the following years of the 1990s, biennials also adapted to the global art world, and the Turkish art scene gained an international interest. With the Istanbul Biennial and cultural tourism as its extension, an increasing number of artists began to engage with social practice at large. As a result, the institutionalization of contemporary art in Turkey played a critical role in this shift, as institutions tended to promote and support socially engaged works. Through these aspects, this research traces the involvement of private institutions in the culture industry, as well as their impacts on the transformations of contemporary art in Turkey. These transformations in the contemporary art practices resulted in an increase in the number of artists who became more engaged with social practices through the use of visual ethnographic methods for the study of culture, along with participatory and collaborative methodologies, into their work. They primarily use video or photography as a medium for their works, and they are created through a process of collaboration or participation. As a result, it becomes necessary to explore the role of anthropological perspectives in these artistic practices. To effectively present these changing practices, first the significance and influence of pioneering artists as Nil Yalter and Gülsün Karamustafa have been illustrated. Following that it is aimed to examine the practices of contemporary artists related to this movement employing various practices. For

INTRODUCTION

this, the works of Esra Ersen, Kutluğ Ataman, Tayfun Serttaş, Köken Ergun, Dilek Winchester and Artıkişler Collective have been scrutinized. In order to demonstrate the relationship between art and anthropology, I investigate examples that are distinguished by their various approaches to social engagement and research methodologies. This research establishes a framework for the interpretation of ethnographic methodologies in the activities of artists, as well as their implications for the subject. In order to fully comprehend the issue, it is necessary to underline the intricacies that arise from social interactions and their social context. With the help of theoretical discussions that are widespread in relevant theoretical frameworks, the purpose of this research is to draw attention to these complexities. I evaluate the works in context not just by examining the many approaches to anthropological methodologies that have been employed, but also by looking at how they interact with social procedures as a whole. As a result, I seek to demonstrate the relevance of anthropology for these artistic practices by discussing a method that is informed by anthropological theories on the social setting and social dynamics of the research location. The primary objective is to demonstrate the consequences of the Turkish case for the intersection of art and anthropology, which is the primary objective in overall. The major purpose of this book is to contribute to the literature on art and anthropology confluence by presenting the experiences of Turkish case that can be considered as a gap in recent debates on the relationship between art and anthropology.

3.

Research Questions

The main aim of this research is to show the ethnographic tendency in arts by investigating art projects that are produced as anthropological research, focusing on the confluence of anthropology and art from a methodological perspective. These art-anthropology exchanges raise crucial questions about these social art practices, such as: • •

What are the functions of anthropological theories in the social practice of art, and what is the agency of the artist in this relationship? How does institutionalization impact on the tendency towards social practices in contemporary art in Turkey?

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• • •

4.

How did the ethnographic practices of artists from Turkey vary in terms of methodology and subject? What were the motives of these contemporary artists to generate works with social practices? How do artists position themselves in the context of art and anthropology confluence?

Methodology

This study in Turkish contemporary art aims to trace the artistic practices approaching anthropology of Turkish artists from Turkey that are based in Istanbul and Berlin. A variety of methodologies employed in this study, which are as follows: a. Literature Analysis: To establish the research background, I conducted an analysis of the existing literature on the shifting contemporary relationships between anthropology and art. The objective of this analysis is to explore various theoretical approaches through the perspective of anthropological linking with art and artistic projects that have implications for the research subject. To reconcile these perspectives, the literature review investigated theoretical debates and case studies that exist between these two disciplines. The primary goal of establishing these linkages is to build the groundwork for a discussion of contemporary art from Turkey in this context. Additionally, the evaluation of literature includes research on the history of contemporary art in Turkey to highlight the dynamics of the shift toward socially engaged artistic practices that has linkages to anthropological practices in art. b. Archival Research: With research from several archives and art collections, especially contemporary art archives in Istanbul and Berlin, the objective is to discuss artists whose work fosters a fruitful discussion of anthropological aspects in art. Therefore, exhibition catalogues, artist books, art magazines, brochures are included in the archival research process. Archival research has been conducted using the artist archives of institutions as SALT Research Galata, Akbank Sanat and the Istanbul Modern Museum. In addition to these archives, leading libraries such as Ataturk Library in Istanbul, Bogazici Library in Istanbul, Royal Anthropological Institute Library in London, and the Istanbul Technical University Library have been utilized.

INTRODUCTION

The Turkish Contemporary Art Archive of SALT Research in Istanbul was one of the primary research sources, as this archive also included the video works of the artists scrutinized in this research. c. Case Study: For a better understanding of the research questions at hand, this research includes a case study that adopts an open-ended interview methodology with the contemporary artists from Turkey. Interviews have been held in Istanbul and Berlin between 2016-2018, by meeting with the selected artists. The artists subject to this research were chosen through archival research on contemporary art from Turkey. Artists in this context are not limited to those who have been named in this study, but I have chosen these artists based on their active contributions and inputs in the context in which they are being studied. As previously stated, it was intended to serve as a main basis for a discussion of the subject from the standpoint of various artistic practices that have divergent implications for the research subject. Main objective was to investigate the approaches, discourses, and methodology of these artists in the context of the confluence of art and anthropology, which was the background for this examination. In order to better understand artistic methods in terms of artanthropology relationships, I conducted in-depth interviews in Turkish with six artists who are the subjects of this research, by asking them open-ended questions about their artistic approaches related to the subject. Unless otherwise stated, all interviews took place face to face in a private setting. Personal Communication with Artists These interviews are significant source of information and a vital component of this research since they demonstrate how artists conceptualize their own work and how they relate their practice to anthropology, particularly in terms of concerns of participation and collaboration with communities. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the approaches and motivations of these artists that led them to collaborate with communities, the interviews contain their experiences during these activities as well as how they positioned themselves within the production process of the works. Depending on the outcome of the interviews, I was able to conceptualize the anthropological framework to evaluate their social practices and relationships with the surrounding community. Additionally, these interviews provided a forum for exploring how artists understand potential connections to the field of anthropology in their works.

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As a part of this case study, asking open-ended questions to the artists allowed them to express their ideas on the focal point of their works and the subject of their research. All of these interviews conducted in Turkish and have been translated into English by me. This case study with the artists enabled me to gain a better understanding of their perspectives about the way they apply ethnographic methods in their work, their influences, and their ways of studying by considering their former practices and thus provided a more complete understanding of their motivations with their artistic strategies. By doing this, I concentrate on the participation and collaboration concepts that have been already an essential subject for anthropology and to build links for a productive discussion in the context of social engagement of artists.

5.

Theoretical Significance of the Research

The main aim of this research is to show the ethnographic tendency in arts by investigating art projects that are produced as anthropological research, focusing on the disciplinary confluence from ethnography to arts and politics of representation. There is an increasing amount of new work that continually getting published in this area of research. In addition to the publications, the number of journals and conferences continues to grow. This study aims to identify the distinctive ethnographic methods of artists from Turkey, to broaden the scope of the research area between art and anthropology on a global scale and intends to evaluate the role of institutionalization in the ethnographic shift in contemporary art from Turkey by investigating the ethnographic methods of socially engaged artists to determine further experimental and creative methods between art and anthropology. A case study with contemporary Turkish artists is conducted to seek an answer to these questions, and to determine which of these artists are creating projects by using anthropological insights or conducting joint explorations. In general, this research opens a discussion on the relation between art and anthropology that I contribute to this literature by focusing on a methodological perspective of ethnography and evaluate this confluence in arts through the cases from Turkish contemporary art. Here the emphasis lies on the converging artistic and anthropological methodologies, along with the artists’ motivations and influences considering the transformations in

INTRODUCTION

the contemporary art in Turkey –specifically by focusing on the institutional changes. It is critical to emphasize that the literature in this research area tends to be concentrated in cases from Europe or North America, and hence the focus on the Turkish contemporary art in this research is important for broadening the scope of relevant literature. There have been publications aiming to bring together traditions outside of Euro-America, such as the volume edited by Arnd Schneider.1213 However, the cases from Turkey were not included in any of the research of contemporary anthropological art practices. As a result, in order to extend the debate between these two disciplines, I focus on cases from Turkish contemporary art, which, until now, have not been critically investigated in this context. By examining the Turkish case in this framework, I intend to provide light on the shifting historical and contemporary relationships between anthropology and art, as well as the major dynamics that exist between these two disciplines. I evaluate its discourses and institutions from a variety of theoretical perspectives and discuss how local art actors in Turkey are adapting their curatorial and artistic methods in the face of institutional change. As the ‘ethnographic turn in contemporary art’ requires more scholarly attention, cases from Turkey in this transdisciplinary territory serve as a critical point of focus, as they feature distinctive aspects of the current debates on this field of research. Especially, the emergence of Istanbul as a new center in the global art scene with the events, fairs, and the Biennial, provides a significant context for the analysis of the issue. Therefore, I argue that contemporary art of Turkey deserves more attention not only for the increasing interest of the contemporary art world and international art market, but also for the examining the artistic strategies for the investigation of local issues in contemporary art, and thus it would be possible to trace the reflection of the recent intense political situation in Turkey on artists. 12

13

For further reading: ed. Arnd Schneider, Alternative Art and Anthropology: Global Encounters, London: Bloomsbury, 2017: This book discusses encounters between contemporary art and anthropology through the perspectives of scholars from China, Japan, Indonesia, Bhutan, Nigeria, Chile, Ecuador, and the Philippines. Another reference significant in this context, covering a geographical area outside the Euro-American framework is the volume edited by Fuyubi Nakamura, Morgan Perkins and Olivier Kirscher, Asia Through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation Across Borders, London: Bloomsbury, 2013.

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6.

Research Structure

Introduction It is in the introduction chapter that readers will find critical background information and fundamental notions about the subject matter that will benefit them in grasping the overall context of the research. The purpose of this chapter is to identify essential concepts and to clarify the topics of study as well as the impact of research. This section of the study goes into great detail about the study’s design and scope. This chapter also discusses the overall study objective, as well as the questions that the study seeks to answer. This is also described in more detail in the methodology section. Chapter I: On the Relation Between Art and Anthropology For the purpose of establishing a relationship to the research’s core theoretical premise, this chapter investigates several aspects of ethnographic writing, ethnographic representation, and ethnography’s evolving role within the field of anthropology from a range of perspectives. On the basis of its ability to build a dialogue between artistic practice and anthropological research, the role of surrealism in ethnographical critiques is examined. The theoretical underpinnings of visual anthropology in connection to art are addressed in this chapter as a result of this circumstance. The literature on experimental anthropology is evaluated, as well as contemporary anthropological developments. Chapter II: An Anthropological Approach to Contemporary Art The subject expanded through a discussion of the links between contemporary art and anthropology with the critiques of artistic context. The potential of ethnographic fieldwork as an artistic practice elaborated. Following that, debates around ‘relational aesthetics’ and the critiques revealed around socially engaged art included to the discussion to link the topic to the context of contemporary art. To thoroughly investigate art and anthropology collaborations, this part detailed the limits and possibilities in this relation and examined the artistic practices that has productive context for demonstrating the links between art and anthropology.

INTRODUCTION

Chapter III: The Emergence of Contemporary Art in Turkey This chapter provides a background on the contemporary art scene in Turkey, by centering an art historical approach. Showing the implications of emerging globalization for the contemporary art in Turkey provides the main background to comprehend the consequences of institutionalization and its connection to the artistic production linked with social contexts. In this part, socially engaged art practices are discussed with the circumstances that provided their proliferation by taking various practices into consideration. Lastly, artists working with an anthropological approach are discussed in the light of the implications of the globalization and institutionalization. Chapter IV: Ethnographic Practices of Contemporary Turkish Artists The fourth chapter of the study investigates ethnographic practices in the works of selected artists related with the context. Firstly, this chapter reviews the cases through the aspect of social engagement. The main purpose of this chapter is to present a reflection on recent art-anthropology connections in contemporary art in Turkey. Therefore, to accomplish this, firstly emergence of ethnographic practices in contemporary art is examined, and the impact of their works is discussed. With the results of this case study of the selected artists, ethnographic research methods are analyzed. Interviews with the artists will concordantly contribute a further insight to the topic. This part of the research not only presents the ethnographic practices of these artists but also shows how these methods have changed by focusing on methodology. Pointing out the critical perspective of ethnographic research in arts is one important focus of this chapter. Conclusion The conclusion part is designed to comprehend productive analogies and engagements between art and anthropology by considering the contemporary art in Turkey. Correlating different ethnographic methods of the artists with the theoretical context is the focus of the conclusion, by both focusing on the theory of art on the analysis of socially engaged practices, and the literature concentrating on the growing anthropological interest on art. Therefore, this part of the book intends to connect the contextual, conceptual, and historical studies to the case study by discussing the general evaluations. The implications of the Turkish case for the relation between anthropology and art, new research agendas related to the subject, and the final approaches are stated.

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CHAPTER I – ON THE RELATION BETWEEN ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY

1.

An Introduction to the Relationship Between Art and Anthropology

The first part of this research, which aim to transcend scientific disciplinary boundaries and differences, lays the groundwork for theoretical discussions on the interrelationship between art and anthropology. To establish a theoretical framework for the research, this relationship is analyzed through the lens of recent anthropological developments and theoretical debates that provided the basis for anthropological interest in art. Institutional critiques in the discipline of anthropology as a whole have been explained and highlighted in order to demonstrate the tendencies towards artistic engagements or anthropological interest in art more broadly to demonstrate institutional critiques in the discipline of anthropology as a whole. To underline the importance of contextualizing these critiques within the discipline of anthropology, it is important to clarify why this would be important in the discussion of these hybrid practices. The critiques have inspired anthropologists to engage with experimental approaches since the 1980s, mostly through the incorporation of artistic practices in their research procedures. This shift towards linking of artistic practices in anthropology also leads anthropologists to the process of collaboration with artists and emphasizing the aesthetic dimensions of these practices. In a related vein, Hal Foster’s influential essay “Artist as Ethnographer?” sparked arguments about the ethnographic shift in contemporary art, which have persisted until the present day. This section of the research will address issues and novel approaches relating to the dialogue between art and anthropology, as well as re-examine pertinent literature in this context. It is necessary to distinguish here between debates and concepts of anthropology of art,

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since this field of study is primarily concerned with the study of how art is viewed in various societies and cultures. Debates on art anthropology generally encompass a cross-cultural understanding of art that confronts the established boundaries of Western and nonWestern aesthetics. While this offers a foundation for broadening horizons from many cultures and eras, it includes the discussions of primitivist and orientalist tendencies in the history of art. Western perceptions toward nonWestern arts and cultures have shifted in recent decades, which can be seen in these debates on anthropology of art. Alfred Gell, for example, and his works serve as an important point of reference at this point. In his piece, Vogel’s Nett, Gell puts emphasis on the conception of art, referencing Duchamp’s readymade concept and questioning Danto’s theoretical approach to aesthetics. As demonstrated in the essay, animal traps have the potential to function and to be presented as artworks since they tend to reflect complicated views and intentions about the connection between humans and animals. Gell asserts that ‘anthropology of art’ should be about providing a critical framework that would “enfranchise ‘artefacts’ and allow for their circulation as artworks, displaying them as embodiments or residues of complex intentionalities.”1 In this context, he advocates for the incorporation of anthropology into artistic processes, and in accordance with this idea, he proposes that such aesthetic definition of the artworks remain insufficient. Gell’s views are still significant today since he relates the anthropology of art discussions to the contemporary context; for instance, his imagined exhibition that he proposes in his essay, Vogel’s Nett includes the work of The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) created by Damien Hirst that displays a preserved tiger shark in formaldehyde in a glass-panel display case, representing the idea of entrapment. The concept of establishing an exhibition on traps occurs as a metaphor not just in the understanding of challenges of representation, but also in Gell’s overall goal of yielding concepts on the theory of art in general and it is one of the reasons his views are still relevant today in terms of theoretical discussions on anthropology of art. However, rather than focusing on discussions about the role of anthropological theory on art and aesthetics that has been exemplified by Gell’s approach and that can be extended in the cross-cultural discussions on Western and non-Western aesthetics, this research draws on the literature on the 1

Alfred Gell, “Vogel’s Net: Traps as Artworks and Artworks as Traps,” Journal of Material Culture 1, no. 1 (March 1, 1996): 37.

CHAPTER I – ON THE RELATION BETWEEN ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY

current overlaps between contemporary art practice and anthropological research and analyses how contemporary artists embrace anthropological practices. The critique of anthropology that emerged in the 1980s, on the other hand, is essential in this context in terms of instigating anthropologists to engage with new forms of representation that extended beyond the ethnographic text. During the course of these theoretical discussions, not only the novel strategies to explore new ways of representation adopted by anthropologies will be discussed, but also selected cases of contemporary art practices will be examined in terms of the many strategies that are employed by artists. By doing this, it is aimed to form a theoretical foundation for the main part of the analysis which will address the contemporary artists from Turkey in this connection.

2.

Critiques of Ethnographic Practices and Representation

In the following years, new debates arose in anthropology as a response to institutional anthropology. With the publication of the book, Writing Culture, edited by James Clifford and George Marcus in 1986, these debates have resulted in growing number of new experimental strategies in ethnography. Through an interpretation of ethnography in conjunction with literary theory, this book describes new textual strategies for ethnographic writing. In the introduction, Clifford points out that “the literary or rhetorical dimensions of ethnography can no longer be so easily compartmentalized. They are active at every level of cultural science. Indeed, the very notion of a ‘literary’ approach to a discipline, ‘anthropology,’ is seriously misleading.”2 By addressing the literary approach, especially with his emphasis on the poetics of ethnography, Clifford criticized the scientific authority of anthropology and its specialized knowledge area within the proper domain of science. This text emphasizes both the literary approach as well as the possible applicability of the audiovisual for ethnographic practice. As Clifford has explained: once cultures are no longer prefigured visually—as objects, theatres, texts—it becomes possible to think of a cultural poetics that is an interplay 2

James Clifford, “Introduction: Partial Truths,” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. by James Clifford and George E. Marcus (United States of America: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 1-27 (p. 4).

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of voices, of positioned utterances. In a discursive rather than a visual paradigm, the dominant metaphors for ethnography shift away from the observing eye and toward expressive speech (and gesture). 3 Clifford highlights the authoritative nature of the authorship in textual presentation of classical ethnography through these comments. Clifford here also proposes giving the research “poetic dimensions” as a means of overcoming this authority’s influence: to recognize the poetic dimensions of ethnography do not require that one give up facts and accurate accounting for the supposed free play of poetry. “Poetry” is not limited to romantic or modernist subjectivism: it can be historical, precise, and objective. And of course, it is just as conventional and institutionally determined as “prose.” Ethnography is hybrid textual activity: it traverses genres and disciplines.4 In general, Clifford and Marcus have as their goal to underline the textually constructed nature of ethnographic writing and to look at anthropology from a broader perspective, one that includes the context in which it has been formed. “By criticism of the terms in which ethnography has been received and by alternative readings of exemplary works”, they seek “to expose possibilities in past ethnographic writing that make it relevant to the current spirit of experimentation.”5 While these discussions generated by this book led to the development of new approaches to the representation problem for anthropologists, this new experimental methodology of anthropology began to emerge as a result. These debates prevalent in the 1980s that can be titled under the Writing Culture Debates, resulted in a substantial turn in anthropology by questioning the established ways of ethnographic methods until that time and what resulted was the growing debates on the issues of representation. While pointing out the colonial legacy of anthropology, Clifford and Marcus aimed to

3

4 5

James Clifford, ‘Introduction: Partial Truths’, in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. by James Clifford and George E. Marcus (United States of America: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 1–27 (p. 12). Clifford, 26. George E Marcus, “Afterword: Ethnographic Writing and Anthropological Careers,” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E Marcus, 1986, 266.

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highlight the dynamics of power relations in the process of ethnographic research. Since that turn, there has been a growing literature and new practices on the ways of ethnographic research and writing challenging with the conventional ones. At large, with its collective influence and impact on the crisis of anthropology, this book is often regarded as a watershed moment in the history of anthropology. In conjunction with this, it was likely to observe an upsurge of reflexivity in ethnographic practices over time. With a broad definition, reflexivity, “means a turning back on oneself, a process of self-reference”, and in social research reflexivity “refers to the ways in which the products of research are affected by the personnel and process of doing research.”6 Consequently, selfreflexivity as a topic and as a methodological approach gained wide currency in contemporary anthropology. Both challenging ideas on the anthropology’s colonial roots, as well as self-reflexivity on the representations of otherness have opened the path for experimental strategies and new academical approaches in anthropology. In present era, however, with the increased mobility of people, the “cultural difference” and “otherness” have come into question that also reveals itself in the words of Clifford that presents ‘West’ not anymore “as the unique purveyor of anthropological knowledge about others”, and he argues that “it is necessary to imagine a world of generalized ethnography.”7 The outcome of this objective would make it possible to build collaborations with the informants in order to break down the uneven relationships that are inherent in fieldwork practices.

2.1

Artistic Influences in Critical Ethnography

Moreover, Clifford repeatedly emphasizes the hybridity of ethnography in his book The Predicament of Culture (1988). In the introduction, he refers to ethnography as “a hybrid activity and thus appears as writing, as collecting, as modernist collage, as imperial power, as subversive critique.”8 To invent new pos-

6 7

8

Charlotte Aull Davies, ‘Chapter 1: Reflexivity and Ethnographic Research.’ in Reflexive Ethnography (Taylor & Francis Ltd / Books, 1998), pp. 3–25 (p. 4). James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Authority,” in The Predicament of Culture: TwentiethCentury Ethnography, Literature, and Art (United States of America: Harvard University Press, 1988), 22. Clifford, 13.

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sibilities on ethnographic representation, he portrays ethnography in an engagement with avant-garde art “which it shares modernist procedures of collage, juxtaposition, and estrangement.”9 Therefore, he aims to show the links between Surrealism and ethnography through the implications of surrealist artistic practice for ethnography. The main motivation for Clifford by mentioning the concepts as the ‘collage aesthetics’ and ‘juxtaposition’ was that it enables the viewer to interpret the outcomes of an ethnographic work. As a result, the application of collage aesthetics in ethnography would neutralize the authority of the ethnographer and open the way to interpretation free of constraints and limitations. In Clifford’s own words, writing ethnographies on the model of collage was explained as: The cuts and sutures of the research process are less visible; there is no smoothing over or blending of the work's raw data into a homogeneous representation. To write ethnographies on the model of collage would be to avoid the portrayal of cultures as organic wholes or as unified, realistic worlds subject to a continuous explanatory discourse.10 The avant-garde scene in France between the two World Wars is a source of inspiration for Clifford, in the way that they incorporate surrealist procedures in ethnographic work. He calls this “ethnographic surrealism”. In his seminal article, “On Ethnographic Surrealism”, he mainly focuses on the anticolonialist approach present in the avant-garde scene in France, and he conveys the story of Musee d’Ethnographie du Trocadero and the Musee de I’Homme through the perspective on art and culture collecting. Clifford has considered the establishment of Collège de Sociologie as a counter activity that is against the academic ethnology in France. The members of this group came together around the members of Documents11 , a surrealist art magazine. According to Kunda, Documents used ethnography in conjunction with its mainly approach of collage as ‘cultural

9 10 11

Clifford, 10. Clifford, 146. Documents: doctrines, archéologie, beaux-arts, ethnographie was a Surrealist art magazine edited by Georges Bataille. Published in Paris between April 1929 and January 1931, it ran for 15 issues, each of which contained a wide range of original writing and photographs. The journal focused upon a host of cultural traditions, spanning the disciplines of poetry, sociology, photography, sculpture, music, archaeology, and painting.

CHAPTER I – ON THE RELATION BETWEEN ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY

criticism’, and according to him this “convergence between ethnography and Surrealism was very particular, and so it invites a careful analysis of the periodical, beyond any easy dismissal of it as merely an aberrant, apolitical, or perverse funneling of ideas through Bataille’s or Leiris’s eccentricities.”12 Using these cases as a point of reference and highlighting the establishment of ethnography in France, Clifford seeks to disentangle aspects of the blurred boundaries between art and science and the detachment of crossdisciplinary studies with the development of institutional anthropology. By doing so, he displays surrealism not just as a literary and aesthetic movement in history, but also as a symbol of its generative ability for overcoming disciplinary boundaries. He displays ‘Surrealism’ as “ethnography’s secret sharer for better or worse in the description, analysis, and extension of the grounds of twentieth-century expression and meaning.”13 Through showing the links between surrealism and ethnography, he aims to “displace any transcendent regime of authenticity, to argue that all authoritative collections, whether made in the name of art or science, are historically contingent and subject to local re-appropriation.”14 With this in mind, in general, he aims to call into question the abstractness in ethnographic writing by pointing out the textual obstacles. Accordingly, Clifford gives a reference to Bakhtin’s description of the novel in which Bakhtin draws attention to the polyphony of the narrative. Based on Dostoevsky’s novels, Bakhtin emphasizes the polyphonic structure that has been created with the dialogical text. By shedding a light on the context of ‘dialogism’, he emphasizes the role of dialogue on showing the perspectives of others. His focus on the novel in regard of the dialogue concept aims to question the authoritative discourse through the openness to interpretation.15 With his reference, Clifford focuses on the social implications of Bakhtin’s theory on novel by indicating the “dialogic” structure or “polyphony”, and by doing this, he aims to show a tendency that combines the various views of informants in ethnographies with openness to various readings, by breaking up

12 13 14 15

M. Kunda, The Politics of Imperfection: The Critical Legacy of Surrealist Anti-Colonialism, University of Tasmania School of Art Thesis (University of Tasmania, 2010), 143. Clifford, “On Ethnographic Authority,” 121. Clifford, 10. For further reading: Bakhtin, M. M, and Michael Holquist. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. 

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from “monophonic” writing. This would be possible with a new textual strategy by writing with a dialogical perspective. To show the limitations of the textual embodiment of the ethnographic research, first Clifford admits the authorial presence, and then he presents dialogical methods for new forms of ethnographic writing. In his criticism on ethnographic authority, he examines the main dynamics of gaining knowledge from the field with the issues revealed around the power relations coming with the representation of ‘Other’. With the dialogical production of ethnographic writing and the collaborative work with the natives16 , Clifford not only suggests new methodologies for the problem of textual authority in ethnographic writing, but also, he addresses the production of knowledge17 with an emphasis of “colonial styles of representation”. He aims to show the anthropological knowledge produced in the colonial structure, so this shows how unveiling the colonial structures in specific contexts became crucial for anthropologists today.

2.2

Situating Visual Anthropology in the Artistic Context

The emergence of institutional criticisms in anthropology has prompted significant advancements in ethnographic methodology that have manifested themselves in a range of experimental contexts with a variety of different modes of experimentation. In anthropology, the inclination toward the development of visual approaches might be considered a component of this transformation. In reflecting back at the history of ‘Visual Ethnography’ which emerged as a subfield of social anthropology, it is possible to acknowledge that, even prior to the creation of anthropology as an academic subject, ‘visual anthropology’ was being applied as a method of research. Its beginning dates to the late 1950s and 1960s associated with Margaret Mead early attempts. Mead’s own research focuses were also important fac16

17

In terms of collaborative work, Clifford also mentions that the “anthropologists will increasingly have to share their texts, and sometimes their title pages, with those indigenous collaborators for whom the term informants are no longer adequate, if it ever was.”, in Clifford, ‘On Ethnographic Authority’, p. 51. It should be noted that, Foucault’s archaeological method on the systems of thought and knowledge, coincides with the reference of Clifford on ‘production on knowledge’. For further reading of the influence of Foucault on the production of knowledge within the context of power relations: Foucault M., The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), Routledge, 1972.

CHAPTER I – ON THE RELATION BETWEEN ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY

tors in the establishment of a certain agenda for visual anthropology.18 Mead and Bateson’s book, Balinese character: A photographic analysis based on their research in Bali was first published in 1942 with photographs that documents the everyday in Bayung Dede. Photographs, which function as field notes, provide further evidence for their research. In addition to this book, in the following years Mead released films that depicted childcare and the children’s relations with the adults. With these films combining audiovisual methodologies with field research, Mead was influential in spreading the use of visual tools in anthropology more broadly. Mead wrote, “as anthropologists we must insist on prosaic, controlled, systematic filming and videotaping, which will provide us with material that can be repeatedly reanalyzed with finer tools and developing theories.”19 Her statements supporting the use of sound and video recordings in the research are a reflection of the time period in which the field of ‘visual anthropology’ was just emerging as a sub-discipline. This subfield of anthropology opened up new possibilities and approaches within the confines of the disciplinary constraints of institutional anthropology. Following the Mead’s early engagement with anthropological filmmaking and other approaches beyond the representation of text, anthropologists established an interest not only in filmmaking but also other diverse methods of audiovisual documentation. In recent years, it is possible to observe ethnography’s turn towards methods that engage with the senses or sensory experiences as a new approach to anthropology’s social concern. These developments were directly related to the previously described rethinking of the constraints and bounds of traditional anthropology, and they have resulted in experimental techniques that have pushed interdisciplinary approaches in anthropology to be developed and implemented. These audiovisual and sensory tools continue to be used by an increasing number of anthropologists to gain a more in-depth understanding of the social dynamics of different societies. Soundscapes, field recordings and documentary practices are some of the methods for these sensory approaches. While ethnographic film has a unique position within documentary activities, it is particularly

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A. Grimshaw, The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology (Cambridge University Press, 2001), 87. Margaret Mead, ‘Visual Anthropology in a Discipline of Words’, in Principles of visual anthropology, ed. by Paul Hockings (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1975), pp. 3–10 (p. 10).

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prominent in the setting of documentary practices because it combines diverse cognitive and sensory modes.

2.2.1

Visual Anthropology: Between Fiction and Reality

Within the history of anthropological filmmaking, as one of the representatives of alternative modes of filmmaking, Grimshaw and Ravetz address the work of Marshall, Rouch, and MacDougall as significant in this regard, and they indicate that, “their innovations as anthropologists hinged upon a radical shift in perspective and position as filmmakers.”20 MacDougall is one of the significant filmmakers and scholars who challenged traditional notions by positing visual anthropology as a sub-discipline. He distinguishes visual anthropology from other disciplines since audio-visual representation methods are based on forms other than written text, according to him. He writes the following in this context: “Seeing, hearing, and other forms of sensory knowledge are accordingly located in individual experience or in cultural and historical collectivities. They are seen as extending the reach of the discipline without fundamentally altering it.”21 Through an investigation of the relation between images and human body, he suggests new strategies and objectives for a new visual anthropology. Visual anthropologist MacDougall establishes a ground for his ideas by rejecting the concept of language in cinema, to expand its limits to include the non-linguistic. In this topic, French filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch is the most cited reference, with his concept of shared anthropology. Rouch’s early work involves documentations of the rituals in different communities. Grimshaw and Ravetz treat Jaguar (1967), Moi, un noir (1958), and Tourou et Bitti (1971) as his later works, as these texts are distinguished by a different approach. They mention that, after a point, Rouch was “no longer working with the notion of documentation, with the camera being used to “capture” events assumed to unfold whether filming is taking place or not, Rouch began to experiment with the camera as a catalyst.”22 With his experimentations crossing disciplinary

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Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz, ‘Drawing with a Camera? Ethnographic Film and Transformative Anthropology.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21.2 (2015), pp. 255–75 (p. 262). David MacDougall, The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), p. 6. Grimshaw and Ravetz, ‘Drawing with a Camera? Ethnographic Film and Transformative Anthropology’, p. 264.

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boundaries, he contributed not only to cinema in terms of film aesthetics, but also to scientific ethnography. Most importantly, by leaving the position of observing with the camera, he became a part of rituals with his camera. In this context, Grimshaw and Ravetz contribute to the literature by referring to Rouch by including Marshall and MacDougall’s works: The work of Marshall, Rouch, and MacDougall offers a productive way of thinking about the creative role of the frame and how it might function as a vibrant element at the heart of their innovative process films. For what is significant, we suggest, is not the absence of framing but what framing makes possible. Rather than conceptualizing the camera as marked by an inert structure– something perhaps seen by Ingold as a technological device that severs gesture from description– we interpret the embodied camera as part of a continual framing and reframing process that produces a particular kind of heightened consciousness.23 This concept of heightened consciousness appears in the form of automatism in Rouch’s film, and his concept ciné-transe refers to his role as a filmmaker participating with the community, acting as a magician in a possession-like state. According to Cowie, Rouch “brings to his filmmaking his awareness of the concern of Surrealism with the split and multiple subjects and retains a hesitation between rational and irrational explanation in his claims for the ciné-transe.”24 These aspects of his filmmaking are linked with his interest in Surrealism via an anthropological connection. Therefore, like Clifford, Rouch was inspired by a generation of anthropologists based in the avant-garde art scene in France between the two World Wars. 25 The lack of lived experiences and subjectivity in the ethnographic text highlight the exploratory function of audio-visual practices. Therefore, the

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Grimshaw and Ravetz, ‘Drawing with a Camera? Ethnographic Film and Transformative Anthropology.’ p. 270. Elizabeth Cowie, “Ways of Seeing: Documentary Film and the Surreal of Reality,” in Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch, ed. Joram Ten Brink (London: Wallflower Press, 2007), 209. Clifford’s influence on the closeness between French ethnography and the avant-garde artist scene during the interwar period has been scrutinized in the previous part. For further reading: James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Surrealism,” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (United States of America: Harvard University Press, 1988), 117–51.

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potentialities of sensory mediums are contributing significantly to the social sciences, especially using new technologies and methods. In reference to these sensory methods, Sarah Pink draws attention to possible methods in representing knowledge: I understand ethnography as a process of creating and representing knowledge or ways of knowing that are based on ethnographers’ own experiences and the ways these intersect with the persons, places and things encountered during that process. Therefore, visual ethnography as I interpret it, does not claim to produce an objective or truthful account of reality, but should aim to offer versions of ethnographers’ experiences of reality that are as loyal as possible to the context, the embodied, sensory, and affective experiences, and the negotiations and intersubjectivities through which knowledge was produced. This may entail reflexive, collaborative, and participatory methods.26 Through this point of view, Pink points out the possibilities arising from these practices, as well as the challenges arising from the representation of ethnographers’ experiences of reality. Herewith, by referring to the experiences of reality, she offers an understanding of an anthropology in which experimentation with audio-visual methods plays an important role. Because this approach challenges the traditional forms of institutional anthropology, it should also resist the approach of text-based tradition, which is in opposition to it. For the discussion of the relation between images and reality, Pink writes: At this level a discussion of the relationship of photographic and video images to reality becomes relevant in different way. (…) this may be because “as products of a particular culture, they (in this case photographs) are only perceived as real by cultural convention: they only appear realistic because we have been taught to see them such’. As ethnographers, we may suspend a belief in reality as an objective and observable experience, but we should also keep in mind that we too in everyday life as well as in research situations might use images to refer to certain versions of reality and treat images as referents of visible and observable phenomena27

26 27

Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, 3rd Edition (SAGE Publications, 2013), 35. Pink, 41.

CHAPTER I – ON THE RELATION BETWEEN ART AND ANTHROPOLOGY

With this perspective, Pink leads the discussion to a phenomenological approach in anthropology and distinguishes between lived experience and the mediated experience. This approach in anthropology refers to the ideas of Phenomenology of Perception (1962) by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Given the approach of phenomenological anthropology to question the conceptions of lived world, in the sense of bodily experience or as Merleau-Ponty calls “body-subject”28 , it is possible to distinguish between the role of reality and the pro-filmic reality conceived in front of the camera. In relation to the conceptualization of reality in this phenomenological approach, the question of representation of reality with its relation to the lived experience remains. On the other hand, this brings up the question of the distinction between subjective and objective reality. In this context, Deleuze discusses the context of reality as an objective in films and the ‘indiscernibility’ coming from the real and imaginary, in his book ‘Cinema II’: there was the documentary or ethnographic pole, and the investigation or reportage pole. These two poles inspired masterpieces and, in any case, intermingled (Flaherty on one hand, and on the other Grierson and Leacock). But, in challenging fiction, if this cinema discovered new paths, it also preserved and sublimated an ideal of truth which was dependent on cinematographic fiction itself: there was what the camera sees, what the character sees, the possible antagonism and necessary resolution of the two. (…) And the camera/filmmaker also had his identity, as ethnologist or reporter. It was very important to challenge the established fictions in favor of a reality that cinema could capture or discover. But fiction was being abandoned in favor of the real, whilst retaining a model of truth, which presupposed fiction and was a consequence of it.29 In pursuit of this ideal, Deleuze suggests a new model of truth following the history of ethnographic film, referencing Flaherty and other ethnographic film directors, and suggests questioning the fictional that comes with the reality. According to him, the idea of reality in cinema is not one of manipulated reality, but rather one of manipulated reality that has already been distorted in

28

29

For further reading on the relation of phenomenological anthropology: Merleau-Ponty M. The Phenomenology of Perception. Transl. ed Landes. D. A., editor. London; New York: Routledge. 2012. Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, trans. by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta, Sixth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), p. 149.

41

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the realm of modernity. This new form of reality enables us to see the idea behind the forms of representation where objective and subjective systems lose their contrast. On this ontological ground, the ideal of the reality, according to Deleuze with reference to Nietzsche “was the most profound fiction, at the heart of the real.”30 It appears that representing reality is a challenging task for political art practices, according to this perspective, The objective of political art to represent the reality through a work does not correspond to an intervention of the real world. In this context, reality as a sensory experience would have been already a construction of the fiction. In conjunction with this idea, according to Rancière, “fiction is a way of changing existing modes of sensory presentations and forms of enunciation; of varying frames, scales and rhythms; and of building new relationships between reality and appearance, the individual and the collective.”31 The discussions of image in philosophy in the works of Deleuze, MerleauPonty and Bergson, point out a new way of thinking for visual anthropology. The first examples of visual anthropology, Bateson, and Mead’s Balinese Character (1942) for instance, show not only the methods of visualization in field study, but also highlight and signal the artistic meditation of the fieldwork. In this context, it is possible to rethink the participatory approach on ethnographic films of Rouch in correlation with MacDougall’s ideas on the filmic language and his observational filmmaking. Rouch’s approach on ethnographic film was groundbreaking in terms of breaking conventional peculiarities of being an observer and observed, as well as the fiction and reality in documentary. In a similar manner, MacDougall’s practice puts emphasis on the encounter context, between the filmmaker and the observed subject, so again it reminds the audience the presence of the camera. Through the explorations, it is likely to reach an effective and extended understanding of the theory in images, as well as to comprehend the role of experimentation in inventing new methodologies.

30 31

Deleuze, 149. Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. by Steven Corcoran (London, New York: Continuum, 2010), p. 141.

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3.

Experimental Strategies in Anthropology and Aesthetic Implications of the Anthropological Research

According to Clifford, “a purely dialogical authority would repress the inescapable fact of textualization” and as long as “ethnographies cast as encounters between two individuals may successfully dramatize the intersubjective, give-and-take of fieldwork and introduce a counterpoint of authoritative voices, they remain representations of dialogue.”32 Hence, he argues that “Experiential, interpretive, dialogical, and polyphonic processes are at work, discordantly, in any ethnography, but coherent presentation presupposes a controlling mode of authority.”33 Furthermore, he argues that “this imposition of coherence on an unruly textual process is now inescapably a matter of strategic choice.”34 With his words that enable a rethinking of the traditional or long-term practices of ethnographic research, Clifford mainly aims to dismantle the authoritarian structure that underpins these practices. In the same way, he includes the newly developed experimental strategies in his inquiry, as they are also a part of the recurring problem. The methodological attempts in ethnography such as collaborative, dialogical, polyphonic strategies -and in general experimental- still would be engaged with authoritative voice, and the motives of alternative textual strategies for an ethnographer becomes apparent. Over time, Clifford’s perspective of textual representation of authority shed new light not only on ethnographic writing but also on the experiments in ethnography that involved collaboration between different disciplines. Together with Writing Culture, The Predicament of Culture provides a new perspective on ethnography in terms of recognizing its interdisciplinary potentialities. Initially, by presenting Surrealism as ethnography’s ‘secret sharer’, Clifford led the way for the study of aesthetic implications in anthropological research. Also, this new perspective extended the definition of ethnography, resulting in new intersections for artists and ethnographers who transit between anthropology and art. Hence, according to Grimshaw and Ravetz, ethnography developed into a common term that encompasses

32 33 34

Clifford, “On Ethnographic Authority,” 43. Clifford, 54. Clifford, 54.

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“a range of activities, practices and sites.”35 Through this argument, they address new ways of dialogue trespassing the disciplinary boundaries, by presenting basic differentiations between the practices of anthropologists and artists. For instance, to illustrate these differences they argue: Artistic work, as a disruptive rather than cumulative kind of knowledge practice, shares a concern with the generation of new knowledge, but it is of a radically different kind. (…) Moreover, anthropologists seek to communicate and persuade their peers through established forms of argument and presentation. The artist is less concerned with the communication of a particular message.36 While Grimshaw and Ravetz discuss a variety of possibilities connected to the asserted shared concerns of artists and anthropologists, they express concern about the erasure of difference that can emerge from crossing boundaries. Following this line of thinking, art’s role might be instrumentalized and complemented with approaches such as appropriation in order to further these activities. It is also applicable to the domain of art to interpret the ways of artists and anthropologists by analyzing their respective goals. Grimshaw and Ravetz traces the debates on finding a hybrid and experimental area between art and anthropology by exemplifying several approaches of artists and anthropologists. According to them, while artists aim to show the insights with their works, anthropologists show them as statements. What is important at this point is their emphasis on the resistances while bringing these two disciplines together, contrasting with the many instances of bringing art and anthropology together. Indeed, a productive dialogue would be possible not only through finding the shared concerns of two disciplines, but also by addressing the conflicts coming from the different approaches on exploring world. Furthermore, as anthropology becomes increasingly involved with artistic activities, the number of scholars debating the possibility of collaboration between the two disciplines has increased and investigating how these two disciplines impact one another has become a more central matter of debate.

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36

Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz, ‘The Ethnographic Turn–and after: A Critical Approach towards the Realignment of Art and Anthropology’, Social Anthropology, 23.4 (2015), pp. 418–34 (p. 421). Grimshaw and Ravetz, 430.

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One of the first publications that described a new relationship between artistic practice and anthropological research, The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, edited by George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers37 , was comprised of articles that made a substantial contribution to extending this area of focus. With this book, Marcus and Myers pointed out the interest of artists in anthropology, in conjunction with the trend that emerged in the 1990s of anthropology to lean towards contemporary art. In the introduction of this book, Marcus and Myers express their interest “in casting a critical focus upon contemporary art worlds themselves arose not from any a priori determination, but rather from our own experiences of following trails in which delimited ethnographic objects of study suddenly expanded and transformed themselves.”38 While evaluating this relation, they tie their ethnographic fieldwork experiences from the past to the new developments in anthropology. Thus, with these essays that they curated, they evaluate some of the debates that these developments generated to “present a different relationship between anthropology and art, its discourses and institutions; but the importance of recognizing the change is not to claim credit for seeing what others have failed to see.” They also add that: We should ask, instead, what are the current conditions that make possible anthropological attention to Western art practices themselves? The phenomenon which probably most generated our interest in putting together this book has been the recent fascination of the art world with the “appropriation” of value-producing activity on an international scale, with the assimilation of the “art” of the Third and Fourth World societies anthropologists have traditionally studied. Such work is not only circulating more noticeably in Western high culture venues; it has also become of theoretical significance for critical debates within the art world concerning aesthetics and cultural politics.39 With this paragraph, they respond to a number of criticisms of the art world’s continuing interest in anthropology, which have been revealed in the dis-

37 38

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George E. Marcus and Fred R. Myers, The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology (University of California Press, 1995). George E Marcus and Fred R Myers, “The Traffic in Art and Culture: An Introduction,” in The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology (Berkeley, Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1995), 2. Marcus and Myers, 4.

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courses of Western art circles. Within this framework, ‘appropriation’ appears as a way of assimilating the differences or art world can appropriate cultural contexts for itself which has been addressed by some scholars (e.g., Foster, 1995). Cultural appropriation of the West and its impacts on the Third and Fourth world artists has many complex layers to be discussed and needs to be critically questioned in terms of West’s definition of the ‘other’. At that point, artists need to deal with the acts of appropriation by challenging with the “othering” strategies through their awareness of the power structures of the West. This overlaps with the critiques of Foster, in the sense that he addresses appropriate art as “new genre, new site-specific work threatens to become a museum category”, however for him, it becomes an “irony inside the institution.”40 Proceeding on this track, Marcus and Myers question the concept of “primitive” both in art and anthropology, as well as the issue of “postmodernity” in the art world. They argue that despite the consequences of postmodernism, art and anthropology remain “identified by fundamentally overlapping discourse fields concerned with culture and the value-making that is implied by defining culture.”41 Challenging with the concepts as “primitive” and taking its approach from the “cultural hegemony”, this volume aims to look at the subject from the opposite side of the established approaches on anthropology of art. For instance, Fred Myers’s article focuses on the success of Australian Aboriginal acrylic paintings in the New York art scene in this new framework. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to this setting by investigating the borders between art and anthropology would also refer to Clifford’s notions on ethnographic writing, which emphasize the potentialities and chances of ethnographic practice in allowing the researcher not only to investigate but also to being a participant in the research process.

40 41

Foster, “The Artist As Ethnographer,” 306. Marcus and Myers, “The Traffic in Art and Culture: An Introduction,” 26.

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1.

Questioning Hal Foster’s Concept ‘Ethnographic Turn in Arts’

Marcus and Myers evaluate the position of art writing by relating their ideas with their approach to postmodernism, which they see as an “assimilative function of art writing less predictable and less efficient.”1 Therefore, to demonstrate the role of anthropological writing in this field, they reference the essay of Hal Foster that criticizes this assimilative inclination and illustrates the ethnographic shift in contemporary art: What role could anthropological writing, such as that deriving from the sorts of studies we are advocating and presenting here, play in this discursive field? In the past and present, very little. By the voracious assimilation of difference and similar discourses, art writing has already made an identifiable place for anthropology (within its hierarchies of virtuous or worn-out sources of influence on art). Hal Foster's insightful essay (this volume) on the appropriation of the “ethnographic” in contemporary art and art writing cogently identifies this assimilative tendency or desire as it identifies the ethnographic avant-garde's modeling of itself on the arts.2 Hal Foster’s seminal essay ‘Artist as Ethnographer?’ opens a productive and long-standing debate on this subject that has challenged artists using ethnographic methods, by highlighting the issue of ‘ethnographic self-fashioning’. With this article, Hal Foster manifests his critical approach about this transformation in art and raises several questions about the relationship between art and anthropology. 1 2

Marcus and Myers, 29. Marcus and Myers, 29.

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Taking Benjamin’s notion of Author as Producer into account, Foster points out the “danger, for the ‘artist as ethnographer’, of ‘ideological patronage.’”3 According to Foster, artist should resist the leaning towards referring to “political truth in a projected alterity.”4 He also addresses the predicaments surrounding the idea of the position of artist related to “otherness” and the possibility of alterity related with self-othering: Then as now such self-othering easily passes into self-absorption, in which the project of “ethnographic self-fashioning” becomes the practice of philosophical narcissism. To be sure, such reflexivity has done much to disturb reflex assumptions about subject positions, but it has also done much to promote a masquerade of the same: a vogue for confessional testimony in theory that is sometimes sensibility criticism come again, and a vogue for pseudo-ethnographic reports in art that are sometimes disguised travelogues from the world art market. 5 Through this approach, artists in the “pseudo-ethnographic” role, as Foster calls it, can turn out to accept ethnographic authority rather than being skeptical about their position of being an observer in the case of accepting the role of ethnographer. Namely, ethnographic authority that has been a challenge for anthropologists, takes the form of artistic authority in the artistic practices. Foster analyses this “turn” from both sides; in other words, he scrutinizes the anthropological confluence to art, as well as the shift in contemporary art of artists employing ethnography as a method. Including Surrealism in the debates of quasi-anthropology in art, Foster criticizes artistic envy of the anthropologists. It can be concluded that, artists, as well as anthropologists, envy each other’s position. However, this mutual interest arises from the “sixties onwards (…) out of institutional critique in both disciplines. Institutional critique – the questioning of art as an institution – was parallel in anthropology by the ‘crisis of representation’ in eighties.”6 Additionally, he admits that he is completely cynical about these developments regarding engagement of artists in ethnographic research. Furthermore he acknowledges that, some artists have taken advantage of these

3 4 5 6

Foster, “The Artist As Ethnographer,” 303. Foster, 304. Foster, 304. Roger Sansi, Art, Anthropology and the Gift (London, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015), p. 7.

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opportunities by collaborating with communities in novel ways, for instance, “to recover suppressed histories that are sited in particular ways, that are accessed by some more effectively than others.”7 Consequently, he is completely skeptical about the impacts of the role of artists in the role of ethnographers in these practices, which he refers to as “pseudo-ethnographic role set up for the artist or assumed by him or her.”8 When it comes to ethnographic authority, Foster warns against the implication of authority by the artists that arises in the setting of institutionalization in this framework. With this in mind, Foster generally concludes that this tendency in art raises the “ethnographic authority” problem that anthropology was already dealing with, this is particularly the case when taking into consideration the discussions around the representation problem. Foster draws attention to these characteristics of artistic intervention in the field of anthropology and does not accept the ethnographic methodologies used by these artists as being valid or applicable. He thus puts into question the function of “reflexivity” in artistic practices, particularly when it comes to concerns relating to power relations, as well as the collaboration in artistic practices as a whole. The fact that he expresses this perspective highlights the questions that have long been prominent in anthropology, as ethnographic research methods already raise issues of ethics and power relations.

2.

Ethnographic Fieldwork as an Artistic Practice

As part of the analysis into the position of the artist as ethnographer, George Marcus discusses the contributions of Hal Foster to this field and the potential of ideological patronage in the arts. Even though Marcus agrees with Foster on some points, he argues that Foster’s article addresses the issues raised by previous debates, and he focuses on the methodological approach of the “ethnographic turn in arts” with an appeal of more intensive collaboration between art and anthropology. In a new way, George Marcus, with his article, “Contemporary Fieldwork Aesthetics in Art and Anthropology: Experiments in Collaboration and Intervention,” re-examines debates about critical cultural theories in anthropology in the 1980s and argues that the success of the

7 8

Foster, “The Artist As Ethnographer,” 306. Foster, 306.

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‘Writing Culture’ formed a basis for giving rise to these critical examinations. In this article, Marcus asserts that: Writing Culture developed what its own implications were, for the conduct of fieldwork, deeply embedded in the norms and practices of the informal disciplinary culture of anthropology. In short, it did not undertake its own ‘‘ethnography’’ of how anthropology mundanely, or as a matter of its ordinary professional culture, distinctively produces ethnographic knowledge; and if it had, it might have then seen the intimate and crucial role of the writing of ethnography within the deeper and more ideological consequential professional culture of doing fieldwork.9 At the same time as Marcus examines the methods of conducting fieldwork and the ways in which it has been taught in institutional anthropological circles, he examines what has changed since the publication of Writing Culture Critique. Correspondingly, in this context he also refers to the Malinowskian encounter concept as a key for the reinterpretation of the fieldwork itself, which he considers as a “matter of aesthetics rather than methods as traditionally conceived.”10 For the new expression of fieldwork, he suggests that rethinking encounter of fieldwork in terms of aesthetics rather than the method itself. In general, Marcus’s approach, which is based on the concept of encounter, underlines the importance of aesthetic considerations in anthropological research. This approach may signal a shift toward an understanding for the practical application of anthropology as an artistic process, thereby strengthening the avant-garde art approach that does not compartmentalize, or separate, art and life. In this sense, he argues for the classification of ethnographic fieldwork as an art form, using the model of Situationists practices in art. For the implementation of fieldwork in arts, he carries out research with an artist, Fernando Calzadilla, in a village in Venezuela. For this project, Calzadilla attempts to enact anthropology’s theoretical, aesthetic, and sensory concerns in the field with fellow artist Abdel Hernandez, by using pipes,

9

10

George E. Marcus, ‘Contemporary Fieldwork Aesthetics in Art and Anthropology: Experiments in Collaboration and Intervention’, Visual Anthropology, 23.4, 2010, pp. 263–77 (p. 265). George E. Marcus, ‘Contemporary Fieldwork Aesthetics in Art and Anthropology: Experiments in Collaboration and Intervention’, Visual Anthropology, 23.4 (2010), 263–77 (p. 266).

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plastic sheets, asphalt, onion sacs and carrier bags to form a structure within a Caracas marketplace. In collaboration with people working at the market, the aim was to question and represent multiple issues from everyday market life and artefacts of violence and the Venezuelan oil industry.11 Marcus investigates this experimentation that extends beyond the textual in regard to the aesthetics of fieldwork through the works of these artists. Marcus writes in this piece, Only artists, who understood the task of ethnography more deeply than most other artists have in the heady era of disciplinary mixings that we have just gone through, might, in pursuing their own license, show anthropologists something important about their methods that they could not see as clearly for themselves. This is what the collective works of Abdel Hernandez and his collaborators in Cuba and Venezuela offer anthropology.12 Marcus emphasizes the significance of experiments in this piece since they push the limitations of anthropology and its disciplinary boundaries. With the idea of performance as ethnography, he addresses that this work should become more of a focus for anthropologists, as “it makes explicit and experimentally explores tendencies deeply a part of the ethos of the discipline having to do with a combination of scholarly distance and a more active participation in a culture but still within the frame of professional field work.”13 With the involvement of artists in social issues, these social relations including the active participation are the context that becomes the main element of their works. In this regard, the differences between the approaches of Hal Foster and George Marcus on the collaboration between artists and anthropologists become clear. While the main objective of Marcus is to present the significance of these experimentations that play with anthropology’s disciplinary boundaries, Foster criticizes the problems around identity and representation in these works. On the other hand, Marcus adds a new dimension to the subject

11

12

13

Andrew Irving, ‘Contemporary Art and Anthropology. (2006). Edited by Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright. Oxford and New York: Berg.’, Doing Fieldwork in Eastern Europe, in Anthropology Matters, Vol 8, No 1. p.23. Fernando Calzadilla and George E. Marcus, ‘Artists in the Field: Between Art and Anthropology.’, in Contemporary Art and Anthropology, ed. by Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (Berg Press, 2006), pp. 95–117 (p. 96). Calzadilla and Marcus, p. 99–100.

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by presenting a different approach towards the productive links between art and anthropology.

3.

Art, Anthropology and Socially Engaged Art Practices

Based on the emphasis of Marcus on social relations of artists or the role of encounter mentioned above, these artistic field experiments are in accordance with the concepts of Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics (1998) that played an important role on the emergence of politicized contemporary art until the middle of 1990s. However, the role of art for the engagement with the communities has long been a subject before Bourriaud considering the history of community art. Community art emerged in the late-1960s in UK, US and in Europe, appeared as a form of cultivating social justice and democracy through an emphasis of community involvement. This allowed artists to work beyond the gallery context, but on the other hand resulted with the instrumentalization of art for the social change or as a part of educational framework by the funding of public and private institutions. Still and all, community art practice left a strong legacy for the independent artists that put collaboration with the communities at the core of their practice. For instance, Suzanne Lacy has coined the term “new genre public art” by characterizing this genre with its implementation of differentiating media as “installations, performance, conceptual art, and mixed media art.”14 According to Lacy, the new genre of public art artists use ideas from “vanguard forms, but they add a developed sensibility about audience, social strategy, and effectiveness that is unique to visual art as we know it today.”15 Indeed, her ideas aim to challenge with the established definition of art by showing the implications of social interactions of the artists. Importantly, Lacy offers an alternative reading on the history of public art “through the development of various vanguard groups, such as feminist, ethnic, Marxist, and media artists and other activists”, and she states that, they all have a “common interest in leftist politics, social activism, redefined audiences, relevance for commu-

14 15

Suzanne Lacy, “Cultural Pilgrimages and Metamorphic Journeys,” in Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, 1. (Seattle: Bay Press, 1995), 20. Lacy, p. 20.

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nities and collaborative methodology.”16 Her words and her artistic practice were addressing the dynamics of this expanded field of art. For instance, The Roof is on Fire (1994) by Suzanne Lacy, Chris Johnson, and Annice Jacoby was a large-scale performance with 220 public high school students from Oakland. The performance was featuring unscripted and unedited conversations on the problems they are experiencing as young people of color, while seated on 100 cars parked on a rooftop garage while over 1000 Oakland residents listening. This performance was a part of a series of projects titled The Oakland Projects that has been followed by other performances, screenings, workshops to highlight the youth needs in the Oakland neighborhoods, and this involved collaborations with the mass media to increase visibility on the issues of youth and criminal justice system. The 1990s arguments over ’new genre public art,’ as well as Suzanne Lacy’s artistic practices, laid the groundwork for the further growth of socially oriented practices in contemporary art. Lacy’s approach was primarily concerned with the societal consequence of the artistic project. The practice of socially engaged art received wide attention in contemporary art in the late 1990s, as art became increasingly approaching and engaging with social practice. Also, the new form of art that Bourriaud indicated in his book opened an ongoing debate on the social relations as artworks and the position of artists in this progress. If it is established based on social relations, an art practice can be examined in the context of “relational art” and thus, relational aesthetics examines art as an idea that produces human relationships, with a focus on artists proposing collaborative practices. For illustrating this new practice, Nicolas Bourriaud focuses on artists developing practices in the context of ‘relational aesthetics’ and to illustrate this practice, he cites particularly works of installation artist Felix GonzalezTorres. His piece Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) (1991) is essentially a heap of candy, and invites visitors to take a piece, and thus aims to elicit active participation of the visitors. On the other hand, the heap of candy also engages all senses of the visitors, “as the 175 pounds slowly diminishes, it will mirror how Gonzalez-Torres’s late partner, Ross Laycock, wasted away until he eventually

16

Lacy, p. 25.

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died of complications from AIDS.”1718 Thus, his work is directly concerned with social connection with visitors, as it involves them in the artistic practice by allowing them to become active participants in the form of the work.  Furthermore, in this context of establishing social relations, according to Bourriaud artists “reintroduce the idea of plurality, for contemporary culture hailing from modernity, means inventing ways of being together, forms of interaction that go beyond the inevitability of the families, ghettos of technological user friendliness, and collective institutions an offer.”19 According to Nicolas Bourriaud, with “relational aesthetics” is separated from modernism, as well as postmodernism. For contemporary art, he points out that, this “introduces a radical shift in relation to modern art, insomuch as it does not turn its back on the aura of the work of art, but rather moves it origin and effect.” and he adds, “the aura of contemporary art is a free association.”20 With these words, he essentially underpins the configuration of relational artwork by juxtaposing the ‘origin’ and ‘effect’ of the work with the ‘aesthetic’ evaluation, so the structure of the relational work that constitutes the human relationships become another main point of concern along with the aesthetics. Relational art, in particular, illustrates artistic practices linked with the construction of social relationships and places these communicative practices within the context of ’relational aesthetics.’ By concentrating on the social relations, ‘relational aesthetics’ provide a basis for the idea of experimentation in anthropology21 by pointing out the role of social relations from encounters to engagements in the artistic practice. Bourriaud’s relational aesthetic also is a clear demonstration of the artistic interest in human interactions that began especially with the Beuys concept of social sculpture. In the context of encounter, this also represents the link that Marcus refers to in his article, with roots in Dada, Surrealism but also the Situationists and Fluxus, among others and moreover he adds that, “the

17 18

19 20 21

At just 38 years old, Gonzalez-Torres died from AIDS in 1996. Stephanie Eckardt, “The New Met Breuer Wants You to Take Candies, Not Photos,” W Magazine, accessed April 11, 2018, https://www.wmagazine.com/story/felix-gonzalez-t orres-candy-the-met-breuer. Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods, Book (Dijon – France: Les Presse Du Reel, 2002), p. 60, Dijon – France. Bourriaud, 61. This aspect is going to be evaluated in the following parts. For instance, based on the ideas of Marcus on social relations of artists or the role of encounter.

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scene of spectacle in such art works, created in the context of real-life situations, is what is imagined rather than the scene of encounter of anthropology, but the two are not unrelated and it would be interesting to use this affinity to think through what anthropology might learn from such art projects.” 22 At this point, it is likely to establish a connection to Kwon’s article, One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity (1997). With this article, she posits that the first instances of site-specific artworks in the 1960s are based on the institutional critique established throughout these years, because artists were experimenting with different methods to discover a way out of museum or gallery space. As a result of this, they started to create their works in a current location, in a specific site. Kwon indicates on the contemporary site-oriented works that “occupy hotels, city streets, housing projects, prisons, schools, hospitals, churches, zoos, supermarkets, etc., and infiltrate media spaces such as radio, newspapers, television, and the Internet.”23 In addition to these, Kwon cites that, site-oriented art is also informed by a broader range of disciplines (i.e., anthropology, sociology, literary criticism, psychology, natural and cultural histories, architecture and urbanism, computer science, political theory) and sharply attuned to popular discourses (i.e., fashion, music, advertising, film, and television).24 Kwon, furthermore, contributed to the book Site-Specificity: The Ethnographic Turn, which analyses correspondences between art and ethnographic practice. Miwon Kwon’s contribution in this volume investigates the artistic relation with ethnography, and she cites the names of the artists as Mark Dion, Jimmie Durham, Fred Wilson, James Luna, and Renée Green in this framework. In addition to her opinions on these disciplinary engagements, she explains the areas that intersect in terms of disciplinary concerns, critical projects through the 1980s and 1990s, which engaged the ‘politics of representation’, self-reflexivity incorporating within the work an acknowledgement of, and critique of, uneven power relations enacted by and through representations, can be seen to share ethnography’s concerns 22 23 24

Marcus, “Contemporary Fieldwork Aesthetics in Art and Anthropology: Experiments in Collaboration and Intervention,” 269. Miwon Kwon, ‘One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity’, October, 80 (1997), pp. 85–110 (p. 92). Kwon, 92.

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to deconstruct the production of knowledge and the constitution of the authority of knowledge.25 With these words, she highlights the characteristics of the artistic tendency to appeal to the anthropological practices such as ethnographic fieldwork, ethnographic interviewing, participant observation or audiovisual research methods. However, Kwon also highlights the complexities and challenges arising from these artistic practices by displaying the shared concern on the uneven power relations.

3.1

From Bourriaud’s “Relational Aesthetics” to Bishop’s “Relational Antagonism”

Bourriaud’s “relational aesthetics” has a significance in different respects in the global art world, as its impacts associates with artistic methods, curatorial strategies, as well as arises interest in scholars from different disciplines. Some scholars focused on the transformation in the art world through the consideration of this concept by demonstrating the increasing number of social practices in art in the global sphere. The debate that Bourriaud opened in art fostered some other discussion, essentially considering the social relations produced by the work itself. For instance, one of the most well-known critiques on relational aesthetics, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (2004) by Claire Bishop that arises productive questions while strongly criticizes the ideas of Bourriaud about the main purpose of relational aesthetics. She states that Bourriaud, “wants to equate aesthetic judgment with an ethicopolitical judgment of the relationships produces by a work of art”. And as a way opposition with Bourriaud’s conceptualization, she underlines the ambiguity of producing relations with an emphasis on the role of the dialogue and therefore she questions, “How do we measure or compare these relationships?”26 By doing this, Bishop calls into question the “quality of the relationships” that excludes the social reality of the places. Influenced by the theoretical concept of “democracy of antag-

25

26

Miwon Kwon, “Experience vs. Interpretation: Traces of Ethnography in the Works of Lan Tuazon and Nikki S. Lee,” in Site-Specificity: The Ethnographic Turn, ed. Alex Coles (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2000), 76. Claire Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, October, 110 (2004), pp. 51–79 (p. 37).

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onism” of Laclau and Mouffe’s on Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), she grounds her theory on the reflection of antagonism on social level: fully functioning democratic society is not one in which all antagonisms have disappeared, but one in which new political frontiers are constantly being drawn and brought into debate, (…) a democratic society is one in which relations of conflict are sustained, not erased. Without antagonism there is only the imposed consensus of authoritarian order.27 With her understanding of antagonism, she criticizes Bourriaud’s presumption about the involvement of ‘dialogue’ in these relational works would automatically constitute democratic practice, hence she traverses this conceptualization of producing relationships with dialogue that comes with the idea of togetherness with the “sensations of unease and discomfort.”28 The idea of democratic society wherein the idea of conflict-maintained forms the main element in her idea of antagonism. In the context of art, she exemplifies her approach of discomfort with the works of Santiago Sierra and Thomas Hirschhorn that confronts the viewer with the “social reality” of the places that they work. Sierra known with his controversial works such as 250cm Line Tattooed on 6 Paid People (1999) at Havana, Cuba that six unemployed young men were hired to be tattooed for 30 dollars which is equal to their daily incomes. Paying others for his work is a repeating motif in Sierra’s works29 for emphasizing the idea of “everything and everyone has a price”30 as Bishop mentions. Also, Bishop has addressed the works of Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn for his works underlining social antagonism, with his sculptural works situated outside the gallery that enables the viewers involved in his practice. His work Bataille Monument (2002) at Documenta XI was dedicated to French philosopher and intellectual, Georges Bataille. His work constitutes a library, snack bar, TV studio and public sculpture installed in a working-class migrant neighborhood where mostly Turkish people are living in the outskirts

27 28 29

30

Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, pp. 65–66. Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, p. 70. For instance, as a part of another work of Sierra, Persons Paid to Have Their Hair Dyed Blond (2001) in Venice Biennial, he paid 60 dollars to the illegal street vendors in Venice with migrant background to have their hair dyed blond. Bishop, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, p. 70.

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of the city of Kassel.31 His main intention was engaging with the local community and thus he collaborated with the residents of the neighborhood during the construction process. Along with this, making people aware of George Bataille’s works was another aim of the project.32 By considering these two works together, Bishop aims to highlight the mutual characteristics that manifest themselves on representing the social and economic reality of the place that they work. The concept of relational antagonism derives from the discomfort or uneasiness of confrontation in these works, rather than the objective of social engagement in works of relational art. Bishop directly disagrees with the vague classification of Bourriaud on relational art that addresses the objective and intention of the artist in the center of the artistic practice. By proposing the objective of activating the viewer with reference to Rancière’s concept ‘autonomy of aesthetic experience’, producing human relations with the ideal of ‘microtopia’ of Bourriaud, what Bishop aims is to address how these relational practices fail on democratic ground. Thus, she points out the ‘politics of antagonism’ as a focal point in her theory as a strategy of embracing tension and conflict as the main productive forces in the social engagement processes of the artists.

3.2

Critique of Relational Art and the Politics of Participation

Finkelpearl outlines all current discussions about participatory processes in art in the introductory text on participatory art. Generally, he considers participatory art in three categories: “relational, activist, and antagonistic.”33 I aim to trace these categories in the works of artists as well as in the critiques of different scholars. Concerning Bishop’s critical point of view on participatory art practices, it is possible to notice the transformation in her approach by comparing the 31

32

33

This reinvention of the monument shows itself in his series of four monuments (Spinoza, Deleuze, Bataille and Gramsci) that are also examples of art in public space. Bataille Monument was the third one in his series. It is important to note that, related with the intention of Hirschorn, there was a lot of criticism on constructing a Bataille monument in a Muslim neighborhood. For further reading on Hirschorn’s works: Critical Laboratory: The Writings on Thomas Hirschorn, ed. Lisa Lee, Hal Foster, Massachusetts: MIT Press. 2013. Tom Finkelpearl, “Participatory Art,” in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, ed. Michael Kelly (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

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article Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (2004) and her book Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012). Bishop notes that about the narrative of her book “is therefore a journey from skeptical distance to imbrication.”34 This shift in her viewpoint is also related with how these practices evolved throughout the time by adapting to the theory and criticism of participatory art. Through this contextualization, she aims to reevaluate the participatory art while by looking back across the art history for questioning the ‘social’ in art. In general, she refers these post-studio art practices of collaboration and participation as ‘participatory art’ in her book, as this refers to the involvement of people and refrains from the vague term of ‘social engagement’ as Bourriaud calls it. With an historical overview of these social practices in her book, she does not only present the development of these practices, but also, she provides the ground to consider through the political concern. She first scrutinizes the works of Rirkrit Tiravanija and Liam Gillick that represent the line of relational artists to which Bourriaud refers.35 For instance, Bishop focuses on Tiravanija’s work Untitled (Free) (1992), conducted in 303 Gallery in New York, in which the artist transformed the gallery into a kitchen, and he served free rice and Thai curry there. This work serves as a substantial case for Bishop to emphasize the lack of the critical social engagement in some relational works, as the gallery creates the ‘public’ itself. So, the concept of public does not coincide with the meaning of ‘public’ engagement as Bourriaud states because of the fact that people coming to the gallery are already associated for their connection in art. Bishop states that, this orientation towards the social context is now almost a global phenomenon – reaching across the Americas to Southeast Asia and Russia yet growing more extensively in European countries with a strong public funding for the arts.36 In this book, Bishop laid the foundation for her ideas with Rancière’s concept of aesthetics with a focus on the experience in relation to art:

34 35

36

Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, 1st edn (London: Verso Books, 2012), p. 6, London. To present the cases of Relational Art, Bourriaud curated a group exhibition under the title ‘Traffic’ at CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France in 1996. Tiravanija and Gillick were also the artists exhibited in this event. Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, p. 2.

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Rather than considering the work of art to be autonomous, he (Rancière) draws attention to the autonomy of our experience in relation to art. (…) this freedom suggests the possibility of politics, because the undecidability of aesthetic experience implies a questioning of how the world is organized, and therefore the possibility of changing or redistributing the same world. Aesthetics and politics therefore overlap in their concern for the distribution and sharing out ideas, abilities, and experiences to certain subjects – what Rancière calls la partage du sensible.37 Rancière’s own theory of modernism evaluates the relation between politics and aesthetics with an aim to display that they naturally associated with each other. While reevaluating the role of aesthetics considering the origins of the term, he proposes a new consideration of aesthetic regimes. He reveals the role and dynamics of aesthetic experience in this process with an emphasis on the ‘autonomy of the experience’, thus questions the role of aesthetic experience through the contradictions of political art and indicates that art is political by its own nature. He evaluates the contradictions in the new inclinations towards the social practice in the contemporary art with these words: It is increasingly the case that art is starting to appear as a space of refuge for dissensual practice, a place of refuge where the relations between sense and sense continue to be questioned and re-worked. This fact has given a renewed impetus to the idea that art's vocation is actually to step outside itself, to accomplish an intervention in the 'real' world. These two opposed trends, then, result in a form of schizophrenic movement, a shuttling-back-and forth between the museum and its 'outside', between art and social practice.38 With these words, Rancière highlights the changing dynamics with the social turn in art, when the boundaries of art that positions the artists in the studio and the gallery-museum context disappeared. In Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, he shows how political art produces a comprehensible political implication, but also on the other hand, a sensible concern produced by the main concern resisting the signification to subvert it. So, an artwork with an objective of being political reduces its political significance because of its own objective. At this point, the tension coming from the aesthetic separation occurs in political art. Rancière’s new conceptualization of aesthetics aims

37 38

Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, p. 27. Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, p. 145.

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to present politics as an aesthetic manner that considers social and political movements in the realms of aesthetics. Yet, in political art the works are already acknowledged with the political concern that does not leave any place for establishing a relation with the works as a viewer. In the same manner this does not leave any place for an autonomous relationship with the artwork. So, the function of aesthetics that corresponds to the idea of ‘art becoming a form of life’ establishes links for the political art. The theory of Rancière allows us to reconsider the role of aesthetics in the relation between art and politics, or within the ‘politics of aesthetics’ as he calls. By doing this, he gives new visibilities to the notion of ‘aesthetic’ with the idea of ‘distribution of the sensible’. In this perspective, aesthetics serves as a mode of distribution, and it becomes difficult to imagine art “without a specific distribution of the sensible trying to a certain form of politics.”39 For the exploration of the role of participation in contemporary art, Bishop refers and expends specifically Rancière’s theory of aesthetics and politics. She specifically embraces “the idea of art as autonomous realm of experience, in which there is no privileged medium” and thus, with the history she traces, she intends to “reinforce this point by situating participation as a constantly moving target.”40 In this respect, Bishop analyses this global emergence of social practices in art not only from historical and theoretical perspective but also from geographical perspective by tracing the works in connection with the society. Moreover, Bishop points out that, since the 1990s, “project has become an umbrella term for many types of art: collective practice, self-organized activist groups, transdisciplinary research, participatory and socially engaged art, and experimental curating.41 ” Bishop aims to specify a critical account for institutional description of socially engaged art and its experimental curation “which has tended to celebrate identity politics, the apotheosis of video installation, large-scale cibachrome photographs, design-as-art, relational aesthetics, conceptual painting, and spectacular new forms of installation art.”42 Bishop’s critic on the ramifications of ‘relational aesthetics’ emphasizes on the difficulties inherent in describing the ‘participation’ context in these

39 40 41 42

Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and Its Discontents, trans. by Steven Corcoran (Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, 2009), p. 44. Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, p. 30. Bishop, 194. Bishop, 194.

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works, and in general, she highlights the ambiguity of terms used to discuss these projects that are rooted in both politics and artistic participation. The geographical dissemination of participatory art in this book encompasses a productive debate not only on the politics of participation, but also the role of cultural policies. By drawing attention mainly on cases from Europe, she addresses the institutional framework, as City Council encouraging the idea of art practices to be ‘socially inclusive’ and scrutinizes the concept of ‘participation’ in this social inclusion discourse. In addition, she scrutinizes the reasons behind the appearance of relational art as a part of contemporary timeframe by looking at the main actors behind this change. To summarize, by returning to these cases at the nexus of contemporary art and anthropology and considering the ways in which the reflexive method might be implemented, the relationship between these two disciplines becomes clearer. The notion of Foster’s “ethnographic turn in arts” emphasizing the engagement of artists with the communities in order to understand their social lives and cultural practices, followed by a growing debate over the art and anthropology collaborations. Through the use of various forms of creativity, experimentality and audio-visual technologies, contributions of anthropologists to this debate aimed to encourage a fresh perspective on anthropology. As a result of these developments, there has been an increase in interest in artistic practices and experimental approaches in the discipline of anthropology. Additionally, Grant Kester’s book The One and the Many (2011) centers on the collaborative practices in art, “that unfold through extended interaction and shared labor, and in which the process of participatory interaction itself is treated as a form of creative praxis.”43 His ideas give a foundation for comprehending the dynamics of collaborative production by reimagining the interaction between artists and participants, which is essential for understanding the collaborative processes. By referring a series of collaborative approaches in art and activism context, he locates the mutual concern of these artists and art collectives44 on “a series of provocative assumptions about the relationship 43 44

Grant H. Kester, The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2011), p. 9. Along with the works of Stephen Willats and the Artists Placement Group in UK, and Suzanne Lacy and Newton Harrison in US, Kester refers to a younger generation of practitioners and collectives such as Ala Plastica in Buenos Aires, Superflex in Denmark, Maurice O’Connell in Ireland, MuF in London, Huit Facettes in Senegal, Ne Nas Plier in Paris, Ultra Red in Los Angeles, and Temporary Services in Chicago. In: Grant

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between art and the broader social and political world and about the kinds of knowledge that aesthetic experience is capable of producing.”45 This perspective on these social practices is based upon a focus on the artistic production process, rather than the ‘finished work’. Meanwhile, he discusses the varying positions taken by the concepts of ’aesthetics’ and ’ethics’ in these practices, he also highlights their significance for the art world, particularly in terms of their transformative elements. Kester generally takes a positive stance toward the potential of collaborations with communities through artistic practices, considering that such collaborations increase dialogue in circumstances of social exclusion – for instance, by constructing a productive relationship with the marginalized communities. Kester conceptualizes the role of collaboration in these cases as ‘conversational aesthetics’ (2011) and these are referred to as dialogical art practice by Kester. With a focus on the ethical aspects borrowed from the ethnography, Kester emphasizes new ways of possible conceptions of the art practice by rethinking these social practices in art. In this context, Kester’s understanding of the ethical aspect on these practices has been a subject to Claire Bishop’s critics for “overemphasizing ethical dimensions of participatory practices and ‘good intentions’ over aesthetic considerations”, whereas Bishop is interested in the “political outcomes of participatory practices and the ability to disrupt and provoke, following from early and late twentieth-century art practices.”46 According to Bishop, Kester neglects the social role of art and artist with his main focus on ethical values; Bishop, on the other hand, considers that artists have the potential to exercise influence on society in order to draw out the social tension. So, she replaces the concept of ‘conversational’ with her argument on ‘antagonism’ by opposing with the idea of artist’s role of establishing relations with the marginalized communities through the process of conversation – or namely, she antagonizes the idea of ‘artist as social worker’. This emphasis on the role of the artist leads us to her conceptualization of ‘relational antagonism’. As a result, it is crucial to stress that Bishop, together with Kester, established the basic framework for the debates on “social in art”

45 46

H. Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art, 1st edn (California: University of California Press, 2013), p. 9 Grant H. Kester, Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art, 1st edn (California: University of California Press, 2013), p. 9. Larissa Hjorth and Kristen Sharp, ‘The Art of Ethnography: The Aesthetics or Ethics of Participation?’, Visual Studies, Vol. 29.No.2 (2014), pp. 128–35 (p. 131).

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and “the politics of participatory art” by offering a rich vocabulary for use in this context, which is important to note.

4.

Practices Between Art and Anthropology

4.1

Exploring Limits and Potentialities

Presently, there is an increasing number of contemporary artists who are engaged with the principal methodologies of ethnography and exploring the limitations and potentials of these approaches in this engagement. In the same way, anthropologists recognize the possibilities and potentialities that exist in the context of artistic practice. For instance, in one of his video lectures, by comparing the work of anthropologists with the practice of artists, British anthropologist Tim Ingold declares that “the real people who are doing anthropology these days are artists. Anthropologists have for the most part of them settled for something else.”47 In order to expand horizons in anthropology, Tim Ingold suggests leaving ethnography in favor of experimentation in anthropology, which opens the door to engagement with art that opens the forms of alternative expression. Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright’s book, Contemporary Art and Anthropology examines the parallels and contrasts in methodological and practical approaches between art and anthropology. They aimed to contribute to the developing productive dialogue between contemporary artists and anthropologists, which is presently taking place, by concentrating on the boundaries between these two disciplines. As a result, this book has consequences in terms of displaying relationships between these two disciplines in order to follow the alternative strategies of research, creation, and exhibition methods. In this volume, Arnd Schneider investigates the role and forms of appropriation for art and anthropology, in his article titled “Appropriations”. He suggests that this concept should be reevaluated by considering its effectiveness between the two disciplines and proposes “a new approach to appropriation, which, while not doing away with the implied imbalances, puts the

47

Tim Ingold on Anthropology, Art and Self-Transformation’, Allegra, 2013, http://allegr alaboratory.net/slow-food-for-thoughts-ingold-on-anthropology-art-and-self-transfor mation, (accessed 21 May 2018).

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stress on learning and transformation.”48 By rethinking the course of appropriation in previous cultural exchanges and historical context, he interrogates this concept through the framework of power relations. While doing this, he analyses the concept of appropriation in art through the significance of dialogical principle for artists. In this context, he adds the following: The attempt here, of course, is not to judge or compare artists' investigations by the standards of anthropology, which are themselves the outcome of a particular disciplinary history and are now frequently questioned in their scientific pretensions. Rather, it is the degree of respect for the other, which must be at the heart of any evaluation, for both artists and anthropologists. Respect, as well as sincerity and seriousness in one's work, are difficult and value-loaded concepts to apply, which is why we are brought back to the dialogical principle. In this sense, an artist's work will have to show an engagement and dialogue with the other. 49 According to Schneider, the main precedencies for anthropologist that is in the realm of morality is necessarily pertinent to artists producing in the domain of social sciences. What Schneider addresses as respecting for the others is the core value of anthropology, yet he takes his idea to another level by implying the dialogical principle for both artists and anthropologists. This level of engagement for artists, on the other hand, appears to be a challenge for those who are not familiar with recent anthropological discussions. So, Schneider’s ideas that present the challenges of the social engagement of artists are effective in the manner of constituting a productive dialogue between two disciplines. In this book, Schneider and Wright not only focus on the relation between these two disciplines, but also include analyses on the works of contemporary artists that directly or discursively demonstrate the influences, potentials, and connective links with anthropology. Again, according to this book, “for anthropologists to engage with art practices means embracing new ways of seeing and new ways of working with visual materials. This implies taking contemporary art seriously on a practical level and being receptive to its processes of producing works and representing other realities.”50 To show these

48 49 50

Arnd Schneider, “Appropriations,” in Contemporary Art and Anthropology, ed. Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (Oxford: Berg Press, 2006), 36. Schneider, 50. Schneider, ‘Appropriations’, p. 50.

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connections, it features some interviews with artists who engage directly or indirectly with anthropology, such as Dave Lewis, Rainer Wittenborn, Claus Biegert, Nikolaus Lang and Rimer Cardillo. In addition to these artists, this book includes an article by Denise Robinson that investigates the art of Susan Hiller, a renowned artist, who is also an anthropologist. Furthermore, Alternative Art and Anthropology: Global Encounters (2017) edited by Arnd Schneider, adds a new dimension to the debates on the convergences of art and anthropology by presenting perspectives from Asia, Latin America, and Africa, with the objective to present a perspective that attempts to take on a global scale. According to Schneider, this volume “brings other traditions of contemporary art and anthropology to the fore and puts them center stage, relying primarily on notions of difference and alterity, and demonstrating the great variety of concepts and approaches proposed elsewhere.”51 The volume is designed with the aim to contribute to future collaborations between art and anthropology by providing experiences from this approach to a globalized setting. This questionable framing is revealed most explicitly through Schneider’s use of the term “other” which he employs to continue to categorize contemporary art practices that are oriented outside of Western circuits, based on defining that which does not—according to this positionality—reflect the traditions and concepts of proclaimed Western artistic traditions. Global cultural processes that are based on the framework of geographical interconnectivity and cultural exchange raise concerns regarding what is considered representational strategies in the art world’s domain and how these strategies are discoursed in general. Synchronously, this categorization is acquiring a temporal limitation since it can be considered as a symbolic gesture rather than activating any form of interconnectivity. On the other hand, by including essays that explore diverse cultures, the book contributes to the debates on the relationship between contemporary art and anthropology that take place in a variety of regions and across a variety of localities.

51

Arnd Schneider, ‘Alternatives: World Ontologies and Dialogues between Contemporary Arts and Anthropologies’, in Alternative Art and Anthropology: Global Encounters, ed. by Arnd Schneider, 1st edn (London, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017), pp. 1–26 (p. 1).

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4.2

Referred Artists in Art and Anthropology Relationship

For the artists engaging with the sociopolitical issues, concept of Beuys ‘social sculpture’ and the theory developed around this extended concept of art in the 1970s still has significance in terms of referring to art and society context. This concept also made critical claims about life, art, and society by relocating the role of the artist for social interactions. In general Beuys believed that social sculpture has the potential to transform society through art and everyone would be an artist in this process of production. His work, 7000 Oaks (1982) began as a five-year project to plant 7000 trees in Kassel in Germany with the help of volunteers. This project also reflected Beuys’ concept of artistic practice as a means of bringing about societal and cultural change, and it is an integral part of an artist’s participation in sociocultural issues. As a whole, Beuys’s practice in the 1970s marked early attempts by artists to engage with social and political issues; he is thus considered to be the primary precursor of contemporary practices of socially engaged art. The link between artists and society is increasingly being called into question as a result of the “social turn in arts” in the arts, which has gained increasing attention in recent years. Additionally, this investigation of this link draws attention to the anthropological potential that may be discovered in artistic pursuits. In this context, there are numerous artists in which expand the field of social engagement of artists. It is essential to list a few of the most important figures in the engagement between art and anthropology in this section. For instance, Susan Hiller is one of the leading artists whose works positioned in the hybrid area between art and anthropology. As an artist born in Florida and recently based in London, after studying film and photography, she pursued her postgraduate study at Tulane University in New Orleans with a National Science Foundation fellowship in anthropology. She has conducted fieldwork in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize but became confused about the academic anthropology’s claim to objectivity, and she wrote, “she did not wish her research to become part of anthropology’s ’objectification of the contrariness of lived events’”, and “during a lecture on African art, she made the decision to leave anthropology to become an artist.”52 Hiller’s aforementioned decision to critique the institutional history of anthropology also contributes to the discussions on the

52

‘Susan Hiller’, http://www.susanhiller.org/about.html. (Accessed 25 April 2018).

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ethnographic shift in art, as well as the debates on the ethnographic research processes. Susan Hiller’s work “has long been recognized for its excavation of everyday phenomena that lie within the recesses, byways and blind spots of our cultural surround”, while she “makes powerful and seductive works out of ordinary, sometimes seemingly unimportant items, works which do not merely enumerate or catalogue but instead involve the audience as witness to the lacunae and contradictions in our cultural life.”53 In pursuit of this, she uses collecting and classification as a technique in her works that can be considered as an archeological method54 by taking inspiration from the cultural experiences. As an artist collecting the materials related with the collective memory, she investigates characteristic paradoxes in everyday life. She discovers the irrational aspects of the cultural life with a focus on dreams, UFO encounters, tales, horror stories, etc. Her works are created with an inspiration from cultural elements; in this way she employs cultural artifacts as material for most of her works. For one of her most well-known pieces of work, From the Freud Museum (1991-96), first created for the Freud Museum in Vienna, Hiller is influenced by the exhibiting techniques used to display Sigmund Freud’s personal collection of art and antiquities. (Figure 1) As part of this artwork, she presents her collection of little artifacts in fifty archive boxes that have been organized in a vitrine. Various of the objects involved in Hiller’s installation are “ephemeral, everyday articles, such as 45rpm records, two china creamers in the shape of cows, the English puppet Punch’s wooden slapstick” and, “others are objects of historical and anthropological significance, including Mayan obsidian blades and reproductions of aboriginal Australian cave paintings alongside earth collected near Papunya in Australia.”56 An exhibition of boxes from her 53 54

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S. Hiller and others, Susan Hiller: From Here to Eternity (Nürnberg: Verlag für Moderne Kunst Nürnberg, 2011), p. 78. For further reading on Hiller’s reference to Freud’s antiquities as an archeological collection and the implementation of this collection in his psychoanalysis sessions see: Morra, Joanne, ‘Not-Archaeology: Freud and Hiller as Collectors’ in Alexandra Kokoli (ed), In Focus: From the Freud Museum 1991-6 by Susan Hiller, Tate Research Publication, 2017. Susan Hiller, From the Freud Museum (1991-96), Glass, 50 cardboard boxes, paper, video, slide, light bulbs and other materials, Tate London (Source: https://www.flickr.com/ph otos/eselat/4840537125/in/photostream/) – Creative Commons Tate.

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Figure 1: Susan Hiller, From the Freud Museum (1991-96), Glass, 50 cardboard boxes, paper, video, slide, light bulbs and other materials, Tate London55

archive exists to allow her to investigate new ways of juxtaposition, both in terms of anthropology and art, through the use of her collecting and its presentation. Objects having anthropological significance were placed alongside personal objects in this work, and the randomness of the arrangement aligns

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with Clifford’s ideas the application of juxtaposition and collage aesthetics within anthropology. Aside from that, Jimmy Durham is regularly mentioned in conversations about the representation of identities, artistic reflections on identities and its social and political implications. Durham is an artist born in Arkansas in 1940, and mostly produces sculptures. He began working as a sculptor in 1963, and in 1969 he moved to Europe and studied at the École de Beaux Arts, Geneva. In 1973, Durham returned to the US to become a full-time organizer in the American Indian Movement (AIM). During this time, he served as director of the International Indian Treaty Council and representative to the United Nations.57 Self-representation of the American Indian identity is an underlying theme in his works, and as a result, he occupies a pivotal position in the discussion over artists who also work as anthropologists. Durham also sparked a debate about his artistic representation of his identity, as American Indian society did not acknowledge him as a ‘Native’. This argument erupted prior to the artist’s retrospective at the Walker Art Center, and Cherokee artists, curators, and other professionals released a forceful editorial denying the artist’s Native American background before the exhibition opened. Durham has long claimed to be Cherokee, was associated in the American Indian Movement in the 1970s and has made questions of colonialism and Native American identity the central themes of his work.58 For instance, with Pocahontas’s Underwear, 1985, displays red underwear with feathers on it, seemingly belongs to Pocahontas, who is an Indian princess, as well as a symbol for peace, that “has long been a subject to Euro-American fantasies involving scantily clad tribal women.”59 With this work, Durham exposes these fantasies through the controversial aspects in anthropological observation by correlating it with material culture. Creating site-specific works, Lothar Baumgarten is yet another important example of an artist who engages with fieldwork practices and produces work that is relevant to the context of art and anthropology. Baumgarten had

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59

“Jimmie Durham - Sprovieri Gallery,” accessed May 17, 2018, http://www.sprovieri.com /artists/jimmie-durham/biography/. “Cherokee Curators and Artists Speak Out: ‘Jimmie Durham Is Not a Cherokee,’” artnet News, June 27, 2017, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/cherokee-curators-artists-jimm ie-durham-cherokee-1007336. Christopher B. Steiner, “Art/Anthropology/Museums: Revulsions and Revolutions,” in Exotic No More, ed. Jeremy MacClancy (University of Chicago Press, 2002), 405.

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various solo exhibitions at major museums all over the world, and currently he lives and works in Berlin and New York. As a student of Joseph Beuys at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Baumgarten’s works are influenced by his teachings on the participatory role of an artist in shaping society. His works mostly employ documentary as a medium, but they also feature elements of participation. As part of his documenting technique, he employs photography, film, records, books, drawings, and stories, among other mediums. The distinctive nature of his works brings forward questions about engagement with the identity of the subject, or the target community. With this question of engagement, his work also “opens up, a readiness to get involved, that at the same time completes the work. Self-reflection, along with invention, is what guides here the documentary eye of the photographic language in the photographic image.”60 If we take into consideration the points that he has made in his works, Baumgarten serves as a vital example in comprehending the agency of documentation in the actualization of engagement. Baumgarten’s interest in ethnography began when he was still in the early phases of his artistic development. According to one of his interviews, first “he became acquainted with the writings of Claude Lévi-Strauss early on, and his comparative ethnographic and anthropological practice stimulated and corrected his work at that time, alongside the opinions of Walter Benjamin, Paul Valéry, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault.”61 In addition to these, Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris became key references in his own understanding of contexts.62 As a result of his interest in anthropology, he lived among the Yãnomãmi people in Venezuela. “Baumgarten’s book for the Documenta X exhibition in 1997 consisted of a hundred or so collaged pages of black and white photocopies of his photographs of the Yãnomãmi people of Venezuela, stuck directly on the wall as if they were proofs for an imagined book documenting the year-and-a-half that he spent living with them between 1978 and 1980.”63

60 61 62 63

Lothar Baumgarten, accessed April 30, 2018, http://www.galeriezander.com/en/artist/l othar_baumgarten/information. Christian Rattemeyer, ‘Lothar Baumgarten: Gespräch’, in Seven Sounds/Seven Circles (Germany: Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2009), pp. 135–51 (p. 139). Rattemeyer, 139. Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright, “The Challenge of Practice,” in Contemporary Art and Anthropology, ed. Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright (Oxford: Berg Press, 2006), 15.

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With this project, Baumgarten exhibited his visual archive constituted during his time while he is living with with Yãnomãmi people. Baumgarten had no interaction with the outside world during his stay, although he did capture and film their sounds, as well as creating paintings with these people. The following is an excerpt from one of his interviews in which he explains his decision to live with the Yanomami people: “I thought I could not reflect my own cultural context without knowing another one. It was the last chance to get engaged to a place not touched by society. (…) My tools allow me to talk about things differently than journalism does. Or anthropology does.”64 With these comments, he makes a clear distinction between his practice and the anthropological perspective on the manifestation of culture. It is still the examination of a cultural background that motivates Baumgarten’s approach, and he accomplishes this by observing another culture in advance. Along with this cultural comparison, he claims that his tools allow him to express himself in a different manner than journalism or anthropology would allow him to do. At this stage, he argues that his artistic practice is a valuable asset in the transformation of representational practice. The mode of exhibiting transformational function in artistic practice in anthropology is similar to the one used by Joseph Kosuth, an American conceptual artist, in his important article “The Artist as Anthropologist,” which was published in 1975. Joseph Kosuth is known as one of the founders of “Conceptual art”, with his practice of using words in conjunction with visual material to establish a connection between concepts and images. His series One and Three Chairs (1965) (Figure 2) in which he assembled an object, a photograph of that object, and an enlarged photographic copy of its dictionary definition, directly explored this conceptual connection and its possibilities. His expanded photostats of dictionary definitions in his series Art as Idea as Idea (1966-68) reduced objects and images completely in order to focus on meaning conveyed purely with language.65 In this conceptual context, he em-

64

65

Elizabeth Sobieski, “Lothar Baumgarten: Culture and Nature,” Huffington Post (blog), April 24, 2014, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-sobieski/lothar-baumgarten -culture_b_5201303.html. “Joseph Kosuth Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works,” The Art Story, accessed May 16, 2018, http://www.theartstory.org/artist-kosuth-joseph.htm.

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Figure 2: Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965), Wood folding chair, mounted photograph of a chair, and mounted photographic enlargement of the dictionary definition of “chair”*

*Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs (1965), Wood folding chair, mounted photograph of a chair, and mounted photographic enlargement of the dictionary definition of “chair” (https://www.flickr.com/p hotos/toasty/36134937010) – Creative Commons

phasized the sociocultural responsibility of the artist as well as their intellectual responsibility, as displayed in his work, One and Three Chairs (1965). The artist and theorist Kosuth’s concept of “anthropologized art” was another breaking point in the discussion of anthropological artistic practices. In his seminal article, he argues “the artist perpetuates his culture by maintaining certain features of it, by ‘using’ them. The artist is a model of the anthropologist engaged.”66 By revealing this aspect, he discusses the idea of the artist that internalizes cultural activity. By engaging with the community an understanding of the culture is possible, not as an object of study, but as a way of sharing. By stressing the transformative implications of art, anthropologized conceptual art has a societal impact on society and culture.

66

Kosuth, 'The Artist as Anthropologist', p. 182.

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In terms of engagement, he claims that anthropology’s capability is limited as a result of its scientific distance, considering its position in the realm of science– or as Kosuth calls it “dis-engagement”, and by doing this, Kosuth positions anthropologists in the realm of science. To cope with this predicament or as he calls ‘dis-engagement’ coming from the scientific distance, he suggests “artist-as-anthropologist” to overcome the issue of being outsiders to the culture or to the community in anthropological studies. On artistas-anthropologist, he writes, “the artist’s activity is not outside, but a mapping of an internalizing cultural activity in his own society. The artist-asanthropologist may be able to accomplish what the anthropologist has always failed at.”67 Furthermore, during the same period in which Kosuth’s critique was written, disputes regarding the scientific distance of anthropology were also occurring inside the field of anthropology itself, which is noteworthy. As a result, it is possible to reveal the reflection of these discussions in his essay, which presents itself in his notion that artistic practice might be used as a means of coping with challenges relating to anthropology’s representational crisis.

5.

New Genealogies and Representation Strategies

Kosuth’s emphasis on the artist-as-anthropologist can be evaluated as an institutional critique on its own, in particular, during the times that anthropology was questioning the problem of ethnographic representation, thus triggering reflectivity discussions. Hence, Kosuth’s critique refers to the times before anthropology’s adaptation to these issues identified mainly in the 1980s. Following that shift in anthropology, with the influence of Clifford Geertz’s notion of an interpretive approach to culture, the potential relationship between reflexivity and anthropology became clear. To the contrary of the Kosuth’s claims, anthropology found ways to reveal its methodology, while anthropologists positioned themselves in the agency of data production from the field. Namely, anthropologists learned reflexivity as a skill and implemented it to the social context. Moreover, Ssorin-Chaikov implemented the Kosuth’s ideas in anthropology, by formulating the idea of using conceptual art as a research method. With his concept “ethnographic conceptualism”, he proposed, “using art to 67

Kosuth, 'The Artist as Anthropologist’, p. 183.

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generate ethnographic situations” by highlighting “the extent to which contemporary art is itself analytics rather than aesthetics.”68 By doing this, he suggests a link with conceptual art. This link is analogous to the reflexive turn in anthropology and, combined with the textual representation of culture, runs parallel to the critique of vision in conceptual art. With this link, he attempts to form an unusual connection between art and anthropology, and he summarizes his suggestion as “the anti-fact of ethnographic conceptualism is a move in the opposite direction. It defamiliarizes the context, and it is in this sense the opposite of the conceptual as in conceptual art and in the anthropological theory as artwork that I suggested above. It is an “autodestruction (in Gustav Metzger sense) of concepts in the unknown.”69 Following Kosuth’s critique on traditional image-based art, SsorinChaikov forms a similar case for anthropology in his critique of dominant text-based approaches. In “ethnographic conceptualism”, image itself as a concept changes places with the text. Through this conceptualization, it is conceivable to reconsider the objectivism critique in anthropology and ethnography’s objectives of descriptivism. Above all, this attempt to unite these two conceptions and create a new concept is essential to rethinking the link between art and anthropology. Considering these cases, it is possible to trace the impacts of these works to anthropological knowledge through the investigative approach and experimentation. In brief, experimentation with audio-visual techniques opens new ways for the representation of culture. As Schneider and Wright point out, “if anthropologists wish to enter into dialogue with the variety of sensual expressions of other cultures they must enlarge their own sensorium”, and they also add by referring to the studies of senses, “ reveal is the extent to which the majority of the sensual experiences involved in fieldwork normally disappear from anthropological writing.”70 Therefore, taking the sensory practices into account in ethnographic research in order to provide richness in the perception of the issues subject to the research lies at the core of this disciplinary engagement. Alternatively, and in addition to this anthropological approach, it is also conceivable to investigate this tendency in the field of anthropology

68 69 70

Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov, ‘Ethnographic Conceptualism: An Introduction’, Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research, 2013, pp. 5–18 (p. 8). Ssorin-Chaikov, 17. Schneider and Wright, “The Challenge of Practice,” 13.

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as a means of crossing the border between art history and anthropology. In other words, rather than solely focusing on what audio-visual means for anthropology, it is possible to evaluate the aesthetic implications as well as complexities arising from the communicative interactions of these practices. In terms of visual documentation, both artists and anthropologists have already appreciated the potentialities of this interaction. Yet, for the representational strategies, there are significant points of concern related to power relations in the process of participation and its impacts in these practices that have been already addressed by some scholars. (E.g., Kester, 2011; Bishop, 2012) Thus, it is vital to examine the literature that questions the relationship between artists and the participants regarding the theoretical discussions on socially engaged art practices. Subsequently, from an artistic point of view, it is important to question the possibilities of implementing a reflexive approach in art and to rethink these issues of changing artistic tendencies from the perspective of art history. This would be possible through the recognition of enriching contributions from social sciences for a new understanding of contemporary art, as the structure of these socially practices in art intrinsically directed the art scholars to engage with the field of social sciences, as these practices directly adopt an anthropological approach. Thus, it becomes increasingly critical to scrutinize the role of anthropology and its role on these social art practices.

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1.

The Recognition of “Contemporary” in the Art Scene of Turkey

A lot of debate has emerged in the Turkish art scene over the term “contemporary” since the 1970s, when a wide range of methods, materials, and concepts were employed. A transition in the Turkish art scene that began during this period, and which was influenced by engagement with metropolitan art scenes and presence in these scenes, may be observed until the late 1970s.However, the most significant transition has occurred as a result of globalized, neoliberal policies that emerged in the 1980s, which laid the groundwork for Turkish contemporary art to become an important voice in the global art scene. By visiting and interacting with international art scenes, as well as with the growing number of international art publications and materials available from other countries, artists began to establish stronger ties with international art scenes. As a result of this period, there has been an increase in the number of artists who are producing work with new artistic awareness and new forms. The contemporary art in 1990s has been marked by a significant change in context and pluralism by disengaging from the institutional modern art education at Fine Arts Faculties. Çalıkoğlu characterizes this transformation, which is laying the groundwork for new forms of artistic representation, in the following words: The developing contemporary art in Turkey in 1990s is interconnected with some dynamics: This process has appeared just beside the Turgut Ozal’s free market economy triggered by 1980 Turkish coup d’etat that has been rejected with antipathy by artists but also it influenced the artistic creativity

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in terms of context. It has been affected by the fall of Berlin Wall that represents the West-East cultural and political contrast.1 With these words, Çalıkoğlu addresses how art, culture and politics intertwined with each other and how all these factors affected each other in the process of this transformation. Relatedly, Bishop historicizes the social turn in contemporary art in three different moments. First the historic avant-garde in Europe around 1917 – then so called neo-avantgarde foremost to 1968 and the resurgence of participatory art in the 1990s leads her to claim the fall of communism in 1989 as a third point of transformation. According to her, each phase was accompanied by a utopian rethinking of art’s relationship to the social and of its political potential. 2 This viewpoint corresponds with this evaluation of Çalıkoğlu in terms of the growth of social and political references within contemporary art in Turkey. Transformation process began in late the 1980s, but largely established in the 1990s. With the impact of globalization, art in Turkey transformed and adapted to these changes with the growing art market. Turkish contemporary art as a new art world have thus come into existence and took part in the globalized frame. Linked with this, Weibel addresses the year of 1989 as the end of the Western monopolies in art. He mentions also on the global art after 1989, “does not ask for inclusion nor can it naively demand the elimination of all mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion; it would, however, like to break up the Western monopoly.”3 The emergence of Turkish art in the global sphere can be considered in the historical context that Weibel addresses. Even though the appearance of Turkey in the global art world coincides with the time frame of the end of Western monopolies, the dominant narratives in the historiography of contemporary art in Turkey tends to present this transformation mostly as an inclusion to the Western art world. Yet, narratives on contemporary art differ from each other in terms of displaying the main actors in the scene or connected with the construction of institutionalization. In order to present the background that formed the artistic inclina-

1

2 3

Levent Calikoglu, “90’li Yillarda Cagdas Sanat: Kirilma-Gerilim-Cogulculuk,” in 90’li Yillarda Turkiye’de Cagdas Sanat, Cagdas Sanat Konusmalari 3 (Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, 2008), 7. Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, 3. Peter Weibel, “The Global Contemporary and the Rise of New Art Worlds. Globalization and Contemporary Art,” ’900 Transnazionale, no. 1 (2017): 13.

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tions in 2000s, the following chapter reveals different voices and narratives in the context of the emergence of ‘contemporary’ in Turkish art.

1.1

Pioneering Artists of Conceptual Ideas

One of the first investigations on the transformation in contemporary art in Turkey was Nilgün Özayten’s PhD thesis with the title, Object Art, Conceptual Art, and Post-Conceptual Art Trends in Turkey (1992). Özayten displays the new tendencies in art appeared in 1980s and determine the dynamics of moving away from the traditional ways of art production. According to Özayten, in this process art education institutions, spectators and gallerists, art critics previously had no contribution to art events, and any notable contribution began in the 1980s. From 1965 to 1980, a small number of artists who gravitated to fields other than painting and sculpture created works parallel to contemporary art and undertook the mission of introducing Duchamp and his contemporaries who became the center of attention of the whole art world until 1910s.4 While providing some biographical information about herself in a conference, Gülsün Karamustafa also shed lights to the chronology of this era in Turkish art history. According to Karamustafa, the years of her study between 1964 and 1969 at the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts correspond to a lively restlessness in the art scene. With some exceptional professors, this state institution addressed both current and the earlier tendencies in art. According to her, the most important experience during her studies was to experience the dissolution of this dilemma. Even if a bit late, they caught the abstract art debate prevalent in those years, and identified themselves with Dada, and largely, the avant-garde movement.5 During this era, some artists and art scholars adopted the position of forerunner to introduce new tendencies and methods that were widespread during those times in the art world. For instance, most art critics and historians 4

5

Nilgün Özayten, Mütevazı bir miras: Batı’da obje sanatı / kavramsal sanat / post-kavramsal sanat ve Türkiye’de 1965-1992 yılları arasındaki benzer eğilimler (Phd thesis, 1992) (İstanbul: SALT/Garanti Kültür AŞ, 2013), p. 84 Gülsün Karamustafa, ‘Gülsün Karamustafa’nın “Günümüzde Kadın” (Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi, 1997) Sempozyumundaki Konuşma Metni - Gülsün Karamustafa’s Text That She Presented in the Symposium “Women Today” (Mimar Sinan University)’, in; Cinsiyetlendirilmiş İlişkiler Arasında Bir Oyun Alanı: Travesti ve Transeksüel Televizyon Showları (Istanbul, 13.03.1997). (p.1).

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acknowledge Altan Gürman (1935-1976) as a pioneer in the late sixties in the move towards conceptualism in Turkish Art, given his work during this era. After his graduation, Gürman studied painting and printmaking in Paris. As Emre Baykal describes, “At a time when the oil painting tradition still held sway, and discussion continued to concentrate mostly on figurative versus abstract painting, he produced works with unconventional materials such as oilcloth, barbed wire, cardboard and wood, which implied a criticism of bureaucracy and militarism.”6 It is clear from this phrase that Gürman’s consideration of art is comprehensive, taking into account both the medium and the conceptual thinking that is engaged in artwork. Gürman started working as a research assistant in 1967 at the Academy of Fine Arts and became the head of the department of Basic Art Education in 1974. Even though he was a part of the Academy, he resisted the traditional instructional practices in art education. In 10 years, by leaving painting and leaning towards the object in art through techniques as such collage and montage, he ushered in a new era in Turkish art. Özpınar mentions the role of Gürman on the search through the origins of ‘contemporary’ in art in Turkey, and how he “made an ‘individual break’ with Modernism.”7 In the narrative on the emergence of contemporary art in Turkey Gürman’s role cannot be denied with his influence on artists by paving the way for the prevailing new techniques and questionings on art. The series of “Montages”, in which Gürman uses cellulose paint and barbed wire on board, have an important role in his oeuvre in terms of its relation to Dadaist collage methods. Through this work, Montaj 4 (1967), it is possible to observe his anti-militarist approach through the usage of barbed wire and the scene depicted behind (Figure 3). Necmi Sönmez interprets these works as a precursor for the new tendencies in Turkish art that formed after 1968 and he also refers to the politicization in 1967 in Turkey by relating it to the work of Gürman with his words: “when the artist brings the sky with the barbed wire side by side, he expresses the ‘zeitgeist’ with a high

6 7

Emre Baykal, ‘Contemporaneity in Turkish Art’, in Unleashed: Contemporary Art from Turkey, by Hossein Amirsadeghi (London: TransGlobe, 2010), pp. 40–47 (p. 40). Ceren Özpınar and Ayşe Lucie Batur, “Periods in the Art History of Turkey,” Art in Translation 10, no. 3 (2018): 257.

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Figure 3: Altan Gürman, Montaj 4 (1967), cellulose paint and barbed wire on wood, 123x140x9 cm*

*Altan Gürman, ”Montaj 4” (1967) - Altan Gürman, ”Montage 4” (1967), Salt Research Archive

voltage forming over the entire series.”8 In the light of these testimonials, his works can be interpreted as a reflection of the growing democratic struggle of students and workers during these times. Gürman opened the way of thinking and producing in the conceptual context in Turkish Art, as also referred by many arts scholars in Turkey. Until the 1970s, Füsun Onur was another pioneering artist who gave rise to experimentation in conceptual art in Turkey. Füsun Onur studied sculpture at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts and after graduation, she continued her master’s degree at Maryland Institute College of Art rewarded by Fulbright Scholarship. In keeping with background on sculpture, she experimented with the boundaries of the object and the form of it. She has been incorporating ready-mades into her artistic production since the beginning of her career. When considering her entire body of work, the majority of her pieces can be considered to be ahead of their time.

8

Necmi Sonmez, “Lebriz Sanal Dergi - Şimdiki Zamanın Gölgesinde: Güncel-Ötesine Geçen Yaratıcılık ve Çağdaş Türk Sanatı,” accessed January 20, 2018, http://lebriz.com/ pages/lsd.aspx?lang=TR§ionID=0&articleID=1043&bhcp=1.

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Özayten refers to several distinctive aspects in Onur’s works: the confrontation of traditional painting and sculpture forms, usage of ready-mades, producing in harmony with the space, and her point of view on the audience. Özayten refers to her works and style as a complimentary of the concept of artwork. All these notions were the newly developed features in Turkish art during the 1970s, and Onur was one of the first artists to bring these concepts forward at this time.9

Figure 4: Füsun Onur’s 1982 installation “Çiçekli Kontrpuan” exhibited in Arter (2014)*

*“Füsun Onur’la Buluşmak: Bir Sergi ve Sanatçısıyla Hemhâl Olmak,” Artfulliving, accessed April 11, 2018, http://www.artfulliving.com.tr/ha ber_detay/191/fusun-onurla-bulusmak-bir-sergi-ve-sanatcisiyla-hemhl -olmak. Photo: Murat Germen

For instance, her early piece, Stories for Grown-ups (1977) was one of her first works in which she combined objects from everyday life with sculpture. This piece was also shown in the first “New Tendencies” exhibition organized by the Academy of Fine Arts. In addition to these, Onur’s installation, Çiçekli Kontrpuan (1982) (Figure 4) can be seen as one of the first works that integrates with space and was produced based on the spatial thinking. Enshrouding the area in blue color transforms the space into a blue underwater environment 9

Özayten, 2013, p. 101.

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with all the objects and the trees included. This furthers the act of the piece, encouraging the audience to have their perceptions challenged. The pioneering artists that provided the basis for disengaging from the traditional forms of artistic practices are not limited to those mentioned above. Following the line of Altan Gürman and Füsun Onur in Istanbul, Baykal mentions the works of Sarkis who worked from Paris, where he settled in 1964. He took part in the exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form” (1969), curated by Harald Szeeman. He took part in Documenta 6 (1977) at Kassel and also presented at Documenta 7 in 1982. 10 For a while, his work had only been presented Turkey in rare cases, but, nonetheless, he is one of the pioneering artists in terms of the creation of a body of work that is altering contemporary art in Turkey. This is a result of his distinctive early production, following his acquaintance with Beuys and Arte Povera in the early 1970s.11 The majority of his works are concerned with memory, identity, and the history of civilization, particularly in relation to the concept of war. Kriegsschatz is an important concept in his art, a German term referring to war spoils; as an act of irony, he de-contextualizes and gives new meanings to objects such as a cut hand or a bullet. 12 In that context, his works, Après Hiroshima (1966) and Gun Metal (1974) represent early instances demonstrating his interest in the concept of war. Sarkis was already well-known in contemporary art circles in Paris in the 1970s as one of the most significant artists in the Turkish contemporary art scene. A similar motif may be found in the case of Nil Yalter, an artist who spent her whole professional life in Paris from middle of 1960s. Therefore, it is possible to view these artists as precursors working from abroad, setting the scene for the inclusion of new methods, such as installation, video art, and conceptual thinking in Turkish contemporary art. If we go back in time and examine the art in Turkey via these instances, it turns out that some of these truly inventive artists have either gone overseas for study or for their creative output. They achieved this by generating their own opportunities and obtaining scholarships from universities, as state support was limited at the time. Unsurprisingly, some of these artists, such as

10 11 12

“Sarkis Zabunyan - Wikiwand,” accessed April 29, 2018, http://www.wikiwand.com/de/ Sarkis_Zabunyan. Baykal, 2010, p. 41. “Artist Detail - Sarkis,” accessed April 29, 2018, http://www.dirimart.com/tr/artists/deta il/72/sarkis.

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Nil Yalter and Sarkis, continued to produce work outside of Turkey, but with frequent visits continued to participate to exhibitions in Turkey. Sarkis’s work, in particular, has sparked debates not just about the use of new approaches including installation, but also about representational issues relating to the artist’s ethnic identity. For instance, his work titled ‘Çaylak Sokak’ that was exhibited in 1986, at Maçka Sanat Galerisi (Maçka Art Gallery), Istanbul has been referred as a turning point in many art history narratives, in terms of changing dynamics in the art market in Turkey. Until that time, local art critics and gallerists have monopolized art market by promoting paintings, sculptures or other forms of art that can be transported and traded easily and the works more connected with the state-promoted way of art production which was also in the education agenda of Fine Art Faculties. Thus, by examining the dynamics of the art market during that era, as well as the paradigm change associated with conceptual art and its modes of production, the reasons behind why this evident transformation concerned certain art circles.

2.

Breaking Points in the Contemporary Art in Turkey

2.1

Signals of Change in Art at 1980s

The involvement of new styles and methods along with the experimental and conceptual artistic frameworks laid the foundation for the further developments in contemporary art. Nevertheless, the understanding of these practices within the frame of “contemporary” took some time in the art scene. These developments resulted in the transformation in the art scene, thus political and social issues as a theme in the art have become increasingly common. However, before the proliferation of the concept of contemporary art in Turkey, these artists mentioned above aimed to use conceptualist ideas to focus on the socio-political issues, such as ethnicity, gender, religion, or migration. In this sense, the implementation of new mediums in art, such as installation and video art, was undertaken by a few numbers of artists. Above all, the realities of their time, especially the 1971 Turkish military memorandum and the coup d’état in 1980, not only affected their lives but also shaped their perspective on art practice. For instance, Gülsün Karamustafa was arrested a few days after the military coup on March 12th and charged with aiding and

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abetting a culprit. She was sentenced to 6 months in prison, and her husband Sadık Karamustafa was sentenced to two years. Based on this, she made a series of paintings called “Prison Paintings” that reflect her experiences and impressions in prison. Also, Karamustafa’s passport was revoked for sixteen years until the mid-80s, which prohibited her from traveling internationally. On the other hand, Kutluğ Ataman tortured by the police during the 1980 military coup for filming the political events with his camera, and left Turkey to live in the US for several years.13 In conjunction with the history of military coups, Baykal describes the changes in contemporary art: Despite the repressive atmosphere promoted by the military coup in Turkey in 1980 and the subsequent changes introduced by the liberal economic policies implemented immediately after the coup, the 1980s witnessed the remarkable resistance and even expansion of the contemporary art scene. These were years marked by the collectivity, independent exhibitions, organized by artist collectives and multidisciplinary approaches.14 In fact, the military coup on the 12th of September in 1980 came with radical changes in the economy; in other words, neoliberal politics in 1980s intensified their power by achieving the support of military forces. 1980 coup came with a series of regulations in concerning the labor, education, and human rights with an emphasis on secularism. As a result, as Yalman mentions, “what was actually smashed were the organized working class and those sections of the intelligentsia considered as organic intellectuals of that class by military.”15 Connected with this, the social and political atmosphere after the coup was characterized by state oppression, embodied in the form of an authoritarian regime. As a result, thousands of people were placed under surveillance or arrested and “just a month into the regime, two twenty-two-year-old militants-one from left and the other from the right-wing- were executed; the aim of these initial executions was to demonstrate the military’s so-called equal distance from both political wings.”16 Related to these changes, cultural pro-

13 14 15 16

G. Dönmez-Colin, Turkish Cinema: Identity, Distance and Belonging, 1st edn (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), p. 160. Baykal, “Contemporaneity in Turkish Art,” 41. Galip L. Yalman, Transition to Neoliberalism: The Case of Turkey in the 1980s, İstanbul Bilgi University Press (Istanbul: 1. ed., 2009), p. 301. Goze Orhon, The Weight of the Past: Memory and Turkey’s 12 September Coup (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), p. 19.

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duction was under the control of the oppressive state, and artistic and literary productions were subject to rising censorship. The art scene inevitably altered its newly growing conceptual approach in response to the recent changes in society. Consequently, with the social implications of the coup, artistic practices became related with the socio-political changes in Turkey. Following these developments, exhibitions such as “New Tendencies” organized by the Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts (Devlet Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi: D.G.S.A.), occurring every second year as a part of the Istanbul Art Fair, played an important role in the proliferation of these artistic practices. These exhibitions organized through an open call for artists were influenced by the new trends in art and its main intention was to bring dynamism to the art scene. From the beginning of the exhibitions, organization achieves this objective through awarding prizes to the artworks that can be considered as novel ways of doing art for Turkey. The “New Tendencies” exhibition was first organized in 1977 and was held until 1987 every two years, similarly to the biennial.17 Jale Erzen summarizes the effects of the first exhibition in 1977 in the following manner: In Turkey unique and innovative works is not derived from a social base. In this case, maybe we should not expect a progress from Turkish art in the level of worldwide art history. Art Festival at D.G.S.A.18 and “New Trends” exhibition is of great importance for this reason. (…) At first sight, the “New Trends” exhibition recalls the late 1960s period of Europe and the United States. Therein, the term of “New Trends” only applies to Turkey. Nevertheless, we can find some works that can easily find its own level in today's Western contemporary art scene.19 At this juncture, it is important to question the implications of comparing the art scene in Turkey with the Western art world. Evidently, this comparison is a natural result of the worldwide visibility gained by some of these artists. As described above, those were the artists that can be considered pioneering representatives of contemporary art.

17 18 19

Sibel Yardimci, Kuresellesen Istanbul’da Bienal, Sanat-Hayat, 8 (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, 2014), pp. 21–22. Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts. Jale Erzen, ‘Turk Sanatinda Yeni Egilimler ve Sanat Bayrami’, ODTU Mimarlik Fakultesi Dergisi, 3.2 (1977), pp. 297–310 (p. 304).

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In addition to this, considering the increasing influence of the concept of “ready-made” in Western art until the beginning of 20th century, this transformation in Turkish art was likely inevitable. Therefore, from its beginning, the “New Tendencies” exhibitions have met its objectives, and extends the boundaries of Turkish art in forms of conceptualism by bringing a pluralist approach to contemporary art. By doing this, it opposed the traditional arts education of the Fine Arts Academy in Istanbul, even though this institution was the organizer. Concerning these exhibition series, Antmen emphasizes the transformative aspect on the mono-disciplinary character of art in Turkey, and she presents the piece that received the first prize at the first exhibition in 1977 as a clue in the turn towards a conceptual approach. The work of Şükrü Aysan, titled Peinture No.7 (1977) consisted of a piece of frame and a colored fabric that is not completely stretched to the frame, and with this work, Aysan aims to create an image with the inconstant surface created with the fabric. Antmen describes the significance of Aysan and his “Sanat Tanımı Topluluğu” (Art Definition Group) in the history of Turkish art with these words: Aysan, who questioned the basic premise of the ideas processes and systems of art through a set of works he defined as ‘pure art objects’. Aysan’s enquiry into the conceptual aspect of art resulted in the Sanat Tanimi Toplulugu, which brought together a group of artists working through exhibitions, thought-provoking sessions, and publications to produce the theory and terminology of ‘pure conceptual’ artistic practice in Turkey. Thus Sukru Aysan, along with artists Ahmet Oktem, Avni Yamaner, and Serhat Kiraz established a practice that has its base on the belief that discourse about art itself constituted artistic action.20 Aysan, who studied abroad at Paris Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Art in Paris, after finishing his education at Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts. He contributed to the Turkish art scene by making conceptualism in art widely known and by revealing the conception of art with theoretical and philosophical references, rather than the material-oriented approach. Still, the belief in the potential of artistic action was established with the changing social and political atmosphere in Turkey. This tendency formed the ground for

20

Ahu Antmen, “A History of Modern and Contemporary Art in Turkey,” in Unleashed: Contemporary Art from Turkey, by Hossein Amirsadeghi (Thames & Hudson, 2010), 25.

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an understanding of art outside the forms supported by state policies of art education. Koçak relatedly considers 1980s as a “breaking point” since he conceives the “Western factor” as a definitive role in the pre- and early Republican periods, that becomes inactive in the 60s, however then it becomes active again through the procedures of global art market.21 This evaluation by Koçak refers to the period of the transition to neoliberalism in Turkey, when banks22 began to create their own art collections. Related with these changes, the number of exhibitions and galleries supported by private sector has increased. The art scene in Turkey not easily accepted these practices in the context of art. Indeed, the initiation and acceptance of contemporary art in Turkey did not develop all at once, yet there were several works that were produced with the influence of conceptualist forms as mentioned above. Erden Kosova, an art critic, acknowledges these artists’ early attempts in conceptual art productions, and underlines the difficulties and struggles that they experienced before their recognition as contemporary artists: Füsun Onur was marginalized and mocked in the seventies when she infused her three-dimensional works with conceptual ideas. The works of Gülsün Karamustafa from the eighties, which concentrated on the hybridization of urban codes and cultures of people who recently migrated from the rural parts of the country, and thus precisely looked at what was going ‘inside', were dismissed for being mere “arabesque”. In the early nineties, there was no western curator around when Hale Tenger produced the precious installations that unfolded as screaming allegories of the state things in Turkey.23 By looking at these examples of the artists mentioned, it is possible to think that the first representatives of contemporary art took it upon themselves to change the conventional forms in art. These artists were mostly those who studied and produced works abroad and became acquainted with the new trends in art of their times. Yet the art scene in Turkey was under the influence of traditional artistic education system, and these attempts initially remained

21

22 23

Orhan Kocak, “Modern Sanatin Elli Yili (50 Years of Modern Art),” in Modern ve Ötesi: 1950-2000, Exhibition Catalogue (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayinlari, 2008), 31. During these years, banks as Ziraat Bankasi, Is Bankasi, Akbank, Central Bank of Turkey formed their own collections. Erden Kosova, “Yavas Kursun II / Slow Bullet II,” Red Thread, no. 1 (2009): 127.

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on the margin. Therefore, the proliferation of contemporary art in Turkey and their acceptance as actors in the art scene took quite some time. Following the “New Tendencies” exhibitions, with an increasing number of artists and galleries, installation and conceptual art practices became common, and found more places to meet with an audience, specifically in big cities as Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir. In addition to these changes, the other exhibitions in the 1980s, such as “Artists of Today” (1980-Present), “A Crosssection in Avant-garde Turkish Art”24 (1984-1988), and the “A, B, C, D exhibitions” (1989-1993) established a new stage for alternative works. The organization that played an important role in the proliferation of new practices in art in the 1980s was “A Cross-section in Avant-garde Turkish Art” and, to a certain extent, its further extension “A, B, C, D exhibitions”. The first exhibition of “A Cross-section in Avant-garde Turkish Art” was organized by a group of artists including Füsun Onur and Serhat Kiraz (one of the members of Sanat Tanımı Topluğu) in 1984 at the gallery of the Istanbul Atatürk Cultural Center. In this context, Karamustafa, summarizes the changes in the art scene in the middle of 1980s: “New Tendencies” Exhibitions and “Günümüz Sanatçıları (Artists of Today)” in the middle of 1980s. The State Fine Art Academy actually organized “Yeni Eğilimler (New Tendencies)”. Until that day, art was directed by the state, and it was dependent. There were no private galleries; there was just one exhibition by the state such as “Devlet Resim Heykel Sergisi” which is important. In this connection, the state was organizing an exhibition every year and was buying works of art. Artists were working as academicians in state universities to maintain their lives. “New Tendencies” was also organized by the academy to follow the new developments in the world. So, it was related to the state again. But during those years, “Öncü Türk Sanatından Bir Kesit (A Cross-section of the Turkish Avant-garde Art)” appeared following “New Trends” with the efforts of artists’ initiative. (…) In this movement, there are a number of names like Ayşe Erkmen, Füsun Onur, Yusuf Taktak, Tomur Atagök, Sarkis came together and organized “Oncu Turk Sanatindan Bir Kesit (A Cross-section of the Turkish Avant-garde Art)” exhibitions that have been held for five years. 25

24 25

‘Öncü Türk Sanatından Bir Kesit’: Here in this title, “Öncü” can also be translated as “pioneering” or “precursor”. ‘Personal Communication with Gulsun Karamustafa.’

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The transformation throughout this era in Turkish art that Karamustafa mentions have many important points to understand the role of state on the art scene, as the state was under the influence of Western art context. For the continuation of the ideas in the establishment of modern Turkey, state maintained the approach of ‘idealized’ ways of doing art through the organization of exhibitions at state universities. However, this idealized form of doing art was neither enough for the representation sociopolitical issues or in terms of artistic materials and usage of space. The organization of “A Cross-section of the Turkish Avant-garde Art” by the artists was a result of these limitations that needs to be exceeded in terms of artistic expression, subjects, and materials, as well as in spatial terms. After the first exhibition of “A Cross-section in Avant-garde Turkish Art”, discussions around the concept of “avant-garde” emerged in the art scene. For instance, art critic and curator Beral Madra criticized the title of the exhibition several times regarding the meaning of “avant-garde”. Madra argues that “avant-garde” refers to an original artistic phenomenon, and she conceives this concept peculiar to the times between World War II and 1960s.26 Substantially, “avant-garde” as a word may have historical references, but in general from the beginning of the exhibitions, it triggered a change and expansion in Turkish art, especially in terms of awakening interest in installation and conceptual art. The fifth exhibition of ‘A Cross-section in Avant-garde Turkish Art’ was the last exhibition organized with this title. Serhat Kiraz, Füsun Onur, Canan Beykal, Ayşe Erkmen, İsmail Saray, Cengiz Çekil and Osman Dinç, the artists who had been involved in these exhibitions until the beginning, detached themselves from other artists working in painting and sculptural forms, and organized under different exhibitions such as ‘A, B, C, D exhibitions’ (19891993).27 These exhibitions were mostly providing a space for works that were directly related to conceptual and installation art.

26 27

Beral Madra, “13. Istanbul Festivalinde Turk Gorsel Sanati Sergilerine Genel Bakis,” Sanat Cevresi 81 (June 1985): 9. Özayten, Mütevazı bir miras: Batı’da obje sanatı / kavramsal sanat / post-kavramsal sanat ve Türkiye’de 1965-1992 yılları arasındaki benzer eğilimler (Phd thesis, 1992), 126.

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2.2

The Transformation of Contemporary Art in 1990s

These exhibitions mentioned above along with the conceptual tendencies of the artists demonstrate a certain disengagement from the methods as painting and sculpture; conjointly, they construct a critical approach to the traditional art education in state institutions. Most importantly with this disengagement, artists began to search for new ways of representation in art by taking some risks with the new methods and mediums. According to Çalıkoglu, this was related with the newly functioning free market economies that made artists more competitive, and accordingly they left the elitist discourse of the whole Republican era on modern art that position them in the role of “intellectual-artist”.28 Leaving the modernist view behind was closely associated with leaving the high-culture references behind. Artists began to produce works with simple and clear concepts that are more open to the interpretation of public, rather than the complex, discriminating formulations of elitist tendencies in modern art. Accordingly, by doing this, they left the whole discourse that was prevalent during the nation building. In other words, the emergence of contemporary art accompanied with an egalitarian and democratic discourse on art. In the context of disengagement from 1980s art during the 1990s, Akay argues: The reason behind the disengagement from the 1980s during the 1990s, was related with the transformation in Europe occurred almost at the same time in Turkey. With a term from social science, there emerged a ‘paradigm shift’. Theoretical and conceptual thinking and its practice came into prominence in the 1990s.29 Separation from the elitist formulations of modern art as “artists as intellectuals” and the artists involving more in the realities of their time with a critical understanding of the socio-political structures were the changes related with this ‘paradigm shift’. Here, it is important to consider this period not from the linear perspective; since the artists from 1980s were still active in 1990s, yet mostly with some changing practices. Considerably, Akay emphasizes the presence of artists 28 29

Çalıkoglu, “90’li Yillarda Cagdas Sanat: Kirilma-Gerilim-Cogulculuk,” 8. Ali Akay, “Ali Akay: 6 Kasim 2006,” in 90’li Yillarda Turkiye’de Cagdas Sanat, ed. Levent Calikoglu, Cagdas Sanat Konusmalari 3 (Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, 2008), 25.

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from 1980s that are active in the 1990s art scene, and he distinguishes this generation of artists from the second generation of artists emerged after 1995. The first generation, while still considering “art as art”, produced socio-political works while still taking their influence from the recent art history. Akay adds that, any of the artists from the new generation after 1995 was working and thinking with these references. Yet, they are mostly thinking detached from the context of art and producing political representative works.30 As mentioned above, the number of artists employing ‘observational practices’ to interpret the dynamics of communities or society at large dramatically increased after 1995. Yet, after this period artists were not only focused on the dynamics of the communities, but also, they were referring to the realities of their time with various representational strategies. Thus, in this expanded area of artistic representation, concepts addressing issues of ethnicity, cultural identity and social issues generally became an essential part of their work. Moreover, Akay distinguishes the social practices of artists of the new generation after 1995 and the generation active both in 1980s and 1990s, in terms of their representational practices. He criticizes the new generation for their consideration of the production process as easiness and thus, thinking less while producing their work. Yet, he believes that it is a prevailing situation in global art, not only in Turkey.31 He also adds that, This new generation of artists while leaving artistic reflection behind, or by not even thinking about it, they began to produce formal and representational ironic works. They are mostly using video as a medium and they produce videos that give descriptive information and make ironical, informative videos. The previous generation was thinking more seriously and more politically that is hidden into aesthetics. Today there is a generation of artists stating themselves with their works that has the direct expression and with the vagueness by virtue of if there is an aesthetic concern or not.32 From this vantage point, it is remarkable that abandoning aesthetics was a more difficult process for the preceding generation than it was for the new generation to undertake. The reason behind the political engagement was still hidden into aesthetics in the previous generation may be the art education

30 31 32

Akay, p. 33. Akay, p. 33. Akay, p. 34.

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that is closely associated with aesthetics that they passed through, and somehow the need to be connected to this tradition. However, in the new generation, while art education and the art scene were changing, they have found a way of free expression that has nothing to do with aesthetics. What Akay addresses has two significant aspects; firstly, he distinguishes the first generation from the second generation especially in terms of mediums they use, and secondly, he addresses the vagueness or lack of aesthetic in the works of new generation artists. The main reason behind this argument is not only related to the changing art education and its educational approach to the aesthetic references, but also, the focus of concern of the artists have changed throughout the time and they tended towards the reflection of the social issues of their time with their work. Therefore, their focus on the current issues –mostly with the subjects by opposing with the elitist tendencies in modern art- determines the easiness of production process and the lack of aesthetic references in their works. Artists engaging with the social issues of their time were also related with the changing political and demographic situation of the country, such as the migration from the rural areas to the big cities. The migration had extensive social and political consequences on life in cities and signified the role of big cities as main economic, historical, and cultural center of the country – especially, this process accentuated the position and potential of Istanbul as a major cultural center. Artists also adapted to these changes not only with the urbanized lifestyle, but also conceptualizing the urbanization and its consequences in their works. The works produced in these times does not only aim to represent directly the realities related with the social change, moreover they began to use metaphoric expressions, by expressing themselves with irony or kitsch art, again as a way of opposing with the ‘high art’ context that is supported by the state. The first curated exhibition in Turkey was designed as series under the title of Anı/Bellek (1991)33 with the curatorship of Vasıf Kortun. This exhibition has significance in terms of tracing the art and politics connection in Turkey as the works exhibited in the exhibition expressing egalitarian views of the artists. In the following years, exhibition’s curator Vasıf Kortun’s presence in the contemporary art scene contributed to the extensive transformation of art 33

“Memory/Recollection” exhibition was first organized at Taksim Art Gallery in 1991 and the second exhibition held at Akaretler No. 50, and the building's door number is added to title of the exhibition.

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in Turkey, particularly in terms of recognition of the concept of “curatorship” and had a significant influence on the practices of politically engaged artists. At this point, another important debate on art in Turkey in 1990s has emerged around the concept of “curatorship” and the role of curator. Remarkably with the involvement of biennial, the role of curator has evolved throughout the time. The curatorship as a concept became a significant subject of interest in art in Turkey. As a part of this transformation, the impact of institutionalization and especially the cooperation with Western art institutions became involved in the debates related to contemporary art. By leaving the state structures and involving in more neoliberal market economy has created more debates for the supposedly ‘independent’ art scene in Turkey. The role of the Istanbul Biennials has an important place in these discussion as it was a highly promoted and widely sponsored event, thus it fostered many discussions around sponsorship and institutionalization in art. By taking the changing dynamics of sponsorship and institutionalization into consideration, I will trace the movement of participatory art in Turkey, as well as how this relates to the increased engagement with ethnographic practices in art.

3.

Impacts of Globalization in Contemporary Art Scene in Turkey

The contemporary art scene in Turkey today is constantly changing and in conjunction with this, the actors of this scene transform and adapt to these changes. As mentioned in the previous part, 1990s contemporary art was marked by a change of leaving state’s modernist view on art and culture behind. However, in contrast to the state’s modernist agenda, there was a lack of state support for art and culture during this process, as well as a crisis of cultural foundation and inaccurate cultural politics during these years. On the other hand, the neoliberal reforms of Turkey in the 1980s were directly related to the state enforcement. With the growth of neoliberalism, the private sector gained significant financial power, resulting in a shift from public to private cultural activities, as the state was encouraging private investment in the cultural sector. As a result, the wealthiest families contributed to the art and culture sector with through several investments.34 Art became

34

The most significant private investments in arts and culture in Turkey were made by the wealthy families as Eczacibasi, Koc and Sabanci.

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a part of the market with these private sector investments. In this context, Banu Karaca argues that, Contemporary art in Turkey has developed largely outside the patronage of the state, and maybe even despite the state. It is not only the fact neither the Ministry of Culture and Tourism nor local government agencies have established standing provisions to support independent arts spaces and artistic production through public money, but that contemporary artists have –by and large– rejected any dealings with the state –including voicing demands for more funding and support.35 So, it is possible to realize that contemporary art in Turkey was not depending on the state support but directed towards a more independent domain. Therefore, these investments coming from the private sector emerged accordingly to the idea of democratizing art. With the shift in funding from philanthropic organizations, most of these institutions aimed to provide a framework for alternative practices in art, which would challenge with the artistic practices of state’s art education. So, this process resulted in a growing number of artists engaged in art by leaving modernist principles. Artists reflecting the socio-political realities of their times could only have developed with the dynamism that non-governmental institutions brought to contemporary art. Therefore, the involvement of private cultural institutions arguably contributed to the freedom of expression in contemporary art, leading to alternative practices as socially engaged art emerged in Turkey. In this respect, it is also important to emphasize the transformative aspect of Istanbul Biennial since the beginning with respect to the construction of new relations between the social life in the city and the practices of the artists. Furthermore, with the involvement of private sector in art, the artistic interest in socio-political issues in Turkey became more widespread. In the context of private sector involvement in the art scene, Karamustafa declares that, At first there were not too much support and sponsorship, therefore the artists kept working with simple materials in kind of small formats. (…) Until the 2010s there appeared some advantages in terms of private sector support. Before those artists were on their own feet and producing with min-

35

Banu Karaca, “When Duty Calls...: Questions of Sensitivity and Responsibility in the Light of the Tophane Events,” ed. Meltem Ahiska and Erden Kosova, Red Thread, no. #3 (2011): 34.

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imum material. Especially in the 1990s, there was no support. For their biennial participation, artists were trying to find a support on their own. Eczacıbaşı, only by founding the institution of IKSV, gave the biggest support. The artists of the first biennials found their own support with their full commitment and efforts. Maybe the private sector has more involvement in this, but I am talking about this very beginning.36 In this way, they laid the groundwork for new methods and approaches in Turkish art that continued to be highly influential, beginning with the first Istanbul Biennial. The foundation of the Istanbul Biennial organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV) in 1987 stimulated Istanbul’s art scene, and this was followed by an increasing number of commercial galleries. With the institutions giving support to the contemporary art practices, artists began to be more engaged with the communities through the issues as identity, gender, and migration –namely, with a general definition, sociocultural issues. Therefore, it is possible to analyze these practices, which highlight issues of “otherness” by considering the politics of institutionalization.

3.1 3.1.1

The Impacts of the Istanbul Biennial The Geographical Representation of Istanbul Biennial

In the 1990s, there was a shift in contemporary art world, both in changing concepts in conjunction with curatorial work, as well as in terms of exhibition sites. According to Enwezor, these elements changed the conditions of artistic production, and the narratives of contemporary art became increasingly concerned with the “wider ramifications for contemporary art of the discursive exclusion of art of minorities – African, Asian, Latin American, Chicago, First Nation, female, queer – within Western societies.”37 With the changing global networks in the art world, these developments prompted large-scale organizations as Biennials outside Europe and North America. With this model, curatorial approaches adapted to the new discourses in contemporary art. Enwezor’s statement that the recent advancements in the world of art are visible in the transformations of the Istanbul Biennial serves as a stark illustration of his point. This development in the art scene also occurred in addition to 36 37

‘Personal Communication with Gülsün Karamustafa'. 2018. Okwui Enwezor, “Place Making in the ‘Wrong Place’: Contemporary Art and the Postcolonial Condition,” in Former West: Art and the Contemporary after 1989, ed. Maria Hlavajova and Simon Sheikh (Utrecht, England: BAK, MIT Press, 2016), 52.

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the political turmoil that was occurring in Turkey, and also to the objective of marketing Istanbul as a cultural product. In the context of globalization, tracking the outcomes of the Istanbul Biennial is of critical importance. Erzen describes the importance of the first Biennial in the global art scene. She also adds: Yet without doubt, part of the success is due to its urban backdrop. The development of cultural tourism in the twenty-first century and investment in art and leisure in Istanbul are major grounds for the attraction that the Biennial has assumed. Yet the question remains as to whether the Biennial and the Istanbul Modern Museum, both active under the auspices of IKSV, related to the Eczacıbaşı Family involved in pharmaceutical production, have made important contributions to the general quality of art and art appreciation in Turkey.38 The first biennials emphasized on Istanbul’s capacity to draw tourists by showcasing works in the historic and scenic ambiance of the city. Because of this, the biennial exhibitions have been staged primarily on the historical peninsula of Istanbul, one of the city’s oldest population zones, thereby highlighting the region’s touristic potential. About the decision to select historical buildings as an exhibition space, the coordinator of first two biennials, Beral Madra, in explaining the decision to host the exhibitions in historical areas, points out that “not only do the historic buildings provide a source of inspiration for contemporary artists but the showing of their work in these spaces counteracts the banality of a touristic response to reassert their value.”39 This displays that, the main aim behind highlighting the cultural heritages of the city was admittedly to attract more tourists to the city, and it was a part of marketing cultural and heritage tourism. The first two Biennials, which took place in 1987 and 1989, were directed by Beral Madra, and the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts has continued to serve as the biennial’s primary organizer to the present day. When we look

38

39

Jale Erzen, “Art in Istanbul: Contemporary Spectacles and History Revisited,” in Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe?, ed. Deniz Gokturk, Levent Soysal, and Ipek Tureli (London, New York: Routledge, 2010), 224. Beral Madra, “1st Istanbul Biennial,” in Simdiki Zaman Gecmis Zaman: 20 Yilda Uluslararasi Istanbul Bienali’nde Iz Birakanlar (Time Present Time Past: Highlights from 20 Years of the International Istanbul Biennial), ed. Cem Ileri, Exh.Cat. (Istanbul: Istanbul Modern, 2007), 47.

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back at the catalogues for these two biennials, we can see that the first few pages of the catalogues were devoted to remarks made by Atatürk regarding the comments he made throughout the nation-building on the importance of art. With this as an additional piece of evidence, the biennials were arguably a part of the modernization and westernization project of the secular Turkish Republic.40 As one of the first biennials organized outside the West, the Istanbul Biennial maintained this touristic approach in the second biennial, with the selection of the exhibition sites from the Byzantine and Ottoman era, such as Hagia Eirene Museum, Süleymaniye Cultural Centre, and The Treasury of Hagia Sophia. Again, the curatorial approach of Beral Madra refers to the architectural history of the city. This approach established an inspiring ground for artists to display site-specific installations in these historical spots. In the following years, as a result of the effects of globalization, the Istanbul Biennials continued to use culture to promote the city as a destination for tourists -so called, branding via culture. The most major shift happened during this process with the third Biennial in 1992, when the decision was taken to shift the focus of the exhibitions away from the touristic sphere, rather than stressing the historical layers of the city as had been the case previously with the exhibition. The curator of the third Istanbul biennial in 1992, Vasıf Kortun, indicates that, it was his “sine-qua-non to spare the viewers from the historical sites and situate the exhibition outside the historical walls.”41 As part of the biennial’s major conceptual approach, ’production of cultural differences’, Kortun has specified an age limit of forty years for the open call for artists in order to provide more space to new and emerging artists rather than wellknown artists in the competition. This approach, which was concerned with new approaches in contemporary art, was heralding a paradigm shift in the arena. This progress in the third Biennial, as well as Kortun’s selection of Feshane (a redesigned Ottoman factory) as the exhibition space, both signaled

40

41

David Elliott, “Glimpsing the Past, Dreaming the Future, Remembering the Present,” in Şimdiki Zaman Geçmiş Zaman: 20 Yılda Uluslararası İstanbul Bienali’nden Iz Bırakanlar (Time Present, Time Past); (Exhibition Catalogue, 6 September-2 December 2007), ed. Cem Ileri (Istanbul: Istanbul Modern, 2007), 24. Cem Ileri, ed., “Interview with Vasif Kortun,” in Simdiki Zaman Gecmis Zaman: 20 Yilda Uluslararasi Istanbul Bienali’nde Iz Birakanlar (Time Present Time Past: Highlights from 20 Years of the International Istanbul Biennial), Exh.Cat. (Istanbul: Istanbul Modern, 2007), 93.

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the further emphasis of artists on the urban culture of the city, or more generally “urbanization” itself. When it comes to the third Biennial, Karamustafa defines the changes in the art scene as follows: The 3rd International Istanbul Biennial held in 1992, would take place under a single roof at Feshane, and take shape around a single theme. Once again there were severe protests from art institutions, academics, and art circles, yet now, the transition to another field, to the field of contemporary art, which allowed for plurality and the freedom of expression in every sense had been completed.42 Clearly, as the comment illustrates, biennial played a significant role in the adaptation towards contemporary art and its dynamics in the art market. Correspondingly, in the following years of the 1990s, biennials have also adapted to the globalization of the art market, in that the selection of Western curators and increasing number of Western artists. The first instance of this was René Block, a renowned German gallerist, art collector and curator who curated the fourth Istanbul Biennial in 1995. On the other hand, René Block was already engaged in Turkish art scene since he was first invited to the Beuys Symposium in Marmara University. Block’s interest on Turkish art brings about the exhibition organized by him with the pioneering Turkish artists as Gülsün Karamustafa, Füsun Onur, Hale Tenger, Ayşe Erkmen that took place at three ifa galleries in Stuttgart, Bonn, and Berlin.43 The fourth biennial titled, ORIENT/ATION–The Vision of Art in a Paradoxical World was a part of the curatorial aim of bringing West and East together. Even the catalogue cover of this biennial through the scheme created, presents the main intentions of the biennial as it plays with the East-West dichotomies. (Figure 5) As a part of this biennial, Block invited numerous artists from all over the world, and exhibited their work across three different locations, Aya Irini Church, Basilica Cistern and 4th Antrepo Building. The works arranged and presented regardless of the nationality of the artists. By doing this, Block revealed his aim to position the biennial in the category of a farreaching international arts event arena in global circuit.

42

43

Deniz Şengel, Merve Elveren, and Gülsün Karamustafa, A Fallen Icon: A Rhetorical Approach to Gülsün Karamustafa’s Art 1981-1992 (Istanbul: SALT/Garanti Kültür AŞ, 2016), p. 85. Sabine Vogel, “Waves at the Periphery: Interview with René Block,” August 2008, http s://universes.art/en/nafas/articles/2008/tanas-berlin.

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Figure 5: Catalogue cover for the 4th Istanbul Biennial in 1995 curated by René Block*

*Asia Art Archive, “4th International Istanbul Biennial: Orientation (Biennial 4),” accessed June 11, 2018, https://aaa.org.hk/ en/collection/search/library/4th-international-istanbul-bienni al-orientation-biennial-4.

The title of the biennial also sparked debates, as it plays with the notion of “Orient”. In response to these discussions, Block expressed that, he “intended nothing else other than to point out how much of our supposed Western culture has its origins in the Orient. In Alexandria, Jerusalem, Byzantium, all

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high cultures by which we still orient ourselves.”44 Yet his approach was still based on the general dichotomy between the Western and Non-Western areas which is maintaining his Western frame of view through the approach of fixed-boundaries. Therefore, the fourth Istanbul Biennial can also be considered in terms of the general cultural politics of Biennials, with the aim of bringing prestige to Istanbul by attracting audience.

3.1.2

Socially Engaged Practices of the Biennial Artists

After the 4th Istanbul Biennial curated by René Block, there has been a shift towards not only through the direction of promotion of Istanbul through culture, but also in terms of the participation of well-known international artists in the Biennial. In the 5th Biennial, curated by Rosa Martinez in 1997, this approach of putting Istanbul as a central theme in the biennial has been maintained. The biennial Martinez curated focused on the main themes of Life, Beauty, Translation and Difficulties, and situates art in the middle of these themes that allows transition. While doing this, she aims to explore the boundaries between art and life, aesthetic experience and knowledge, communication, and language. As a part of the 5th Biennial, there has been many public places such as Sirkeci and Haydarpaşa train stations, Ataturk Airport, billboards have been added to the historical biennial venues. As a curator considering the geopolitical location of Istanbul with its sociopolitical aspects, she reconsiders the gates of the city through these words: “For this reason, I recommend artists to produce works related to the “gates” of the city. Ferries travelling between airports, train stations, Asian and European sides can be metaphors in terms of connecting differences.”45 The 6th Biennial in 1999, curated by Paolo Colombo was rather small scaled in terms of exhibition venues comparing to the previous biennials, since the exhibition venues were limited to Dolmabahçe Cultural Center, Basilica Cistern, and Hagia Irene Church. The theme of the biennial was emphasizing the cultural pluralism and heterogeneity of the population of the city, on the other hand the selection of the exhibition venues reflects an historical and

44

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Cem Ileri, ed., “An Interview with René Block,” in Simdiki Zaman Gecmis Zaman: 20 Yilda Uluslararasi Istanbul Bienali’nde Iz Birakanlar (Time Present Time Past: Highlights from 20 Years of the International Istanbul Biennial), Exh.Cat. (Istanbul: Istanbul Modern, 2007), 136. 5. İstanbul Bienali Kataloğu, "Yaşam, Güzellik, Çeviriler ve Diğer Güçlükler Üstüne”, İKSV, İstanbul, 1997

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touristic representation of the city. The emphasis on the city examined in the context of personal artistic representations of the artists. The 7th Biennial in 2001, has been curated by Yuko Hasegawa and the selection of the artists was mostly constituted of emerging artists and art initiatives. The conceptual framework of the biennial was on “Egofugal”, which has been explained as an escape from ego for the diversity, collectivity, and sustainability. In that sense, it was a general framework that focuses on the global issues on culture, economics, politics through a more humanitarian and unselfish context, so it can be considered as an instance amongst the Istanbul biennials that does not focuses on the historical and touristic promotion of the city. 8th Istanbul Biennial in 2003 curated by Don Cameron46 under the title of Poetic Justice was focusing on social responsibility of the artist through the political emphasis. Moreover, this biennial can be considered in the framework of rising socially engaged art practices in Turkey. For instance, Esra Ersen’s video work documenting the lives of African immigrants in Istanbul, titled Brothers and Sisters has been exhibited as a part of the biennial. In addition to this, Can Altay’s “in various cities as they recycled “We’re Papermen” (Figure 6) video was documenting the ‘papermen’ while they navigated around the city for collecting paper from garbage. Also, with the participation of Kutluğ Ataman, Oda Project to the 8th Biennial was putting Istanbul at the center through the socially engaged projects. In the following years, the most significant shift in terms of exploring the city has occurred in the curatorial collaboration of Charles Esche and Vasıf Kortun, for the 9th Istanbul Biennial in 2005. As it was explained in the concept of the ninth Biennial, they did use any historic monuments, they rather chosen “sites that have a more common reference to the everyday life of the city in the Beyoğlu and Galata neighborhoods; (…) apartment block, an old customs storehouse, a former tobacco depository, a gallery, a shop, a theatre and an office building.”47 It is aimed to present Istanbul as a modern city, by preferring the exhibition sites around the Beyoğlu and Galata region that resembles Western European cities in terms of architecture in the 19th century. By deciding these locations, the biennial moreover aimed to create a basis for

46 47

Cameron was the chief curator of the New Museum of New York. “9th International İstanbul Biennial,” accessed July 4, 2018, http://9b.iksv.org/english/? Page=Concept.

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Figure 6: We’re Papermen”, he said. 2003, Installation: 2 DVD projections, 1 slide projection, texts and photos on used paper, 8th Istanbul Biennial, 2003*

*“8th Istanbul Biennial, 2003: Can Altay,” accessed April 6, 2021, http:// www.universes-in-universe.de/car/istanbul/2003/antrepo1/e-tour-16.h tm.

the artists to engage with the everyday life of the city in various neigbourhoods. In this way, not only there was a shift in focus away from the touristic cultural heritage of the city, but also the practices of the artists transformed to represent the ‘local’ life in the city. With the biennial open call, they invited artists to the residency program from all over the world to produce site-specific works in Istanbul. Through these efforts, socially engaged practices of the artists were linked with the everyday life of the city.48 The well-known curator Hou Hanru curated the following biennial in 2007, titled, Not Only Possible, But Also Necessary: Optimism in the Age of Global 48

For instance, Karl-Heinz Klopf’s work Mind the Steps, 2005 perfectly exemplifies the socially engaged practices of the artists. Karl-Heinz Klopf who has taken part in the biennial as a resident artist, chosen six different points in the city with step formations and placed theatrical projector spots to illuminate these points at night. Some musicians, artists, and a break dance group used this platform for their performances throughout the biennial with the inclusion of the people in the neighborhood.

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War. This 10th Biennial was also the continuation of the position of the previous in terms of emphasizing the importance of the social inclusion of the artists to fully experience the urban living and community building. In this context, Honru comments on the conceptual framework of the Biennial: It is true that the issue I tried to bring up did touch on some essential aspects of Turkish society. (…) Clearly, my questions were about the old-fashioned modernization project of the republicans. Turkey is stuck between the desire to become European and finding a new identity in this big climate of the Middle East. One has to develop a critical view on this from an historical perspective and also from the perspective of what is going on today.49 Honru’s remarks summarize his curatorial strategies, which focused on social change through artistic practices by creating situations for society to transform. In this sense, Honru prefers non-touristic neighborhoods as the exhibition sites, and includes a wide range of site-specific works in various neighborhoods, accompanied by public talks and events. In the following years, this approach was maintained and expanded through the collaborative and participative practices of the artists. Their works remained linked to the social practice engaging with— and occasionally challenges — the residents of various neighborhoods within the developing metropolis, which became home to a rising number of urban impoverished. For instance, strategically İMÇ building that served as a textile traders’ market and a significant example of Turkish modernist architecture has been chosen as an exhibition venue to create space for communities to meet. Many of the works were site-specific projects, depending on the collaboration with the people working in the building. They aimed to create dialogue as in the case of Ferhat Özgür’s work, titled Playground: Crossword Puzzle (2007) that has an objective of social participation. As a part of this project, Özgür carried out research with these people by engaging in a dialogue about their problems, their lives for the preparation of a puzzle paper and board. Again, in the same venue, at İMÇ building, Swiss artist Ursula Biemann’s video work, The Black Sea Files (2005) has been shown. Ursula Biemann was a research project on the Caspian oil geography, the world’s oldest oil extraction area. With this work, she investigates the subterranean pipeline crossing the Caucasus and Eastern 49

‘Optimism Reconsidered: Curator Hou Hanru, ed. by Nilgun Bayraktar’, in Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe?, ed. by Deniz Gokturk, Ipek Tureli, and Levent Soysal (London, New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 201–15 (p. 204).

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Turkey that transports the material to the West. With a non-linear video, she conducts a fieldwork in the field and documents the oil workers, refugees, farmers, and prostitutes around this area. These are some cases that manifest the curatorial strategies of Honru that aims to focus on the practices linked to the social, urban, and cultural realities through conversation with communities. With this biennial, Honru emphasized the role of artists for the social engagement and the representation of local issues in art for the social change. This strong focus on the social engagement has been an influence for the further socially engaged art practices and maintained as a focus in the next biennial. The 12th Istanbul Biennial in 2011, curated by Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Pedrosa put the emphasis on active participation of the visitors with their curatorial approach. With a reference to Felix Gonzalez-Torres, they chose the title as Untitled, and directly reflected the artistic approach of GonzalezTorres on art for creating social change in communities through the selected works. From the end of 1980s to the present, the Istanbul Biennial, has, in many ways transformed parallel to developments in the social and the political atmosphere in Turkey. With the impacts of neoliberalism, growing industrialization and urbanization in Turkey, many changes developed in society that manifested in the questioning of the cultural identity and East-West population movements. This resulted in an increasing number of residents living in informal settlements, or shantytowns. Furthermore, after the widespread migration from rural areas to big cities, Istanbul’s social structure drastically changed. However, migration was not the only aspect that affected urban centers; the increasing number of skyscrapers, towers, and mega projects intensified the transformation in big cities, most dramatically in Istanbul. In addition to this, these transformations catalyzed gentrification accompanied by urban renewal projects. In the grand scheme of things, the Istanbul Biennial has set an example by showing concern on these changes, both in terms of the selection of exhibition spaces, and by introducing the city of Istanbul as a metropolis with a unique urban culture. In this context, the biennials curated by Charles Esche and Vasıf Kortun (2005) and by Hou Hanru (2007) were significant attempts for the engagement with the urban public spaces. The main objective of these attempts was pointing out the injustices in the specific areas of the city with humanist and democratic ideals. Multiculturalism of Istanbul is the most out-

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standing theme in this process.50 The multiculturalism emphasis was also a marketing strategy for art in Turkey that Istanbul biennial spawned to highlight the potential of the city. During the Turkey’s EU accession negotiations, this emphasis was a part of the representation of the country with all the cultural diversities. Therefore, the Istanbul Biennial not only laid the groundwork for the recent growing interest on Turkish contemporary art in the international art world, but also transformed the practices of the artists by presenting the city in conjunction with the society and its local culture that resulted in increasing number of socially engaged art practices. In addition to the biennial’s influence, the rapid urbanization in Istanbul had a significant impact on the practices of artists. Biennials in Istanbul triggered artists to explore the relation between the city and its cultural dynamics by providing a spaces to present their works by engaging with communities. In this respect, Danila Mayer by considering the recent changes in the sociopolitical context in Turkey, inquires the position of Biennial in social context in her article How global art came to Istanbul?: The Context of Istanbul Biennial: In a metropolis charged with economic and social competition, social change and with a violent recent history of bombings and assassinations, where the common and the public are under scrutiny can art contribute to bridge the gap between social groups, or does it solely guard the threshold of division? From the first editions, the clefts in Istanbul’s urban society emerged more clearly and widened, and the public, or “large We” (Christov-Bakargiev) of Istanbul is increasingly fragmented.51 Here, Mayer addresses the issues arising from building connections with local realities with the practice of socially engaged art that has been supported as a strategy in the Istanbul Biennial and expresses her concern on the representation of “otherness” in the urban context. Social themes and urban issues became more apparent in this contextualization. In this regard, it is critical

50

51

For further reading on the representation of Istanbul as a city of history, diversity and the arts: Deniz Göktürk, Levent Soysal, and Ipek Tureli, Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe? (Oxfordshire, New York: Routledge, 2010). Danila Mayer, “How Global Art Came to Istanbul?: The Context of Istanbul Biennial,” in An Anthropology of Contemporary Art: Practices, Markets, and Collectors, ed. Thomas Filitz and Paul van der Grijp (London, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), 85.

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to underline the significant role of Biennial for the proliferation of the practices related to social engagement by emphasizing specific characteristics of the community and engaging with social, urban, cultural issues.

3.2

Consequences of Private Sector Institutionalization in the Contemporary Art

Despite this new perspective that first biennial ushered in some other financial institutions appeared in the art scene as the supporters of the private galleries. For instance, with the main sponsorship of Eczacıbaşı Family, the first contemporary art museum in Turkey, Istanbul Modern was founded in 2004. Following this, Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation founded Pera Museum in 2005 as a private museum in Istanbul, Tepebasi. Again, in 2000s, the santralistanbul project that was led by Istanbul Bilgi University was finished in 2007, transforming Silahtarağa Power Plant into a platform for arts, culture comprised of a museum and a university campus.52 In addition to these museum projects, leading contemporary art spaces were established, such as Depo founded in 2009, Arter in 2010, and Salt in 2011.53 Vehbi Koç Foundation initiated two major projects to promote Turkish contemporary art: TANAS-Berlin (2008–2013) and Arter (2010–). “Arter – space for art”, opened its doors in 2010 in Beyoğlu with the aim to create a platform of visibility for artistic practices in Turkey, and to present thematic contemporary exhibitions from the VKF Contemporary Art Collection.54 Although private cultural investments are not limited to those mentioned above, they all followed similar cultural entrepreneurship strategies. These cultural institutions, in general, intended to present the idea that they were cultivating work for the benefit of society. According to Yardımcı, the impact of big investment through sponsorship or board of trustees on the prominent museums and festivals (Koç, Sabancı, Eczacıbaşı), publishers (Yapı Kredi), art galleries (Akbank, Garanti), and even universities (Koç, Sabancı, Bilgi), shows how economic and cultural capital transformed into each other.55 As a re52 53

54 55

Silahtarağa Power Plant was the Ottoman Empire's first urban-scale power plant. In addition to these art spaces, some museums supported by banks and holdings, as Aksanat (1993), Borusan Sanat (1997), Is Sanat (2000), Proje 4L -Elgiz Museum (2001) have founded in these years. “ARTER – Space for Art,” accessed April 14, 2018, http://www.arter.org.tr/W3/Default.as p?sAction=AboutVKV. Yardimci, Kuresellesen Istanbul’da Bienal, 95.

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sult of the investments of major corporations, and financial organizations, Turkey’s cultural atmosphere changed rapidly. In addition to these developments, independent artist alternatively ran spaces developed in opposition to the monopolization and institutionalization in art.56 For the proliferation of these non-institutional and independent spaces, Pelin Tan focuses on three factors: the glamour newly bestowed upon self-initiated artistic projects in the age of globalism; Turkey’s bid to become a member of the European Union: and the related rapid and large-scale transformation of Istanbul. Self-initiated art practices, institutionalism and urbanism thus form the three facets of the question. (…) And another factor to be considered in this sense was the legacy of Turkey’s military regime of the 1980s lives on in the state’s institutions, policies, and procedures and in its bureaucrats who remain both nationalistic and conservative.57 Correspondingly, the increasing number of art galleries between 1990 and 2000 clearly showed the dominance of new galleries in the field of contemporary art.58 Moreover, international curators began to take a leading role in various exhibitions and had a voice in Turkish art. A vibrant and lively art scene in Turkey has emerged as a result of these developments as well as artist residencies, artists moving abroad, international art organizations in Turkey and, in particular, the general interest of artists in Istanbul. With all these changes stemming from the institutionalization in art, artists tended to be more involved in the issues related to identity politics. The role of Turkey’s EU-integration process cannot be denied in these changes, as this process intended to strengthen cultural relations. During this process the attempts were mostly aimed to build connections between the big cities 56 57

58

For instance, Oda Project, Apartment Project, Hafriyat, Pist, Nomad, Galata Perform, K2, BAS can be considered as examples of artist-run spaces and collectives. Pelin Tan, “Sanatci Kolektifleri, Inisiyatifler ve Sanatcilar Yonetimindeki Mekanlar / Self Initiated Collectivity, Artist Run Spaces and Artists’ Collectives in Istanbul,” in User’s Manual: Contemporary Art in Turkey 1986-2006 = Kullanma Kilavuzu; Türkiye’de Güncel Sanat, ed. Halil Altındere and Süreyya Evren (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, 2007), 130. Cem Özatalay and Senem Örnek, “From Modern to Contemporary Art: Transformations of Art Market in Istanbul,” in Recent Developments in Sociology and Social Work., Proceedings of the XII. European Conference on Social and Behavioral Sciences (University of Catania, 2017), 369–79. (p. 369).

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(most often Istanbul) and the cities in the Eastern side of Turkey.59 In this regard, the cultural policies attempted to present the social diversity in Turkey through the agency of art. Principally this cooperated with the sociopolitical strategies of the European cultural policy. With the involvement of artists addressing cultural identity, artistic practices serving for social change, namely supporting and being in solidarity with marginalized communities through art turn out to be a common practice. As Kwon addresses in her influential article with a focus on ‘site-specific art’, “the critique of the cultural confinement of art (and artists) via its institutions was once the ‘great issue,’ a dominant drive of site-oriented practice today is the pursuit of a more intense engagement with the outside world and everyday life.”60 To put it another way, art that is incorporated into the field of social issues with a focus on specific communities. Concordantly, one of the first exhibitions in Turkey on such artistic practices engaging with social issues was held in Proje4L Contemporary Art Museum61 – also known as the first representative of the institutionalization process in Turkish art scene. This exhibition in Proje4L, Becoming a Place62 (Figure 7) curated by Vasıf Kortun in 2001, deals with the question of the transformation of the traditional way of life, the construction of the visual in the context of the house, and the way in which the public space is used, based upon the ongoing urbanization in Istanbul. This exhibition was significant in terms of it featured the first examples of artist engagement with urban life, as well as a focus on the distinction between public and the private spheres. In this setting, the areas of urban transformation remained the focus of concern for artists in the following years. For instance, following the international attention on Sulukule’s violent urban transformation, according to Özkan, “Tarlabaşı became one of the most popular destinations in Istanbul for artists. They not only instrumentalized 59 60 61

62

Diyarbakir Art Center and Sinopale would be an example for these attempts. Miwon Kwon, ‘One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity’, October, 80 (1997), 85–110 (p. 91). The private museum, formerly known as Project4L, is continuing to organize exhibitions, education, and social programs with the name of Elgiz Museum. Collectors, Sevda Elgiz and Can Elgiz, founded Elgiz Museum as Turkey’s first contemporary art museum in 2001. (http://elgizmuseum.org/tr/?page_id=174). Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin, Gülsün Karamustafa, Hale Tenger, Can Altay, Halil Altındere, Tina Carlsson, Erik Göngrich, Hakan Gürsoytrak, Aydan Murtezaoğlu, Bülent Şangar and Oda Projesi were participating in the exhibition.

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Figure 7: Invitation for the opening of “Yerleşmek”, Proje4L, 2001 – ”Becoming a Place”*

*“‘Becoming a Place’, Proje4L, 2001. Sanatçılar - Artists: Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin, Can Altay, Halil Altındere, Tina Carlsson, Esra Ersen, Erik Göngrich, Hakan Gürsoytrak, Gülsün Karamustafa, Aydan Murtezaoğlu, Bülent Şangar, Oda Projesi; Curator: Vasif Kortun,” 2001, Salt Research Artist Archive.

their art to help resist violent top-down urban transformation projects, but they also used these lived social spaces as stages in which to locate their artistic performances.”63 As an example, in the Becoming a Place exhibition, Oda Projesi’s site-specific work exemplified how artists employed Istanbul’s urban transformation 63

Derya Özkan, ‘From the Black Atlantic to Cool Istanbul: Why Does Coolness Matter?’, in Cool Istanbul: Urban Enclosures and Resistances, Urban Studies (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 13–33 (p. 18).

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by the artists. For this project in 2001, Oda Projesi64 used the houses in the Gültepe neighborhood as an exhibition space. Gültepe was initially a shantytown formed by immigrants coming from the eastern and southern regions of Turkey. During the project, Oda Projesi organized interactive exhibitions with the neighbors and the children in the Oda Projesi space in Gültepe. Once a month in the Project4L museum, students participated in artist-led workshops so that students could closely engage with the exhibitions through discussions on themes, techniques, and contemporary art.65 Since, Oda Projesi has been focusing on urban spaces in terms of their varied purposes, based upon social relations and its potentials; they aim to produce events based on collaboration by organizing meals, discussions, workshops, exhibitions, screenings in various neighborhoods. Bishop also states the importance of Oda Projesi’s works in terms of “opening up the space for non-object-based practice in Turkey”, and she adds, “a country whose art academies and art market are still largely oriented toward painting and sculpture.”66 Here with these remarks, Bishop underlines the shifting patterns in Turkish art by establishing links with the ‘social turn in art’ and so tracing the roots of shift away from the concept of ‘aesthetics’. Another turning point in the art scene was the Plajın Altında: Kaldırım Taşları / Under the Beach: The Pavement (2002) exhibition,67 curated by Vasıf Kortun and Halil Altındere. The exhibition’s themes again touched on urbaniza64

65

66 67

Oda Project is an artist collective from Istanbul. The three artists, Özge Açıkkol, Güneş Savaş and Seçil Yersel that formed Oda Projesi, turned their collaboration into a project. In a flat that they rented in Galata neighborhood, in Beyoglu-Istanbul they organized projects engaged with the society. Moreover, they conducted the project, Cultural Agencies in 2009, again with an aim of engagement with a marginalized community living in the outskirts of Istanbul. They aimed to create a platform for recording and sharing the neighborhood's collective memory with a series of interviews and generated practices to collect materials as an evidence of Gülsuyu’s urbanization process. Derya Özkan, ‘From the Black Atlantic to Cool Istanbul: Why Does Coolness Matter?’, in Cool Istanbul: Urban Enclosures and Resistances, Urban Studies (Berlin De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 13–33 (p. 18). Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents,” 180. The artists involved in this exhibition: Şinasi Güneş, Karolin Fişekçi, Nevin Aladağ, Sefer Memişoğlu, Yetkin Başarır, Fikret Atay, Seyhun Babaç, Ahmet Öğüt, Zeynep Soleyman, Nasan Tur, Erinç Seymen, Demet Yoruç, Aslı Sungu, Başir Borlakov, Ali Demirel, Fahrettin Örenli, Erkan Özgen, Ferhat Özgür, Cengiz Tekin, Oda Projesi: Özge Açıkol, Güneş Savaş, Seçil Yersel, Kutu: Ali Batı, Gökçen Cabadan, Elmas Deniz, Borga Kantürk, Gökçe Süvari, Evrim Yiğit.

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tion and otherness, as well as the perspectives of artists from Turkey’s eastern region. The presence of the Kurdish artists in this exhibition such as Fikret Atay, Erkan Özgen, and Şener Özmen signaled a change from the dominance of artists from the big cities in the art scene. While the Kurdish artists acquired a lot of recognition currency in the art scene, they also highlighted concerns about the many forms of violence that are prevalent in the eastern regions. In the following years, the artists involved in this exhibition continued to produce works based on social engagement with communities that are subject to social exclusion. Accordingly, these exhibitions are important to tracing the proliferation of socially engaged art in Turkey, as well as understanding its connection with the support of private institutions and curatorial strategies in this trend. When it comes to social engagement in art, Vasıf Kortun has been highly influential and effective in the expansion of socially engaged art in Turkey.68 According to Arend, “together with Beral Madra and René Block, he is one of the curators who has made a decisive contribution to making the new Turkish art scene of the 90s nationally and internationally visible.”69 Prior to the implementation of SALT, Kortun served as the Founding Director of Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul (2001–10), a nonprofit art organization that hosted exhibitions, conferences, an international residency program, and an archive of contemporary art in Turkey and Proje4L Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art (2001–04).70 Later on, he worked as a director of research and programs at SALT between 2011-2017, an art institution founded by Garanti Bank, Turkey’s second largest private bank. Both Platform Garanti and the later formed institution SALT were both supported by Garanti Bank and directed by Vasıf Kortun. Kortun contributed to the increased social emphasis in contemporary art, in addition to raising the international prominence of the Turkish art scene. He has published articles on visual culture and contemporary art in a variety of publications. During his period as director of SALT, he promoted works that

68 69 70

Kortun, born in 1958, is one of the most significant curators in Turkish contemporary art scene. Ingo Arend and Vasif Kortun, ‘Die Öffentlichkeit Muss Neu Erfunden Werden’, KUNSTFORUM, 2013, p. 370. “Vasif Kortun,” in Wikipedia, March 10, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title =Vasif_Kortun&oldid=829742707.

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linked to social practice art particularly. Gülsün Karamustafa, Esra Ersen, Tayfun Serttaş, Köken Ergun, and Dilek Winchester all had exhibitions at SALT, and these artists provide the basis for the analysis for this research on the relation between art and anthropology. As a consequence, it’s critical to underline the role of Kortun’s curatorial strategies in the increasing commitment of the social practices of artists to create social changes.

3.3

International Recognition of Turkish Contemporary Art

With the impact of globalization on art, Turkish art began to reach not just to a local audience, but also to an international audience. On the representation of art from Turkey, according to Özpınar, as it “becomes more visible on global circuits, the question of how the ‘world’ sees this art becomes more important.”71 Social and political concerns in Turkish art gained more prominence as a result of these changes. The presentation of contemporary art from Turkey outside of Turkey was not promoted by state institutions at the beginning of 1990s. Artistic work was presented abroad only after artists took the initiative to secure financial support. Artists and curators’ efforts made a significant contribution to the recognition of Turkish artists in the art world, primarily in Europe. Following these attempts, a number of exhibitions have been organized abroad, predominantly in Germany. First, Beral Madra curated the significant exhibition “Iskele” with Sabine Vogel in the galleries of IFA in Berlin, Bonn, and Stuttgart in 1994. When it comes to the presentation of Turkish art abroad, this exhibition signifies the beginning of a focus on migration, identity, and East-West connections. In the following years, a number of exhibitions were held to promote Turkish artists in Europe. These exhibitions were commonly held in Germany and focused on the migration aspect. Especially, due to the integration process of Turkey into EU, the popularity of Istanbul gained attention in the art scene in Germany. The exhibition Berlin - Istanbul · vice versa’ (2004) in Künstlerhaus

71

Ceren Ozpinar, “Playing out the ‘Differences’ in ‘Turkish’Art History Narratives,” in Narratives Unfolding: National Art Histories in an Unfinished World, ed. Martha Langford (Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017), 42–61. (p.61).

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Bethanien gathered artists mostly from Berlin and Istanbul to investigate the cultural exchange between these two cities. 72 Again in 2004, Call me ISTANBUL ist mein Name at ZKM in Karlsruhe, was one of the exhibitions that held during the process of Turkey’s attempted accession into the EU. The works at the exhibition sought to present the transformation of Istanbul through the lens of modernization. The exhibition URBANE REALITÄTEN: Fokus Istanbul held the following year at in the MartinGropious-Bau, Berlin and organized by Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, aimed to display the Istanbul as a dynamic, cosmopolitan metropolis in regard to urban development, by investigating the city from outside, but with a perspective inside the city itself. However, due to the lack of transparency in the selection of artists by curator Christoph Tannert, most of the artists from Turkey withdrew their works from the exhibition.73 Through this exhibition and those following with similar formats, artists based in Germany such as Nasan Tur, Nezaket Ekici interrogated cultural identity and challenged prejudices about migrant identity in Germany, by defying clichés. Therefore, those works of the artists aimed to represent the diasporic community and their cultural position. More institutional support for Turkish artists appearing internationally developed around a geographical specification based on an approach on cultural exchange between Berlin and Istanbul. TANAS-Berlin, a significant project supported by the Vehbi Koç Foundation and established in 2008 and was managed by René Block who has curated the 4th Istanbul Biennial in the past. The project space TANAS, Raum für zeitgenössische türkische Kunst aimed to follow developments in contemporary Turkish art and to present them in Berlin, to eventually build a bridge between Istanbul and Berlin. TANAS also

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The artists involved in this exhibition: Erdag Aksel, Nevin Aladag, Banu Birecikligil, CHARLIE, Antonio Cosentino, Marta Deskur, Extramücadele, Tan Cemal Genc, Hakan Gürsoytrak, Ali Kepenek, Serhat Köksal, Neriman Polat, Lars Ramberg, Klaus Staeck, Roland Stratmann, Asli Sungu, Sencer Vardarman, Nalan Yirtmac. The exhibition presented the works of these artists: Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Rey Akdogan, Nevin Aladag, Marc Bijl, Katinka Bock, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Fernando Bryce, Hussein Chalayan, Heman Chong, Damien Deroubaix, Cevdet Erek, Peter Friedl, Leyla Gediz, Jens Haaning, Eberhard Havekost, Richard Hoeck, Olaf Holzapfel, Folke Koebberling & Martin Kaltwasser, Ali Kepenek, Germaine Koh, Via Lewandowsky, Olaf Metzel, Hajnal Nemeth, Serkan Özkaya, Reynold Reynolds, Sarkís, Cornelia Schleime, Wael Shawky, Asli Sungu, Christoph Tannert, Christoph Tannert, Evanthia Tsantila, Nasan Tur, Sencer Vardarman, Costa Vece, Suse Weber, Peter Welz, Michael Wesely.

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intended to provide a platform for the discussion and interaction of Turkish artists and curators with German and international audiences until 2013. For instance, Zwölf im Zwölften exhibition in 2011 focused on the work of 12 Turkish artists living abroad.74 The work of these artists can be interpreted as discussions of “globalization” and “identity”. Pazarbaşı, the co-curator with Rene Block, explains in a daily newspaper, ”This is an exhibition that rethinks the meaning of being a Turkish in this global world by combining the identity attributed to the Turkish artists.”75 This exhibition exemplified how artists in diaspora have dealt with national identity. Another project in this context, Tactics of Invisibility was held in collaboration with TANAS Berlin, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Vienna, and ARTER in Istanbul. The project presented the works of 14 artists and artist collectives from different generations. The general concept of the exhibition was dealing with the idea of invisibility through notions that have been suppressed by the official history in Turkey and its diaspora. With this exhibition, artists called these notions into question, mostly by focusing on the concept of “otherness”. This project has brought together a range of artistic practices from three decades, by presenting works by pioneering figures such as Sarkis, Füsun Onur, and Ayşe Erkmen as precursors for the socio-politically engaged art of the 1990s, during which time questions of multiculturalism, identity politics, migration, and minority politics came to the fore. Also, the works of Inci Eviner, Kutluğ Ataman, and Hale Tenger demonstrated links to the debates and developments of that period. The project questions the terms of “reality” by generating conceptual breaks which link them to the artistic positions of the younger generation, as represented by Cevdet Erek, Esra Ersen, Nilbar Güreş, Nasan Tur, Nevin Aladağ, Ahmet Öğüt, xurban_collective, and the artists’ initiative Hafriyat.76 This project was held in three different galleries with the main sponsorship of Vehbi Koc Foundation and with the co-curatorship of Emre Baykal and

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75 76

Canan Tolon, Vahap Avşar, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Servet Koçyiğit, Ahmet Öğüt, Nilbar Güreş, Anny ve Sibel Öztürk, Ebru Özseçen, Şakir Gökçebağ, Nevin Aladağ, Nezaket Ekici and Nasan Tur. Deniz İNCEOĞLU, “Almanlar Türk sanatçıları keşfediyor,” accessed July 17, 2018, http:// www.hurriyet.com.tr/kelebek/almanlar-turk-sanatcilari-kesfediyor-19484699. Cevdet Erek, ‘Show: Tactics of Invisibility’, 2010, https://cevdeterek.com/2010/09/08/sh ow-tactics-of-invisibility-2. (Accessed 16 July 2018).

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Daniela Zyman. This exhibition was another in the line of those representing Turkish identity. Thus, this evokes questions related to the reproduction of culture and identity by virtue of the exhibition’s location abroad. Hereof, Koyuncu draws attention to the problem of representation, through the history of Turkish artists’ appearance and involvement in the international art scene: The problematics of representation has kept on the agenda with new variations, after the turn of millennia. Beside the allegoric works dealing with the structural problems of Turkey (the thorny path to democratization, militarism, migration, unemployment, the Kurdish problem, the Armenian problem, the problems of other minorities, the paranoia about the reintroduction of Sheria etc.) there were works and exhibitions that set out to transcend the over-used clichés of East against West, Muslim against Christian through transversal methodology, that emphasized the social dimension of the art practice and criticized the autistic closures of the world of art. 77 The shift in representational strategies arose as a result of a transformation in the image of Turkish art in the international art scene. With this transition, the presence of nation-centered artists diving into socio-political issues by deconstructing Turkish identity with a broader approach to marginalized populations increased. With these critical approaches in art, the prevailing idea of being between East and West has become a cliché. Artists once again gravitated toward the realm of culture, but this time employing observational methods in cultural research. On the other hand, these changes prompted further discussions around the representation of Turkish identity. As Sönmez expresses: At the same time, the Turkish artist would build up his/her self-belief as he/she had never done before, thus making him or her able to approach European exhibitions from a critical point of view and to opt out of participation if necessary; hence it would be possible to talk about the ethics of the current artist who considers the critical aspect of exhibitions, rather than the

77

Mahmut Koyuncu, “Ulus Sergileri ve Temsil/Nationally Framed Exhibitions and Representation,” in User’s Manual: Contemporary Art in Turkey 1986-2006 = Kullanma Kilavuzu; Türkiye’de Güncel Sanat, ed. Halil Altındere and Süreyya Evren (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, 2007), 94.

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contemporary artist acting as a voluntary globalist and participating in exhibitions abroad without questioning.78, 79 Through this lens, she openly criticizes contemporary Western orientalist perspectives for their tendency in employing concepts associated to identity politics. It is vital to consider how this critical point of view evolved in Turkish artists and how this critical perspective has progressed in the following years. Looking at previous cases of Turkish artists critically examining exhibitions in other countries, one can notice the dominance of orientalism critiques. By opposing this Orientalist perception on artists from Turkey, they have developed their own strategies that challenge the Orientalist gaze.80 As a result, it is possible to retrace the steps of artists who are developing their practices by focusing on social reality and concerns. As a result, Turkish artists creating works with a sociocultural agenda, focusing on subjects such as sex, assimilation, gender, exile, urbanization, language, history, memory, and so on, must be evaluated with a broader perspective, taking into account all the complexities of socially engaged practices.

4.

From Socially Engaged Art to Ethnographic Practices

4.1

Art and Possibilities for Social Change

These aforementioned cases clearly reflect the impacts of globalization and institutionalization within contemporary art scene in Turkey, and as a result of these transformation, the aim of artists engaging with the issues and problems of their time has developed and gained visibility. Rather than focusing on artwork with an outcome or the artwork as a material, artists aimed to 78

79

80

Aysegul Sonmez, “Turkiye’de Guncel Sanat 2000-2007: Tespitler ve Olaylar... / Current Art in Turkey: Determinations and Incidents,” in User’s Manual: Contemporary Art in Turkey 1986-2006 = Kullanma Kilavuzu; Türkiye’de Güncel Sanat, ed. Halil Altındere and Süreyya Evren (Frankfurt am Main: Revolver Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, 2007), 137. Here, Sonmez refers to the exhibition ‘Urban Realities: Focus Istanbul’ Exhibition taken place Martin Gropious Bau in Berlin in 2005. 11 artists from Turkey have withdrawn their works as a result of a conflict with the curator of the exhibition. In this context, Gülsün Karamustafa’s ‘Double Action Series for Oriental Fantasies’, Selma Gurbuz’s ‘Harem Fantasies’, Nil Yalter’s ‘Woman without a Head or the Bellydancer’, Esra Ersen’s video installation ‘Harem’ are significant works challenging with the orientalist gaze.

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focus on the process of art production, and thus their practices are accomplished outside the traditional organization of galleries and museums. This shift away from the institutions, and giving voice and space to communities to create change in the whole society resulted in new perspectives in art. With this, post-studio practices in art gained a wide currency because of the increasing number of conceptual, socially engaged, and performative works. Institutional framework in Turkey has transformed in accordance with these changes through biennials and the curators supporting the social engagement in art. The attempts of the artists have been endeavored with the goal of social change through collaboration and participation with communities. In the investigation of the proliferation of socially engaged art in Turkey, it is important to emphasize the impact of the so-called globalization and growing private sector support for art. A basis for artistic freedom emerged within this institutional structure –specifically when the artistic support is not dependent on the state– by means of artists leaving the traditional gallery context to unite life with art. With the inclusion of concepts such as “relational aesthetics” which French art critic Nicolas Bourriaud highlighted in the early 1990s, artists tended to be more engaged in collective activities through collaboration and participation with communities, expanding the influence of socially engaged art practices. In the context of Turkey in regard to social inclusion of the artists, Baykal illustrates: In the 1990s, the centers on the international art map began to show increasing interest in the periphery, along with the globalization and the European Union’s changing cultural policies. The social integration strategies in European countries that experienced immigration and explorations of the possibilities of coexistence, despite differences caused the concept of the “other” to come noticeably to the fore. 81 As a result of the establishment of these cultural policies, there has been an increase in interest in identity politics and ‘otherness’. In this respect, it is important to underline the effects of Turkey’s EU accession process, which has exacerbated the ‘cultural difference’ aspect. The context of European integration and urban transformations provided a dynamic ground for cultural policies. As a result, an increasing number of artists concentrated on migra-

81

Baykal, “Contemporaneity in Turkish Art,” 42.

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tion issues through collaboration with immigrant communities, as well as focusing on the effects of current sociopolitical problems. Artists also began to depict social concerns in their works, which were inextricably linked to their experiences in big cities. The large wave of migration to the big cities from Turkey’s eastern region in the 1990s affected everyday life, particularly the social and urban structure of Istanbul, and contributed to the growing interest on the issues pertaining identity, mobility, or culture at large. The focus of artists on urban development in Istanbul has largely evolved in ‘economically deprived and ethnically marked’ districts. This has contributed to the process of artists engaging in ethnographic and observational research practices in order to support them, defend their rights and demonstrate solidarity with those communities. Pelin Tan describes an instance of this with the controversial demolition of Sulukule, a Romani neighborhood in Istanbul through the solidarity of artists with the residents of this area. Based on this, she mentions that the artists have observed urban transformation closely in several districts and therefore “their artistic interventions take the forms either of documenting the process of eviction from neighborhoods or of collaboration with urban collectives.”82 In this respect, collaboration with residents has been chosen as an artistic strategy and it is aimed to produce collaboratively around the context of solidarity with these communities to generate awareness of their ongoing resistance. Hence, the case of Sulukule resistance illustrates the potential of art to promote political and social change to create fairer conditions for these communities. With the rise of neoliberal urbanism and migration from the eastern region to big cities, specific neighborhoods where migrants of ethnic backgrounds lived formed as a result of changing city planning. It was around this time that artists began to start paying more attention to society’s transformations, especially in big cities. The most significant changes have been made as part of the “urban transformation” agenda and in response to the struggles of people defending the rights of the residents. As a result of this

82

Pelin Tan, ‘Possibilities of Counter-Culture: Dissemination of Localities’, in Tactics of invisibility: contemporary artistic positions from Turkey; (Nevin Aladağ, Kutluğ Ataman, Cevdet Erek ...; Exhibition Catalogue of ‘Tactics of Invisibility’, organized by Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna and Vehbi Koç Foundation, Istanbul. Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna April 16 to August 15, 2010, Tanas, Berlin September - December 2010, Arter, Istanbul, January - April 2011) (Köln: Walther König, 2010), p. 146.

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shift in society, urban transformation is a crucial factor to consider for understanding the artistic practices around this theme. Through this contextualization, Pelin Tan’s thesis on “Locality as A Discursive Concept in Recent Socially Engaged Art Practices” investigates the socially engaged art practices with an emphasis on the spatial context, particularly artistic methods in urban. While she is concentrating on the academic concern on socially engaged art, she considers “those art practices as “in - between” situations/positions of ethnography -anthropology and artistic representation,” that enables us to question “the position of the artist and his / her production from an ideological perspective.”83 Tan’s thesis has been built around a focus on the socially engaged practices with a concentration on the “locality” concept. By doing this, she addresses the significance of locality rather than the globalization, as “the concept ‘globalization’ does not allow us to grasp the proximity of the cultural and artistic artifacts in such socially engaged art practices.”84 It is a frequent subject in the history of social practices in art that locality influences artists to deal with social realities and Tan’s perspective, as well as her project, is aligned with the historical context of socially involved art practice.

4.2

Artists Producing with Ethnographic Approach

These local transformations indeed attracted the attention of artists to the social issues or realities of their time. In Turkey, parallel with the art world, an increasing number of artists began to focus on the ethnic identity, gender, migration and in general social issues. Antmen analyzes these artists who scrutinize the field of culture through key facets of identity: The radical atmosphere of transformation in Turkey since 1980s towards a globalist neo-liberal economic and political structure confirms in every sense what Jameson pointed to: postmodernism as both an aesthetic and political problem. Thus, we observe in the aesthetics of the last twenty years a political attitude almost embedded into artistic expression, a creative effort in which the politics, as much as the aesthetics of representation, played an important part.85 83 84 85

Pelin Tan, ‘Locality As A Discoursive Concept In Recent Socially Engaged Art Practices’ (Istanbul Technical University, 2010), Istanbul, p. 76. Tan, ‘Locality As A Discoursive Concept In Recent Socially Engaged Art Practices’, p. 85. Antmen, “A History of Modern and Contemporary Art in Turkey,” 29.

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As postmodernism led the way for new values related to minorities, gender equality and women’s rights, these cultural tendencies began to present these concepts in Turkey. From a social science perspective, it is possible to observe the dynamics of transformation that have taken place with the presence of private institutions in the culture industry. As a result, politically motivated art appears, reflecting the social life of communities while addressing the representational challenge. Concerns surrounding the aestheticization of urban poverty and violence are raised when ‘otherness’ is represented through art. In addressing the progress of contemporary art in Turkey, Kortun and Kosova provide an example of this transformation. According to them, the cultural environment that concentrated on idealized proletarian figures in the 1970s tended towards focusing on the new migrants to cities in the 1980s, and in the 1990s they directed their attention to diverse norms or segments living on the margins and in this respect, the best example of this transition would be Gülsün Karamustafa. While working as an art director in the film sector, her piece Merdiven (2001) showed playful Romanian children who came to Istanbul for three months in order to earn money in the streets. Simultaneously with this work by addressing some common analogies, Kortun and Kosova also point to an analogous work, Esra Ersen’s piece, This is the Disney World (2000), documenting glue-sniffing street kids in Taksim, Istanbul.86 The trend that Kosova and Kortun follow to demonstrate these current practices, referencing Ersen’s works in conjunction with Karamustafa’s works, is connected to the progression I am following in this research of anthropological research practices in contemporary art practices in Turkey. Proceeding on this track, a considerable number of artists from Turkey are subsequently aiming to illustrate identity issues through their works. As mentioned above, growing private sector institutionalization and globalization had a significant impact on the transformations of concepts in the contemporary art in Turkey. As a result of these changes, adopting visual ethnographic methods for the study of culture with participatory and collaborative methods became more prevalent. Through the disappearing boundaries between ethnographic and artistic practices, they contribute to this area with new means of representation. In this regard, photographs, videos, drawings, installations, and other mediums blend with the data collection process of the artist and aim to reveal the cultural construction and dynamics of the target community. Herewith, they use 86

Vasif Kortun and Erden Kosova, Ofsayt, Ama Gol! (SALT/Garandi Kültür AȘ, 2014), 34.

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image to study and represent a society, or within the context of visual ethnography, they adopt visual media to portray a culture with an interdisciplinary approach. Here in this context, it is essential to scrutinize the role of ethnographic methods in these artistic practices by rethinking the consequences of social turn in contemporary art. Herewith, I argue that conducting research with a community to observe and document their lives became a recurrent theme for Turkish art till the 1990s. By employing a methodology that includes diverse research strategies to deal with questions revealed around an issue, they aim to reach a better understanding of the dynamics of the community. With the efforts made in this premise, it is possible to observe a growing number of artistic practices using ethnography as a method. Therefore, to effectively present these changing practices, I adopt a framework that initially displays the significance and influence of pioneering artists as Nil Yalter and Gülsün Karamustafa. Following this, I aim to examine the contemporary cases related to this tendency in art towards changing practices. In this context, I will scrutinize the works of Esra Ersen, Kutluğ Ataman, Tayfun Serttaş, Köken Ergun, Dilek Winchester and lastly, the Artıkişler Collective.

CHAPTER IV – ANTHROPOLOGICAL PRACTICES OF CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS FROM TURKEY

I.

An Introduction to Art and Anthropology Practices in the Context of Turkey

Following the transformation of art in Turkey illustrated in the preceding chapter in the time span marked by radical social, economic, and political change, a number of artists actively engaged with anthropological approaches as an artistic practice for the observation of social issues in a variety of local settings. In the context of Turkish art history, some of the artistic approaches might be considered early cases of anthropological engagements, as their methodologies experiment with observational methods while simultaneously interacting with participants through their research processes. It is crucial to highlight that, throughout the early career of some of the artists, neither the cultural institutional framework nor the frequency of large-scale exhibitions were at the level of today’s condition. For example, Nil Yalter, who was one of the first representatives of contemporary art in Turkey, is significant in that she employs installation and video as a medium in the early 1970s, as well as video as a tool for her investigation into migrant populations. Gülsün Karamustafa became yet another pioneer in the proliferation of the term ‘contemporary’ in Turkish art and since the 1980s, she has included social-scientific approaches into her work, which frequently included references to gender, identity, and migration. In the next part, I first identify the influence of these two pioneering artists by conducting an examination into the convergence of art and anthropological practice. These two artists, Yalter and Karamustafa, are significant for this research because they represent the beginning of the paradigm of artists working with anthropology in Turkey, as well as through their illustration of the evolving representations of the concept of identity construction.

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When reflecting on her early career, Karamustafa adds that while both Nil Yalter and Sarkis were based in Paris, Sarkis maintained a close connection to the Turkish art scene. During these years, there was not so much contact with Nil Yalter. However, later on, once they have come together, she notices that they are on a similar path in terms of their approaches in art. Karamustafa also embraces her position as a pioneer, considering her efforts and her future collaborations with the younger generation. However, she points out that she was not just involved in these changes and occurrences in Turkey; she was a part of these events on a global stage as well, as well as the people she encountered along her journey.1 Since the early 90s, Karamustafa’s work has gained significant attention across the art world, and it is regularly lauded for its inclusivity, inventiveness, and engagement with changing socio-political issues. Following that, beginning of the new century brought a rise in artists producing works using similar references and methods. The beginning of the new century brought a rise in artists producing works using similar references and methods in terms of sociopolitical awareness and its analysis. Yalter and Karamustafa demonstrate through their social scientific research-based works how this tendency in art presented itself and at what moment certain techniques in art gained prominence. When comparing the practices of these two generations of artists, what has changed? What are the distinctions between the concerns of artists from previous generations and those from the younger generation? Most noticeable is the shift of attitude toward specific social concerns, which may be recognized as a result of the changing society. These pioneering artists tended to concentrate on questions of gender and ethnic identity as they related to their respective cultures. However, the younger generation does not always tie their ideas to gender and ethnic issues, but to a broader context. As a result, these pioneering artists are critical in understanding the issues that affect the practices of artists and how they have evolved through time while the political climate is changing rapidly in Turkey.  Following an examination of the works of Yalter and Karamustafa, I intend to look at contemporary artists who frequently employ anthropological approaches in the investigation and documentation of a particular community. To demonstrate this trail in Turkish art, I have chosen artists to research and explore this issue from an anthropological and artistic perspective. These artists were chosen for their continuous and recurring use of anthropological 1

Personal Communication with Gulsun Karamustafa.

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practices and their emphasis on socio-cultural issues. Although important to highlight, it is important to underline that the Contemporary Turkish artists referred to in this context are not limited to those whose work is discussed as a part of this research, yet every artistic practice that are subject to this research adopts productive framework for the theoretical discussion of the topic. For instance, Esra Ersen’s work provides a framework for the discussion of participant observation approaches in the context of visual documentation. It is also vital to look at Kutluğ Ataman, who began his career in the early 2000s with a series of works documenting social identities. In a similar vein, Köken Ergun’s video installations depict the rituals of communities while also acknowledging the artist’s involvement with anthropological methodologies. Similarly, Tayfun Serttaş’s works serve as a key example of this engagement by demonstrating the importance of archival study in both research and artistic production. Furthermore, some artists exhibit diverse methodologies in an ethnographic environment with the purpose of doing research in the city, or how an artist can conceptualize of the city. The works of Dilek Winchester illustrate this trajectory by evoking Situationist practices of urban space. Furthermore, once again in the metropolitan area, Artikisler Collective implements critical features to documentary methods in their video activist works, and as a result, they establish a unique perspective in the confluence of art and anthropology. Yet some of these artists refer to their own works and practices with an emphasis on anthropological inquiry, and even they collaborate with anthropologists for some projects. Rethinking these cases, I demonstrate the connection between art and anthropology by juxtaposing and examining their research methodologies and aesthetic concerns by connecting them to each other. Consequently, I develop a framework for the interpretation of research methodologies and for challenging their subjects in the works of these artists, as well as for considering the consequences of their work for ethnographic field research. When evaluating these cases, I take into consideration many approaches to ethnographic methods that have been used, in addition to highlighting the exhibition methods, aesthetic intention, and interpersonal art practices as a whole. In considering these cases, I aim to demonstrate the dialogue that exists between art and anthropology, with a special emphasis on the methodologies and perspectives that are shared between the two disciplines, with a transdisciplinary approach. Overall, main goal in the following section is to show the consequences of contemporary artists from Turkey for the relationship be-

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tween art and anthropology, which will be discussed in detail consequently. The final goal of presenting the experiences for the debate on the linkages between art and anthropology is to contribute to the literature from a region that has been absent in this ongoing debate.

1.

Approaching Immigrant Communities Through Art: Nil Yalter

Nil Yalter (b.1938) is an artist from Turkey, working and living in Paris. Migration, as a concept, is a significant theme in her works as a result of her own lived reality, given that she has been changing living locations many times throughout her lifetime. In this sense, Rappolt mentions, “migration has, in many ways, defined her life. (…) Born in Cairo to Turkish parents, Yalter moved to Istanbul at the age of four.”2 This pattern of changing locations continued in her later life, when she moved permanently from Istanbul to Paris in 1965 when she was 27 years old. In the 1970s, she was a leading figure in France’s Feminist art movement. Moreover, she is regarded as a pioneering artist in Turkey, not only for her handling of installation and video art, but also for the inclusion and influence of many approaches from various disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, history, and literature. Her majority of works are concerned with issues of identity, gender, and immigration from a sociocultural and feminist perspective. After relocating to Paris, she began to produce works that explore gender, immigration, identity, namely, sociopolitical issues more generally. She also began to experiment with varied methodologies and media such as video, performance, and photography in addition to her practices with drawing. Her multimedia installation A Nomad’s Tent: A Study of Private, Public, and Feminine Spaces (1973) (Figure 8) is one of her most emblematic works that “represents the culmination of her work on Turkish immigrants, revealing her documentary findings on the nomads living around Niğde.”3 This artwork marks the beginning of her interest in encompassing anthropological approaches into her artistic practices. She traveled numerous locations in Niğde for this work, engaging with Yörüks and collecting materials throughout her research process. In this way, this process displays ethnographic references through a variety of fieldwork approaches in order to gain 2 3

Mark Rappolt, ‘Nil Yalter: Exile Is a Hard Job’, ArtReview, London, April 2017. “Artists,” accessed January 22, 2018, http://fertile-crescent.org/artists.html#yalter.

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Figure 8: Nil Yalter, Installation view of Topak Ev / A Nomad’s Tent: A Study of Private, Public, and Feminine Spaces (1973)*

*“Topak Ev, La Yourte, Nomad’s Tent - Courtesy of the Artist

a better understanding of the culture, traditions, beliefs, everyday practices of the specific community. Yalter employs anthropological methodologies in this work in order to learn more about this culture through firsthand observation by her visits to several villages in Niğde where Yörüks live. She gets inspiration for her installation through a variety of fieldwork methodologies, including participant observation, as well as how they live as a nomad while maintaining their traditions. This installation consists of a metal tent covered with leather, goat hair, and sheep skin, with a reference to the fur tents of Yörüks, in which they live and move when they migrate according to the season. By bringing this tent from Turkey to the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, she intended to evoke the sense of the physical environment of the Yörük’s settlement and their traditionally made tents. On the other hand, this work can be considered as an early attempt of doing fieldwork in Yörük settlements, that has been a point of interest as an ethnic group for many anthropologists throughout the time. Along with this, this work also traces the history of shamanic beliefs in Anatolia, with an

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emphasis on beliefs and traditions, and employs an anthropological approach to explore the subject matter. She grasps these issues from the perspective of their ancient origins in Central Asia, while also studying the role of women in these migrating communities. During Yalter’s visit to this Yörük town in Niğde, she observes that “these women’s husbands, brothers, or sons have left the tents and migrated to Istanbul, Ankara and living in the gecekondus (shantyhouses) around these areas. These houses can be considered a sort of tent as well.”4 This can be a reflected as a result of growing industrialization in these areas, as they live as seminomads in the margins of industrialized society. On the other hand, while her feminist component and inspiration from the sphere of the culture and traditions are evident in this work, given that it focuses on the temporary living quarters of migrants and workers who are in transit. After several years, this body of work was followed by a number of projects that demonstrated her interest in the experiences of migrants, particularly those of women migrants, with experiences from various locations around the world. According to Yücel, this work revealed that Yalter “would not only focus on the theme of ‘women’ but also include ethnographic and sociological methods in her practice.”5 Yücel’s primary emphasis of Yalter’s research practices serves as the central focus throughout her artworks. Although ethnographic interest is immediately discernible in her works, visual sociology might also be mentioned as an influence in terms of the subjects that Yalter engages in various ways. It is important to note, however, that visual sociology does indeed have linkages to anthropology throughout the history of its development. Generally, Yalter’s artistic work involves experimenting with many media to explore how the lives, beliefs, traditions of this community. Here it is generally aimed to focus on her art practice within the scope of these many methodologies, with an emphasis on researching and documenting the communities that she engages through her artistic practice.

Temporary Dwellings, 1974-77 Over the course of the 1970s, in most of her initiatives, Yalter aimed to better understand the experiences of those who have migration background. 4 5

“Eda Berkmen’in Nil Yalter ile söyleşisi// Eda Erkmen’s interview with Nil Yalter,” November 14, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhlYy9hfkXs. Derya Yucel, “Nil Yalter,” in Nil Yalter (Galerist&Revolver, 2013), 22.

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Her multimedia installation based on a research process; Temporary Dwellings (1974-77) illustrates the temporary places where the workers lived in the process of migration. Temporary Dwellings consists of seven archival board panels on which Yalter documented details of the lives of immigrant communities in Istanbul, Paris, and New York. The seven panels are complemented by six videos comprised of documentary interviews with the inhabitants of these places. (Figure 13) There are seven panels that represent diverse neighborhoods, all of which were characterized by the nationalities of immigrants: Turkish, Kurdish and Puerto Rican. Allen’s remarks summarize the content of this work: Yalter traveled through not only France and Belgium but also Turkey and the United States to interview them, much like an ethnographer taking field notes. The videos recorded in black and white accompany cardboard sheets featuring diary-like entries written in block capital letters, Polaroids, drawings, and artifacts found on-site all displayed with the sparse facticity of a school science project.6 In these series of works, Yalter uses the places she travels as a topic of study to better understand how these inhabitants address concepts of home and exile, living in the diaspora, memories, and simply witnessing their daily lives. By supplementing her study with visual materials such as photographs, movies, and drawings, she demonstrates her method of anthropological practice, which extends beyond ethnographical discourses. With reference to the Writing Culture debates generated by Clifford and Marcus, it becomes evident how her work challenges conventional ways of doing anthropology, as she is expanding her approach in terms of searching for traces through a variety of processes. In that sense, her exploratory practice of documenting, drawing, and collecting extends to an open-ended process of tracing and moving with the experience itself, implying numerous difficult modes of production between art and anthropology as early as the 1970s.

Turkish Immigrants, 1977 Likewise, Yalter conducted research on many immigrant communities, such as Turkish immigrant workers and their families living in Paris. She assem6

Jennifer Allen, “Nil Yalter - Galerie Hubert Winter,” Frieze, Autumn 2011, Issue 2 edition.

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Figure 9: Nil Yalter, Temporary Dwellings (1974), 12 collages with polaroids, objects, and drawings on temporary dwellings of immigrants in Paris, New York, and Istanbul*

*Temporary Dwellings - Courtesy of the Artist

bled all the materials she collected during the research, including videos, photographs, and drawings, in her installation, Turkish Immigrants (1977) (Figure 10). Turkish Immigrants involved video and photographic recordings of women, men and children’s everyday lives, the difficulties they experience, their stresses and needs, all presented through Yalter’s detailed drawings that has been shown in the exhibition.7 These photos include scenes from everyday life but separated by “masculine” or “feminine” places in-house, such as showing the kitchen and living room as contrasting spaces. Yücel also adds in this context of representation in the photos: “The only missing detail in these drawings of immigrants is the faces. Instead of either an authentic representation or a marginalization of immigrants from Turkey, the distance brought

7

Yucel, “Nil Yalter,” 40.

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on by the artist’s interpretation was preserved.”8 This aspect highlights Yalter’s ideas on the ethics of visual research, particularly when it comes to identifying people in photos while working as an artist utilizing ethnographic methodologies. By taking this stance, she avoids aestheticizing and romanticizing the research subjects of her work.

Figure 10: Nil Yalter, Turkish Immigrants (1977), installation consisting of photographs and drawings on Turkish immigrant workers and their families in Paris*

*“Turkish Immigrants - Courtesy of the Artist

In addition to these, in an interview with Derya Yücel, Yalter mentions that the immigrants she visited and worked with came to the opening of the exhibition in Paris by showing their worker’s IDs at the entrance of the museum.9 Her intention in inviting the workers to the exhibition coincides with her ethical decision of not drawing their faces in her works. With these decisions, she reflects her perspective on the role of observer and the relation between observers and observed, a relationship that can easily become unequal during the research process. Regarding this, she avoids creating ‘other’ through the romanticization of the lives of these communities and by detaching from the possible unequal relationships.10

8 9 10

Yucel, 40. Nil Yalter, Interview conducted by Derya Yucel, November 2012, Paris. Yalter.

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Ris-Orangis, 1979 In a similar manner with her previous works, Yalter conducted research with Portuguese immigrant workers living in the suburbs of Paris in 1979. For this work, Ris-Orangis (1979) she conducted video interviews with the Portuguese immigrant community, who spoke about their difficulties living in exile and problems with their integration process in France. (Figure 11) Nil Yalter builds, through this work, a real memory work on the issue of immigration. In order to realize this, she works with sociologists, associations, and municipalities. In one of her interviews, she expresses that, “We cannot go to people like this and tell them: Tell us your life.”11 Considering this statement, Yalter’s perspective on the domains of art and social sciences creates an approach where she seeks or collaborates with other social scientists. She applies ethnographic methods to better comprehend the relationship of these works with their home.

Figure 11: Nil Yalter, Snapshot from Ris-Orangis (1979), black and white video (24’)*

*Ris-Orangis - Courtesy of the Artist

11

“Nil Yalter / Ris-Orangis,” accessed January 28, 2018, http://www.newmedia-art.org/cgi -bin/show-oeu.asp?ID=150000000763672&lg=FRA.

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Rahime, Kurdish Woman from Turkey, 1979 The stories of immigrant women are a recurrent theme in Yalter’s works. Her installation Rahime, Kurdish Woman from Turkey (1979) (Figure 12) is comprised of videos, photographs, texts (pages from Quran), fabrics and drawings. For the videos of this work, she works together with Nicole Croiset, a media artist from France. Identity, womanhood, and migration constitute the main subjects of Yalter’s work, assembled in the story of Rahime and consequently in Yalter’s installation. The video begins with views from the streets showing the poor neighborhood. This continues with the position of girls in the school in conjunction with the patriarchal culture and forced marriages. Then the story of Rahime begins, who married at thirteen and had a child at fourteen. She shares her experience of how she raised her daughter while working as a cleaner in Istanbul after emigrating from her village. Furthermore, she also shares the story of her daughter’s death who is murdered by a man, because she did not want to marry this man. In accordance with this femicide, Turkey’s issues of violence against women and such “honor” killings are deeply established and prevalent. Yalter considers this tragedy as a “gecekondu12 tragedy” in one of her interviews.13 Additionally, she recalls Rahime’s life in the following years, mentioning that she began working as an aide in a hospital, where she learned how to give an injection and how to care for patients. Yalter evaluates the reason behind her employment in the hospital as “she wants to learn what death is. How can someone die? How can her daughter die, she wants to learn this.”14 In her exploration of this tragic story of Rahime, Yalter explores it from several points of view, as well as taking an insightful and profound look into the conditions behind these life stories. The installation includes a series of drawings and a 55-minute video that is made in collaboration with Nicole Croiset, photographs, and drawings, which also deploy subtle shades of mauve, yellow, and jade to color in doors, pillows, bed covers, and sundry bits of apparel. Again, Yalter employs black-and-white photographs in her illustrations, but does not include portraits of the people in the photos. Outstandingly, a dense cluster of cloth strips, dyed a rusty red, protrudes from the middle of a framed photographic assemblage. Assorted 12 13 14

‘Shanty town tragedy’ “Eda Berkmen’in Nil Yalter ile söyleşisi// Eda Erkmen’s interview with Nil Yalter.” “Eda Berkmen’in Nil Yalter ile söyleşisi// Eda Erkmen’s interview with Nil Yalter.”

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Figure 12: Nil Yalter, Rahime, a Kurdish woman from Turkey (1979), mixed media installation, Video 55’, photographs and drawings on the story of Rahime*

*Rahime, Kurdish Woman from Turkey. Courtesy of the Artist

with tightly wound thread, these “bloody rags” refers to the honor killing of Rahime’s daughter, narrated in the video.15 This installation is attentively designed, with details that can be associated with the documentation and reflection of the story, as well as with the emotions that this experience evokes through the choice of materials. This work is also worth considering in terms of supplementing a research process and representation of experience with sensory experimentation that has many consequences on the cognition. A vast range of sensorial experience emerges at this juncture, not just in terms of visual representation, but also in terms of a physical manifestation of tactility in the form of red cloth strips, which can only be comprehended by looking at it from the perspective of the intersection of art and anthropology. In addition, the fact that all of the fabric strips are grouped together with all of the other materials used in the installation demonstrates Yalter’s interest in various traditions and rituals.

15

Agnieszka Gratza, “Nil Yalter - Mot International, London: February 6 - March 28, 2015,” Art Agenda, March 2015, http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/nil-yalter/.

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1.1

Yalter’s Artistic Practices Between Ethics and Aesthetics

In one of her interviews, Nil Yalter discusses “shamanism” as a component in her works. It is possible to see the presence of this subject in her installation, Nomad’s Tent: A Study of Private, Public, and Feminine Spaces (1973). She states that her “approach on shamanism is totally scientific.”, and she adds that she focused on shamanism from an “ethnological perspective”.16 With these words, she shows her interest in the religious context that ethnographers have long addressed, with the same approach as in the field of anthropology of religion. Evidently, she does not consider herself to be or to be associated with shamanism or the belief around shamanism, and as a result, she addresses this subject matter with a level – possibly at the form of social scientific interest. Yalter’s display strategies include the ways in which she incorporates various media into installations that are constituted of notable artistic interventions as well as significant compositions. The fabrics that she collects, her drawings related with the photographs, texts, and in general, all the found objects correspond to the facts of the situations, taking account of sensory modes that these have been incorporated into the installation, reflect the fragility in her work. She displays her research, which she has used to create an inspirational narrative of her experiences. Rahime, Kurdish Woman from Turkey is a powerful example for this case of sensory representation. This intervention in standard documentary methods was indeed a way earlier attempt to create an imaginary sensory experience for the viewer through the use various media. The methods she develops to display the traces and documentation are not only influential in terms of exhibition strategies, but they also have significant ramifications for the engagement of art and anthropology. In this frame of references, Yalter’s works bear resemblance to the works of anthropologist Michael Taussig’s book I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own where he brings together his field notes with his drawings and collages by experimenting with the visual forms and literary forms in an ethnographic work.17 However, given the sensory environment created by these works, it is clear that this is not the only reference to analyze these works. 16 17

“Eda Berkmen’in Nil Yalter ile söyleşisi// Eda Erkmen’s interview with Nil Yalter.” For further reading: Michael Taussig, I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

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In terms of her interest on the social scientific research processes, Yalter expresses her artistic interests in social issues in one of her interviews: I am an outsider to the art world. Using media from within, working on cultural topographies. Working on aging artist´s body within a culturally corrupted society. The artist´s body is a vector for social issues: digitalized, virtual forms, words, hypertext. Lonesome interactivity. I am a woman shaman on the razor´s edge. The surface of my skin is where I write my message. Like a snake, I leave the trails of my skin on my passage.18 With this interview, Yalter draws attention to the male-dominated framework that has shaped art history. In opposition to the dominant male gaze, which is characterized by the presentation of women in artworks as objects of fantasy, she aspires to build a new language that is derived from the body itself. Indeed, from the very beginning of Yalter’s artistic productions, it is clear to discern how her inspiration is related to the ways in which anthropology and art function together. However, her inspiration is not limited to these, as Yücel mentions that she is also “inspired by sociology, poetry, and philosophy; and by conveying these disciplines to a personal context, formed her unique and complex area of artistic activity.”19 Following the artistic methods described herein, Yalter continued to investigate sociocultural issues through an interdisciplinary approach to visual media in the following years. She has recently maintained an exhibition agenda that includes installations, video sculptures, and interdisciplinary works that can be considered cases of ‘new media art’, in which the sensory experience is still present. Technological innovations are included into her most recent works, which range from painting to interactive works and computer mediations, among other media. She has, on the other hand, maintained her interest in subjects of social and cultural topics. Due to the general scope and depth of her artistic production, she has had numerous unique implications on the ethnographic research processes that she has been implementing since the beginning of her artistic career.

18

19

Rosemarie Martha Huhn, “Ethnic, Ethic and Aesthetic Crossways in the Work of Nil Yalter,” in Contemporary Artists, 5th Edition, vol. 2nd Volume (Michigan: St. James Press, 2001), 1857. Yucel, “Nil Yalter,” 62.

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2.

Unveiling Hybrid Identities: Gülsün Karamustafa

As another pioneering artist, Gülsün Karamustafa is one of the most influential artists in contemporary Turkish art. Gülsün Karamustafa (b. 1946) is an artist from Istanbul and has come to be regarded as “one of the most important artists of the second half of the 20th century in Turkey, where her work has been a decisive influence on younger generations of Turkish artists since the 1990s.”20 She studied painting in Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts in the second half of 1960s, and witnessed the transformations in Turkish art throughout her ongoing artistic career. After her graduation she stayed in London for one year, “where Vietnam War, feminism is heatedly discussed” and upon her return, she found herself “in the midst of the political turmoil in Turkey.”21 In the same year, she joined the teaching staff of the State School of Applied Fine Arts and opened her first solo exhibition in 1978. About this exhibition she indicates that: It’s a painting exhibition, but the works I exhibit are not peinture. My subject matter includes cultural overlappings, juxtapositions and changes that enter my field of observation, topics I focus on during that period and would continue to work on in different dimensions and narrative techniques in the future.22 According to her own statements, the emergence of cultural observation as a concept in her works dates all the way back to the late 1970s. During the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Karamustafa became immersed in the Western art circles for the first time. The third and fourth Istanbul Biennials (in 1992 and 1995, respectively) positioned Turkey, and notably Istanbul, as a center of contemporary art production, in which Gülsün Karamustafa played a crucial role among other artists such as Hüseyin Alptekin, Hale Tenger, and Füsun Onur.23 Karamustafa’s mobility, which she used to travel extensively for exhibitions after acquiring her passport in 1986. Her 20

21 22 23

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, “Gülsün Karamustafa. Chronographia,” accessed January 17, 2018, http://www.smb.museum/en/exhibitions/detail/guelsuen-karamustafa-chron ographia.html. Şengel, Elveren, and Karamustafa, A Fallen Icon: A Rhetorical Approach to Gulsun Karamustafa’s Art 1981-1992, 80. Şengel, Elveren, and Karamustafa, 80. Meltem Ahiska, “The Imperial Complex and Gleaning the Wonders of Modernity,” in Gülsün Karamustafa: Chronographia - Exhibition Catalogue – Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum

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consideration of themes of sociopolitical issues in her works coincides with this period. In a series of installations, such as Presentation of an Early Representation (1996) and Fragmenting Fragments (1997), Karamustafa addressed the ideologies and representations of the Orient-Occident (1999). The artist’s complicated admiration and criticism of orientalist imagery were represented in the works.24 The artist’s works were exhibited in numerous art galleries and museums throughout the world over the following years, and he grew to considerable prominence on the international art arena as a result. Most notably, in 2016, the extensive retrospective of her works at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart in Berlin gained a remarkable attention. Karamustafa came to prominence as a result of her studies on Turkish history, politics, modernism, identity, gender, integration. The majority of her works are based on her observations of daily life, cultural change in Turkey, and the city in which she currently resides, notably local life in Istanbul. Additionally, Karamustafa is concerned in problems such as life in exile and migration concerns more widely, and hence the concept of “home” or “Heimat” is a recurring motif in her works. According to Ahıska, “(…) instead of attempting to restore the past and the lost home as a way of fighting against displacement, she gleans the wonders of modernity as displacement, so as to give these a new life in the future.”25 While using characteristics, she not only draws attention to the experiences of migrants through her artworks, but she also addresses the concept of displacement. When we look back at her work before to the 1980s, we can see that she mostly concentrated on painting while also experimenting with other artistic mediums. It is crucial to recall that, until the 1980s, artistic forms other than painting and sculpture were not widely practiced in Turkey, owing to the influence of art education at the Faculty of Fine Arts on the majority of artists. During this time period, artistic production did not mostly follow the same trends as contemporary art practices. Karamustafa, on the other hand, began her creative career by experimenting with a variety of mediums that are widespread in contemporary practices, and in the following years, she became

24 25

Für Gegenwart – 10.06.-23.10.2016 – Berlin, 1st ed. (Berlin: Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2016), 46. “A Promised Exhibition | SALT,” accessed April 17, 2018, http://saltonline.org/en/616/va dedilmis-bir-sergi?q=promised. Ahiska, “The Imperial Complex and Gleaning the Wonders of Modernity,” 46.

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increasingly interested in installation art. Consequently, she distances herself from the current trends in Turkish art, and her artistic practice has evolved to include research-oriented works or projects that are concerned with sociocultural themes. Both Kültür: A Gender Project from Istanbul (1996) and Unawarded Performances (2005), two of her earlier pieces, might be presented in this context.

Kültür: A Gender Project from Istanbul, 1996 One of Karamustafa’s first collaborative works was with Swiss video and film artist Ursula Biemann26 , titled Kültür: A Gender Project from Istanbul (1996). Kültür was a research and exhibition project in which eight Istanbul-based women participated. Feminism, identity, and migration were the primary areas of focus throughout the project. Participants in the project came from a variety of backgrounds, including artists, textile suppliers, sociologists, and film directors, among others: Ayşe Durakbasa, Ayla Yüce, Meral Özbek, Yasemin Baydar, Şeyma Reisoglu, Meltem Ahıska, Gülsün Karamustafa, Tül Akbal und Nihan Turan. Karamustafa contributed to this project with her work of mixed media installation, titled A Playground in the Net of Gendered Relations (1996), which was displayed at the Kültür–Shedhalle in Zurich. Karamustafa created a video work that was composed of television footage of well-known transsexuals and transvestites from Turkey. It consisted of episodes from popular Turkish entertainment and talk shows from the 1990s, which were presented by transvestite actor Seyfi Dursunoglu (whose stage name is Huysuz Virjin) or transgender actress Bülent Ersoy and were displayed on two monitors. (Figure 13) Both characters suffered long-running censorship battles with the government over their “abnormal” gender bending, but they managed to become well-known figures in the entertainment industry in the end. In this piece, there were some posters and articles describing their struggle for freedom of speech, as well as newspaper clippings concerning transgender murders, to demonstrate the hypocrisy of their position.

26

Ursula Biemann is a video-artist, curator, and art theorist. Her works addresses mostly the topics related with migration, mobility, gender, and globalization. She produces her works in a documentary-like style by engaging with the socio-political issues. Notably, she collaborates with anthropologists as a part of some of her works.

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Figure 13: A Playground in the Net of Gendered Relations (1996), mixed media and video installation. Kültür–Shedhalle, Zurich*

*‘Gülsün Karamustafa: A Vagabond, From Personal To Social, From Local To Global’, http://blog.saltonline.org/post/101409726454/gülsün-karamustafa-a-vagabond-frompersonal-to (accessed 11 February 2018).

In this piece, she tackled identity issues directly by focusing on marginalized groups, which in this case included transgender persons. It was one of her first pieces to do so. Nonetheless, she approached this marginalized group from a different angle, revealing the public’s interest with these well-known transvestite figures while contrasting this enthusiasm with the violence and discrimination they face in their everyday lives. However, while these figures have gained widespread attention as a result of television programs, these shows have failed to portray the realities of transgender people, who have been subjected to disproportionately high rates of violence, bullying, abuse, and discrimination in the past. In conjunction with this situation, Karamustafa explains, “in an environment where transvestites and transsexuals struggled for their life under brutal conditions and had to organize to defend their rights, the popular interest of both men and women in these shows revealed the social hypocrisy towards

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transvestites and transsexuals.”27 Karamustafa uses the framework of work to highlight insincerity and hypocrisy that frequently surface in everyday life, as well as established societal norms. Within the scope of cultural analysis and artistic production, Kültür: A Gender Project from Istanbul put a large focus on analyzing and contributing to urban spaces, as well as the relationship between the city’s center and its periphery, and the position of women in these structures, particularly those in the garment industry. Kültür was produced in collaboration with the participants, and initially shown at the Shedhalle in Zurich. This was followed by the production of the final report, and a book project, which presented the context and outcomes of the research. Karamustafa summarizes the project's progress as follows: Ursula Biemann came with a project, and I was the first one in contact with her within this process. The objective was forming a community mapping, between Istanbul-Zurich and she asked me, how to do it. (…) There were two groups working. One of the groups has started their work with woman textile workers in Istanbul. (…) This project was the first one that focuses on the social issues between Zurich and Istanbul. The work we have done was a pioneering work. In the following years, the project continued with the workshops in Zurich and the Turkish woman migrant workers living in Zurich attended these workshops.28 Subsequently, this work was exhibited at the 1997 Istanbul Biennial. The project at the biennial was aligned to the focus of the biennial’s aim of centered on migration, urban politics, and Istanbul’s aim to become a global city.29

Unawarded Performances, 2005 During the following years, the number of her works that featured research into a specific community rose. During her residency at the Kölnische Kunstverein in 2005, she created a video for the Projekt Migration, which was cu-

27

28 29

Gülsün Karamustafa, ‘“Cinsiyetlendirilmis¸ İlişkiler Ağında Bir Oyun Alanı” (Ein Spielplatz Fur Geschlechterbeziehungen)’, in Kultur: Ein Gender-Projekt Aus Istanbul (Zurich: Shedhalle Zurich Verlag, 1997), p. 78. ‘Personal Communication with Gülsün Karamustafa’. Ahiska, p. 46.

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rated by Katrin Rhomberg and Marion von Osten. The fundamental concern of Projekt Migration was the current situation of immigration patterns in Germany, as well as the discussions that surround them. The following are the words used by Haq to summarize the overall conception of this project: The “Projekt Migration” curators handled their subject with intelligence and directness, resisting the temptations of ethnophilia. The exhibition’s synthesis of socio-scientific research, documentary projects and artworks were mostly successful, if occasionally dry. Still, “Projekt Migration” offered a much-needed injection of faith into the potential of contemporary art to find strategies for engaging with current socio-historical problems associated with the various waves of migration into Europe. 30 Through this approach, the project on its own contributed to the debates on the potential of contemporary art through its connection with the socio-cultural issues; in this case particularly with a focus about migration. Karamustafa contributed to this project with her film, Unawarded Performances (2005) (Figure 14) consisted of her interviews with the Gagauz women migrants and talking with them about their stories and problems that they experience. These Turkic people who are Eastern Orthodox Christians came mostly from Moldova. However, due to forced migration they began to live mostly in the Ukrainian regions of Odessa and Zaporizhia, also in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Brazil, Turkmenistan, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Georgia, Turkey, and the Russian region of KabardinoBalkaria. As a result of this migration, Gagouz population in Turkey, particularly the women of this community, has become entangled in illegal occupations since the early 1990s. These women have begun working illegally in domestic labor, primarily as housemaids or caregivers, in order to supplement their income. The highlights of these interviews with these women are captured in a 24minute documentary. The film by Karamustafa is divided into three sections. The first section contains interviews with these women in which they discuss their journey to Turkey and the reasons for which they decided to leave their home nations to work in the country of Turkey. The second section of the film looks into the mafia that is behind this illegal labor, and the third and final section shows how they deal with the police and the authorities.

30

Nav Haq, “Projekt Migration,” Bidoun, Issue: 7, Tourism, Spring 2006.

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Figure 14: Gülsün Karamustafa, Unawarded Performances (2005), video stills*

*Melanie Roumiguière, Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu and Gülsün Karamustafa, eds., Gülsün Karamustafa: Chronographia / Für Die Nationalgalerie - Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin (Exhibition Catalogue) (Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2016), p. 155, Vienna.

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While the women are sharing their stories in this movie, the objects in the apartment where they are living are also demonstrated in order to present the living atmosphere. (Figure 15) Through this, it conveys the experience of migration and inequality in their lives in a subtle way while also displaying the contrast between their sense of belonging and living conditions through an aesthetic representation. Karamustafa’s views and feelings concerning the creation of this work are expressed in the following words: It was an intense and very emotional time for me to meet these women and listen to their stories. They were open in expressing their feelings, as they were together with a group of women interested in their fate. (…) The film became not only a piece of research or a documentary about Moldovian Gagouz women working in Istanbul households, but also made reference to a more sincere aspect, which can only be rendered with artistic sensitivity.31 When this explanation is taken into consideration, it is possible to notice that Karamustafa’s claim of becoming a part of this practice through her artistic sensitivity also refers to her position as an artist and as a mediator between research practices that appeal to social science and artistic practices.

2.1

Ways of Social Interaction in Karamustafa’s Works

Similar to Unawarded Performances (2005), another of her works, Making of The Wall (2003), depicts three imprisoned women speaking about their experiences with torture and hunger strikes while in prison. In reality, these three women were political detainees, jailed as left-wing activists during the 1971 military coup. This work not only demonstrates the development of her art’s predisposition toward the representation of women issues through their voices being heard, but also contains some references to her life period in prison for political reasons after the military coup of 1971 and to her Prison Paintings between 1972-197832 . 31

32

Gülsün Karamustafa, ‘Unawarded Performances’, in New Mobilities Regimes in Art and Social Sciences, by Susanne Witzgall and Gerlinde Vogl (London, New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 149–55 (p. 155). Karamustafa was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison following the military coup of1971, having been a member of the 1968 generation and a politically active student during her university years in Istanbul. She was a member of the 1968 generation as well as a politically active student during her university years. The Prison Paintings were created from memory by the artist after she was freed from an

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Figure 15: Gülsün Karamustafa, Unawarded Performances (2005), video stills*

*Susanne Witzgall and Gerlinde Vogl, New Mobilities Regimes in Art and Social Sciences (Routledge, 2016), p. 160.

For her single-channel video, Unawarded Performances (2005), Karamustafa mentions, “one had to be very careful not to make any mistakes and exploit the very delicate relationships involved. I, therefore, had to be extremely mindful about where I was positioning myself as an artist.”33 Because of her hesitation, she chose to consult a sociologist, who, according to her, “are definitely more experienced than artists conducting research on such a subject. Thus, the project became an artist/sociologist collaboration in which we tried to establish all our contacts with the utmost care, creating mutual trust between the interviewer and the interviewee.”34 Consequently, Karamustafa is aware that working with a camera and conducting interviews to depict a particular community’s life entails a variety of challenges; as such, she strives to work with sensitivity and discretion. Her collaboration with a social scientist might

33 34

institution that was designed specifically for female prisoners who were serving life sentences at the time. Gülsün Karamustafa, ‘Unawarded Performances’, p. 151. Gülsün Karamustafa, ‘Unawarded Performances’, p. 153.

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be viewed as an attempt to address not only this representational issue, but also as a technique for minimizing harm in the process. On the other hand, one cannot ignore the impact on Europe of museums and galleries that organize projects and exhibitions about international migration for the proliferation of the artists focusing on these sociocultural issues. Nonetheless, Karamustafa’s approach to cultural issues and her works addressing marginalized people can be regarded as pioneering instances of Turkish art with a sociocultural orientation and signifies novel approaches to this area. According to this interpretation, Kültür: A Gender Project (1997) contributes significantly to comprehending the future trajectory of cultural issues in Turkish contemporary art. It is possible to see the installation that she has created for this project as a crucial example of her leaning toward sociocultural issues during the 1990s. In the following years, she returned to the subject of transgender persons with one of her works titled Unconsolidated Visions (1998), in which she presented photographs of transvestites and transsexuals taken in Istanbul and Valencia. With a reference “to the tradition of painting the underside of Spanish balconies, she installed these photographs on the undersides of balconies of a Roman theatre in Sagunto.”, and in the context of presenting photos in this location, she mentions “that balconies are “inter-locations”; they are neither inside nor outside, like transvestites.”35 When reconsidering Karamustafa’s oeuvre, one of the concerns that arose was when and why she decided to depict sociopolitical realities in her works. The fact that she had lived through the results of intense social transformation in Turkey made it evident that she was always concerned about politics and had so many political references. In her own words, Karamustafa examines the development behind this tendency towards cultural issues in art: Urbanization, migration, gender issues… These subjects are the ones that gained wide currency in the 1990s. This related to the changes in the world in the last 10 years of the century. The collapse of socialist regime between East Europe and West Europe and in Russia, the rise of African art and Chinese art, and changing paradigms (…) In this context the interests of art have changed. At this point while artists telling their own aspects, at least there emerged artists talking on their behalf. The change of the regime was painful.36 (…) 35 36

‘Gülsün Karamustafa’. In this context, she also refers to the migration from the countries with the collapsed economy to other countries, shuttle trade, the war in Middle East, breakup of Yugoslavia and Balkan wars.

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In this atmosphere, the artists were producing. For the first time, the artists had the chance to express themselves in Turkey. Thus, they began to refer themselves, their identity in their works, because until that day there was a kind of repression regime. At that point, they felt the need to represent themselves. Likewise, it is connected with the artists’ production in the era of suppression in Balkan countries. These all formed a basis for anthropological works with the artists telling their own stories.37 Karamustafa’s artwork has been extensively distributed, in terms of both media and theme. Her works has been shaped by current issues, with which she includes references to her own biography, which has resulted in her works having a tendency to fluctuate. But she is also using these phrases to not only demonstrate the change in her own interests, but also describe the general environment at the time contemporary art was beginning to take root in Turkey. These socioeconomic upheavals gave rise to a generation of artists, who then defined their work in accordance. She also acknowledges that works dealing with social issues can be read within the context of anthropological approaches, and she believes that the works indicated above are appropriate within this framework. It is substantiality or richness, she believes, that distinguishes the many approaches to the interpretation of her work.38 Nonetheless, her works Kültür: A Gender Project from Istanbul and Unawarded Performances, as well as her works from the 1990s and early 2000s, provide essential perspectives and insights into the examination of an anthropological change in Turkish art practices.

3.

Social Engagement Strategies: Esra Ersen

Esra Ersen is an Ankara-born artist who now lives in Berlin while continuing to pursue her career. Between 1988 until 1995, she studied at Marmara University’s Fine Arts Faculty in Istanbul, where she received her undergraduate and graduate degrees. In 1999 and 2000, she studied at the Ecole des BeauxArts de Nantes in France, where she received her post-Diplome. Various art scholarships and residencies have repeatedly brought her to Europe, especially to Sweden and Germany. Ersen participated in numerous exhibitions,

37 38

‘Personal Communication with Gülsün Karamustafa’. ‘Personal Communication with Gülsün Karamustafa’.

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such as in Karlsruhe, Casino Luxembourg, Rooseum Malmö, and Gallery for Contemporary Art Leipzig, Manifesta Frankfurt and the Istanbul Biennial. Her exhibitions include solo shows at SALT Ulus in Ankara and the Frankfurter Kunstverein in Frankfurt, as well as the 4th Liverpool Biennial (2006) and the 27th São Paulo Biennial (2006).39 As a result of his travels, Ersen has lived and worked in several different countries including Sweden, Austria, the United Kingdom, and Germany. She has endeavored to identify and address a specific social problem in each of the locations where she has worked thus far.40 One of her first socially engaged art projects, I am Turkish, I am Diligent, I am Honest (1998) (Figure 16) was held in a school, Realschule Velen, near Münster in Germany. Ersen notices that there is nothing in the school to remind the students of government control, such as flags, ideological photos, maps, the military system, which contrasts starkly education system in Turkey. Hence, she devotes her project to exposing this disparity between the two countries. It is standard in Turkey for students to dress in formal attire when attending school, and they are required to do so at all times in black uniforms with white collars. From this perspective, Ersen requested these students from the Münster area to dress in this traditional school uniform for one week and to record their thoughts and feelings in a journal. At the conclusion of the project, she collected the letters from the students expressing their feelings and transferred the notes onto the school uniforms. The exhibition consisted of these uniforms with notes, which were displayed behind a clear glass panel. Due to the fact that this project was a learning process between two parties—in this case, the artist, and students—this piece exemplifies the challenging approach she takes. Ersen recognizes that she does not know what she will achieve at the end of a project for the most part; in other words, she employs a process-based approach to her work. For instance, she states that beforehand she “could not imagine a student becoming happy or honored because of wearing the black

39

40

‘Esra Ersen - Arbeiten / Works 1998 - 2005 | OÖ Kulturquartier’, http://www.ooekult urquartier.at/en/press/esra-ersen-arbeiten-works-1998-2005/. (Accessed 10 September 2017). Amanda Coulson, “Esra Ersen, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt Am Main, Germany,” accessed September 10, 2017, https://frieze.com/article/esra-ersen.

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Figure 16: Esra Ersen, Installation View from I am Turkish, I am Diligent, I am Honest (1998), mixed media, Realschule Velen, Münster, Germany*

*Erden Kosova, Esra Ersen: Yüz Yüze - Face to Face, trans. by Mine Haydaroglu, Türkiye’de Güncel Sanat, 1st edn (Istanbul: Yapi Kredi Yayinlari, 2011), p. 51.

uniform.”41 In this sense, she conceptualizes production as a collaborative process in which both parties contribute to the creation of the work’s content. 41

Personal Communication with Esra Ersen, Sound Recording, January 11, 2017.

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Following this model, Ersen conducted numerous socially engaged art projects. Hello, where is it? 2000, If you could speak Swedish., 2001, I am Penalty Area, 2001, Casting for a Canary Opera (2011), A Possible History: When Thinking Some Play with the Moustache, Others Cross Arms (2013) are some examples closely associated with the participatory practices that she adopts in many of her works. Recently, for the 14th Istanbul Biennial, she presented a video installation in which she expands her former project, A Possible History I: When Thinking Some Play with the Mustache, Others Cross Arms (2013), with a new chapter, A Possible History II: Turkish Heroes, Chinese Knick-knacks (Figure 21). This video installation incorporated a number of artistic interventions to the research material, such as contouring the figures in the photographs that were included in the work. As stated in the description, this work is concerned with the building of national identity: “While the former considers the history of Bulgaria and its strategies to build a national identity after gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire, the latter investigates the ideas at the origins of national identity building in Turkey.”42 When one examines her body of work, it becomes evident that the influence of power structures on the formation of identities is a recurring issue in her work. We see her in the role of researcher in another project, this time dealing with themes pertaining to Turkish history, in this work as well. As a result, this demonstrates her artistic approach, which is founded on concepts and methodologies that are similar to those employed in social science research.

This is the Disney World, 2000 This video project, called This is the Disney World (2000), focuses on Istanbul’s urban life by presenting groups of street children and glue-sniffers living on the street. Several variations with different constructions of this artwork have been shown in various venues, such as at Bard College in New York. (Figure 17) In an interview with Ersen, she explains the construction as it “is composed of individual chapters broken down into universal headings like love, future, and expectations.”43 The video contextually separated by the artist according to the association of ideas in these sections. 42 43

“14. İstanbul Bienali / 14th Istanbul Biennial.” ‘Fatos Ustek / Interview with Esra Ersen’, http://www.fatosustek.com/interview-with-es ra-ersen-eng-it#more-265, (accessed 10 September 2017).

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Ersen developed an interest in the lives of outcasts that have been marginalized by the society throughout this time frame, and as a result, she began searching for these children. This group of children has re-mapped the town center in an unusual manner, which Ersen seeks to follow. They have fled impoverished homes and have been exploited by criminal gangs. They have been rejected by the mainstream media and the majority of the populace due to their involvement in criminal activities.44 First and foremost, before to the shooting, she made contact with a former glue-sniffer who was mainly concerned in rehabilitating these children and reintegrating them into society. She was able to learn more about their lives due to the assistance of this individual. Ersen’s goal in this video is to uncover the hidden aspect of their lives through conversations with people who have committed crimes or used drugs. (Figure 18) She goes on to clarify, “she has spent lots of time on the streets with the glue-sniffers and was really affected by their lives.”, and she adds that, she found it “really difficult to establish a close relation with them but at last she felt like she became a part of their group.”45 She uses the following terms and practices to illustrate her approach, which tends to observe the subject of the research while actively participating and positioning as an observer in an active role. This researcher role corresponds to the participant observation method in anthropological practice. The participant observation approach developed by Ersen, as well as its advantages and disadvantages, can be called into valid question as a result of this connection. For example, Shah considers participant observation to be a revolutionary method in anthropology, but he also acknowledges that this method “requires us to dive deep into the sea of other people’s lives and find a way to swim with them. It requires commitment, endurance, constant improvisation, humility, sociality, and the ability to give oneself up to and for others.”46 As an artist working with various media, it is critical to consider her position and perspective not only as a participant observer, but also as a filmmaker in this work. It also becomes crucial to reexamine Ersen’s work from this perspective, particularly in terms of the ways of involvement of the

44 45 46

“Kunsthausbaselland – Esra Ersen – Elsewhere,” accessed September 10, 2017, http://k unsthausbaselland.ch/events/esra-ersen-elsewhere/. Personal Communication with Esra Ersen. Alpa Shah, ‘Ethnography? Participant Observation, a Potentially Revolutionary Praxis’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7 (2017), pp. 45–49 (p. 53).

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Figure 17: Esra Ersen, Installation view from “Brothers and Sisters” (2008), Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, Anandale-onHudson, NY*

*Kosova, Esra Ersen: Yüz Yüze - Face to Face, 80.

process of filmmaking. As an artist who uses anthropological methodologies in conjunction with a filmmaking process, a number of questions can be examined about her practice in light of its engagement with anthropological filmmaking and her research methodologies.

Brothers and Sisters, 2003 Brothers and Sisters (2003) is a video by Ersen that documents the lives of immigrant Africans living in Istanbul by relating the subject of illegal immigration to the lives of these Africans. Throughout the following years, this documentary was featured in a number of exhibitions held in various locations around the world. All of these exhibitions have alternative settings for displaying the work, such as the “Exciting Europe” exhibition that was held in Leipzig, which

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Figure 18: Esra Ersen, This is the Disney World (2000), video stills, 9’15”*

*Kosova, Esra Ersen: Yüz Yüze - Face to Face, 81.

featured two chairs to display the work in. (Figure 25) Ersen contributed to the exhibition “Hier, Platform, Istanbul” (2003) with her video Brothers and Sisters. In addition to Ersen, Gülsün Karamustafa took part in this exhibition with her video Stairway, 2001 and Huseyin Alptekin with his work L’hospitalité inconditionelle (1999-2003).47 To produce her documentary, Ersen chose some themes that are associated with illegal immigration, specifically from Africa to Europe with the hope

47

V. Kortun and E. Kosova, Szene Türkei: Abseits, Aber Tor! (König, 2004), p. 143.

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of improved living conditions. After six months of field research, she begins filming for the film she is producing. Concerning this procedure Ersen explains that she first conducts research on her own by making readings about the subject and gather materials about the community.48 She then contacts other researchers who are engaged in the same topic, and the project takes shape, albeit the outline may vary as a result of the interaction with others. She is also investigating how the residents of the community perceive the environment in which they live. At various points in the documentation process, questions drive the participants in different directions, but most are openended, allowing them to elaborate on their lives and experiences in depth.

Figure 19: Esra Ersen, Installation view from Brothers and Sisters (2003), from “Exciting Europe” Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig*

*Kosova, Esra Ersen: Yüz Yüze - Face to Face, 88.

In spite of this, Ersen found the process of creating “Brothers and Sisters” to be a challenging one, as it took some time for her to be accepted as a member of their community. As illegal immigrants in Turkey, the possibility of Ersen coming into contact with the police was frightening to them. In 48

Personal Communication with Esra Ersen.

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her own words, Ersen tells how, over time, she earns their trust by explaining what she is doing and how they come to embrace her camera as a part of her.49 Ersen wished to portray the everyday life and aspirations for the future of this group, which was isolated in the Istanbul suburbs. (Figure 20) Ersen, through her artistic agency, plays the role of a mediator, raising awareness about the situation of these people and initiating change in their circumstances. Her involvement in their community can be viewed as a component of her techniques, which are intended to portray the realities of their existence with the intention of bringing about social transformation. The film opens with a scene set at Istanbul’s Haydarpaşa Train Station. The video tells the story of a Ghanaian man who attempted to immigrate to Hamburg by ship, but whose smuggler abandoned him in Haydarpaşa instead. Later in the film, we are presented to a touching funeral scene, which follows the death of another Ghanaian guy. Normally, Nigerians and Ghanaians live in separate communities in Istanbul, but in this instance, they gather together to make rice on the seventh day after the funeral and dance together as a community. As a part of the film production process, Ersen interestingly meets with people of the community in a range of locations, however these settings have no distinct identity and are largely similar everywhere in the world, such as McDonald’s or shopping malls. These places can be everywhere or nowhere as in the paradigm of how Marc Augé explains non-places such as motor ways, hotel rooms, airports, shopping malls. According to Augé, the person in a non-place “becomes no more than what he does or experiences in the role of passengers, costumer or driver (…) he tastes for a while (…) the passive joys of identity-loss and the more active pleasure of role-playing.”50 With this nonplace description in mind, it is possible to think that, for the time being, the immigrants feel like they are anonymous, they do not feel like they are in Turkey— on the contrary, as Ersen mentions, they feel like they are anywhere in the world.51 The reasons behind choosing these places without a specific identity and character probably lies in maintaining the conversation without

49 50 51

Personal Communication with Esra Ersen. Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London: Verso Books, 1995), 103. Personal Communication with Esra Ersen.

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Figure 20: Esra Ersen’s, Brothers and Sisters (2003), video stills, 23’20’’*

*Kortun and Kosova, Ofsayt, Ama Gol!, 87.

any social references or the signifier of the components of the city and its cultural life.

Passengers, 2009 Passengers (2009) produced as a two-channel video for an exhibition in Tanas Gallery in Berlin. According to Ersen, she grounded her work on an article she read in a newspaper titled “They Have Never Seen the Sea”, about a group of people living in Istanbul who have not seen the Bosphorus as they live in

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an isolated area on the outskirts of Istanbul. As a part of this project, Ersen rents a bus and takes those people to a trip to Bosphorus, and one channel of the video shows them on the road, while other channel shows scenes from the places where they live. The video ends with a break-in-point with the Bosphorus and lastly shows the reaction of the passengers when they see the Bosphorus for the first time. According to Üstek, The video installation is not a mere documentation of a trip to Bosphorus and a district of Istanbul. The piece stems from a social condition positing to a larger scale of interrelated situation: the post-condition of 70’s emigrants – how they position themselves, how they live, and more importantly how they are asked to live, underlining the tension of the negotiation of place, but also the social space as well as mapping out the political strategies played upon.52 The story revolves around a group of people who live in Istanbul but have never seen the Bosphorus because they live in a faraway location on the outskirts of the city. As part of this project, Ersen rents a bus and transports the participants to the Bosphorus, with one channel of the film showing them on the route and the other channel showing scenes from their surroundings. The film concludes with a break-in point at the Bosphorus, and then depicts the passengers' reactions when they see the sea for the first time. This is where Üstek brings attention to the overall setting of the video installation, which is concerned with the socio-economic situation of these individuals who live on the outskirts of Istanbul. The migration and urbanization of rural migrants who live in this shantytown53 are the primary concerns and their adaptation to urban settings are the issues that Ersen wants to address with this piece. As a result, with the purpose of bringing the facts of this shantytown to light, she deals with the living situations of rural migrants in this location, or, as Üstek describes it, how they are expected to live in this

52 53

Fatoş Üstek, “On Passengers by Esra Ersen,” May 23, 2011, http://www.fatosustek.com/ wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Passengers.pdf. It is also possible translate shantytown as ‘Gecekondu’ area, as it’s called in Turkish. Gecekondu, as well as illegal construction and urbanization, has gone through several periods throughout its history. It is a type of housing supply that evolved as a result of limitations in legal housing construction for low-income groups that migrated from the rural to large urban centers in Turkey.

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shantytown. Ersen, on the other hand, constructs her narrative in an indirect manner.

Figure 21: Esra Ersen, Passengers (2009), stills from multi-channel video installation, I. channel: 28’10”, II. channel: 21’16”*

*Kosova, Esra Ersen: Yüz Yüze – Face to Face, 120.

During the course of the project’s development, Ersen collaborated with three other persons, one of whom served as the driver. However, these individuals only provided assistance to Ersen during the organizing process. She took on all management responsibilities and made contact with the community herself, believing that the conversation process necessitates sensitivity and consideration on both sides. As a result, only Ersen was a participant in this dialogic process. About this video, Üstek mentions that “the camera acts like a scientific observer, gazing at the children playing on the street or at the street seller’s walkthrough, or at large scale wall paintings on facades of buildings, taking the viewer (the audience) to a trip creating a commonality with passengers.”54 Here in this context, data collected from the camera is used to provide explanatory frameworks for events and actions that arise outside the flow of the cultural moment. The use of audio-visual approaches in research may

54

Fatoş Üstek, “On Passengers by Esra Ersen.”

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open up new avenues of thought for the portrayal of the lives of those who are underrepresented in society. As previously stated by Üstek, the “scientific-observation” that takes place in this video takes place on the second channel of the video installation, which also includes shots from the regions where they live, chronicling life in this shantytown. In the first channel, the close-up camera shots that reveal the filming of the passengers on the bus, rather than the wide-angle photos, are preferred by Ersen, on the other hand. (Figure 21) These sequences, which occur while the camera moves around those being shot, completely frame them, making the subject to become the primary focus of the audience’s interest. Ersen intended that by doing so, the audience would be more able to identify with the subject being discussed. As her primary goal was to document them, the purpose of her participation is to become involved in the target group or community by using her camera to capture them. Of this particular instance, she organizes all of the details in the production process of ”Passengers” including the stage setting, which in this case was a bus. She also conducts an investigation of the neighborhood in which this community resides with her camera. She documents their trip to the Bosphorus as well as their arrival at the seaside from this point forward. Consequently, Ersen as a documentary filmmaker maintains her position, and as a result, she preserves her position as the one who documents the subject from an anthropological perspective which can be questioned in the context of ethnographic authority in which these passengers have been observed and documented.

3.1

Ersen’s Anthropological Conceptualization of Identity

As a participant in the 14th Istanbul Biennial, Ersen was presented as an artist who employs a methodology of “micro-events borrowed from documentary filmmaking and anthropological investigation.”55 Her method entails paying close attention to the concept of identity as an anthropological category, with specific reference to her investigations on the subject of “Turkish identity”, a leitmotif in most of her works. She examines how identities are produced and their ideological construction in the context of a sense of belonging to a certain state or nation, taking her own background into consideration. The

55

“14. İstanbul Bienali / 14th Istanbul Biennial.”

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prejudices associated with being Turkish, as well as the subject of orientalism, are among the themes she focuses on in her work. Her aforementioned project I am Turkish, I am Diligent, I am Honest (1998) is an example of how she examines her background and how she dealt with the tough political climate and authoritarian environment in which comes from. The reflection of social issues as inspiration is a prominent aspect of Ersen’s works. To investigate social and political elements, Ersen uses many ways and mediums such as photography, installations, videos, and performances, and additionally she finds various ways to intervene socially. She engages with the issues of sociopolitical reality by addressing the “otherness”. She has created a large body of work that may be classified as “site-specific art” with the majority of her work taking place inside the institution. In her article, Kwon clarifies issues related to site-specific art: Concerned to integrate art more directly into the realm of the social, either in order to redress (in an activist sense) urgent social problems such as the ecological crisis, homelessness, AIDS, homophobia, racism, and sexism, or more generally in order to relativize art as one among many forms of cultural work, current manifestations of site specificity tend to treat aesthetic and art historical concerns as secondary issues.56 Taken together, this argument of Kwon, linked with Foster’s critique of the relationship that exists between politics of ’alterity’ and institutions, might result in the artist being positioned as “cultural actors” in these communities. In addition, this has been the central concept of the potential of art to transform societies, with Foster emphasizing the anthropological function of art. Characteristics of artistic practices that are intended to influence social change differ from those found in anthropological practices where the goal is to bring about social change. A long-running argument has raged within the field of anthropology on how to promote social change in anthropology and how this relates to the structure of power relations. In this context, anthropologists have taken a variety of positions. While some have emphasized the activist tendency in anthropologists, arguing that they should make a contribution to improving living conditions in some cases, others have argued that anthropology should retain its status as a critical discipline within its institutional context. Especially problematic in the case of art for social

56

Kwon, “One Place after Another: Notes on Site Specificity,” 91.

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change because artistic projects that appeal to “artistic sensitivity” for sociocultural awakening can result in unequal relationships between artists and these communities if the artists are not critically questioned on their concepts and attempts. Given that site-specific art is predominantly associated with anthropology, this unequal relationship may be appropriate for ethnographic research. The practice of reflexivity was one manifestation of these conflicts in anthropology, and it is vital to recall this methodology while considering the works aiming a social change in communities.  I selected to look at Ersen’s previous three video projects in order to better understand her approach to anthropologic approaches in art. These three projects have distinctive characteristics, but they are also related to one another in certain ways, particularly in terms of the methods of documentation. In each of these instances, Ersen becomes involved in close collaboration with the respective communities. In an interview, she states that she makes an effort to become interested in the issues she works on and to build relationships with the people concerned. She would not say that she becomes one of them, but as long as she creates a connection of trust with them, they begin to open up and the fact that they are on different sides of the camera begins to dissolve. According to Ersen, it takes a considerable period of time for trust to build, and sometimes this trust does not develop. However, if this occurs, a natural period of sharing arises without the presence of opposing viewpoints, and it is in this type of circumstance that one can feel and have access to the facts that are concealed right beneath the surface. Ersen goes on to say that trust is heavily dependent on how much time you spend with someone, and that she herself can become so invested that it results in unforeseen relationships.57 The process of engagement that she explains in this example is closely related to the participant observation method that she uses for the research. With an extended period of time spent in the field, social anthropologists may be able to put their theories into reality through intensive involvement. However, it is not the only process to observe; it is necessary to combine other study approaches as well. It also necessitates objectivity and a certain amount of distance from the situation. If we consider this point of view, it is feasible to reconsider her comment on surprising relationships which was made in response to a query about one of the boys who openly flirts with her in the film 57

‘Fatos Ustek / Interview with Esra Ersen’, http://www.fatosustek.com/interview-with-es ra-ersen-eng-it#more-265. (Accessed 10 September 2017).

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“This is the Disney World.” The answer to this question would indicate how close Ersen was able to become to them, in Ersen’s opinion. She continues, “They had begun to regard me as someone with whom they might flirt rather than as a person with a camera in her hands.” (...) I make an effort to get along with people and become a part of their lives, and I also make myself available for them to become a part of my life.”58 The intimacy of ethnographic methods indicates the importance of the researcher’s own involvement in the research process, and in this context, Ersen’s involvement can be critically examined. According to Ersen, trust is a key component of ethnographic study, and the issue of trust is a major topic of discussion in modern ethics discussions in anthropological theory. This indicates that Ersen recognizes the fact that her initiative is based on an underlying principle of trust, and she is developing her connections and approaches in accordance with this awareness. In this scenario, creating ethical relationships with the participants results in the creation of another variable that is related to the element of visual representation as well as the documentary ethics. Specifically, the ethical decisions and justifications of her for those actions are crucial aspects in this project’s development. The most challenging part of Ersen’s work is ensuring the safety of the participants, who in this case are African migrants and street children and this can be considered as a part of ethical discussion of the work. Another important aspect of Ersen’s work is her decision to keep the documentation process as open as possible by refraining from fiction. During the montage process, she selects the images she will use and puts them together to form the final piece. In this case, the topic of fiction and reality in Ersen’s video practice can be expanded to include other aspects of his work. The viewpoint of Ersen’s working methodology is based on the notion in the idea of reality as an objective, which can be compared to ethnography in terms of interacting with participants of research in a real-life environment. Ersen’s working methodology is based on the idea in the experience of life as an objective. She wants to use her artistic techniques to capture and reflect what is really happening in the world. The images and videos begin to function as a link between reality and its representation in the media. While understanding reality as a visible experience, this way of thinking about reality does not always translate into practical application. Pink says that in order to resolve these uncertainties, one must engage with reflexivity in which she explains as “realist uses of the visual ethnography should be qualified by a reflexive 58

‘Fatos Ustek / Interview with Esra Ersen.

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awareness of the intentions behind such uses, the cultural conventions that frame them, their limits as regards the representation of truth, and the theoretical approaches that render them ambiguous.”59 In order to use reflexive methodology, the researcher must be concerned with considering his or her own position and perspective in the context of research issues. This notion can be used to the theoretical consideration of Ersen’s projects, as well as to other similar projects. Ersen does not reveal any of her methods, nor her position and perspective in the videos she produces, she only documents the target community that she focuses on her works. As a result, neither her participation in the study process nor the dynamics of the ethnographic encounter between the researcher and participants can be traced back. Furthermore, starting with the notion of a social conception of the research subject, the notions of realism and objectivity are relegated to the background. Considering these features in the context of these practices of documentation, it is possible to reconsider Ersen’s artistic practices through a critique of the observational approach in anthropology and so reevaluate her artistic practices through the lack of reflexive practices. Furthermore, the ramifications of these practices and experiments may be relevant to the issue of representation in anthropological theory in general.

4.

Construction of Identity: Kutluğ Ataman

Kutluğ Ataman was born in Istanbul in 1961 and works as a video and installation artist. He is active in Istanbul and London, and he has lately relocated to Erzincan, in the Eastern Region of Anatolia, where he continues to work.60 He received a BA in 1988 and MFA in 2003 from the Film Department of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He also has a degree in Liberal Arts from Los Angeles Santa Monica College. 61 His artworks have been shown at Documenta (2002), the Venice Biennale (1999) as well as the Biennials in Sao Paulo (2002 and 2010), Berlin (2001) and Istanbul (1997, 2003 and 2007). He also participated in the London’s Tate Triennial in 2003.

59 60

61

Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, 41. Arkitera Mimarlık Merkezi, ‘Kutluğ Ataman’ın Erzincan’daki İçi Stüdyolu Evi’, Arkitera. C ,om http://www.arkitera.com/haber/28530/Kutluğ-atamanin-erzincanda-icistudyolu-dairesi (accessed 5 December 2017). “Kutluğ Ataman CV” (Lehmann Maupin, n.d.), SALT Research Turkish Artist Folders.

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His recent solo exhibitions include Mesopotamian Dramaturgies, Lentos Kunstmuseum, Linz (2009), Kutluğ Ataman: Paradise and Küba, Vancouver Art Gallery (2008) and Ludwig Museum Cologne (2009), Paradise, the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California (2007), De-Regulation With the Work of Kutluğ Ataman, MuHKA, Belgium (2006), Küba, Artangel (2005), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2005), Long Streams, Serpentine Gallery, London and Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre, Denmark (2002).62 His works are in major international collections, including MoMA New York, Tate Modern, London, ThyssenBornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, the Dimitris Daskalopoulos Collection, Athens and the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh. With his exploration of the subjects such as otherness, identity in his artworks, Ataman has earned reputation on the global art context after the end of 90s. Ataman began his artistic career in 1997 by taking part in the 5th International Istanbul Biennial where he presented ‘semiha b. unplugged’, a documentary about Semiha Berksoy, Turkey’s first opera singer. Ataman’s career as a filmmaker intersects his first involvement in the contemporary art scene as, originally trained in film at the University of California, Los Angeles, during the 1980s, and a subsequently, the director of numerous award-winning independent films, from The Serpent’s Tale, 1994, to Journey to the Moon, 2009, Ataman went on to contribute experimental films to art exhibitions during the 1990s, which offered flexible and inclusive sites to screen works that did not fit easily in film festivals, and which encouraged his re-positioning as an artist.63 Until 1997, his video works and documentaries mostly consisted of interviews with those shown on screen, while also telling their stories and including the impact of identity. One of his first works as a contemporary artist, semiha b. unplugged (1997), documents the subjective reality of the old opera singer by conducting an interview with her that has been exhibited as a single channel-video installation, in various venues as MCA in Australia. (Figure 22) This piece can be considered a precursor to his documentary practice that manifests itself in his videos, or as Ataman calls them, “video sculptures”. This perspective that Ataman employs can be seen in his four-screen video installation, Women Who Wear Wigs (1999), which shows four Turkish women

62 63

‘Kutluğ Ataman.Biography’, http://www.Kutluğataman.com/site/artworks/content/15 (accessed 5 December 2017). T.J. Demos, “Kutluğ Ataman: The Art of Storytelling,” in Kutluğ Ataman: Içimdeki Düşman / The Enemy inside Me (Istanbul: Istanbul Modern, 2010), 31–37. pp. 31-37, (p.31).

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telling the stories that led them to choose wearing wigs in a documentarylike format.

Figure 22: Kutluğ Ataman, Installation view from semiha b. unplugged (2005), MCA, Sydney, Australia*

*‘Kutluğ Ataman.Artworks.Kutluğ Ataman’s Semiha b. Unplugged.Description’, http://www.Kutlu ğataman.com/site/artworks/work/29/ (accessed 11 June 2018).

According to the catalog of the exhibition The Enemy Inside Me that has taken place at Istanbul Modern: “While the videos in this four-screen installation individually reflect the reasons why these women wear wigs, the larger picture that emerges sets forth a social portrait regarding the problem of identity in Turkey’s recent history.”64 Moreover the exhibition display techniques create another way to interpret his artistic practice: “the four adjacent screens with simultaneously looping conversations in Women Who Wear Wigs (1999) not only reveal the oral–visual cacophony of the four Turkish women (each with radically different reasons for wearing wigs: a balding transsexual, an ex-rev-

64

T.J. Demos, ‘Kutluğ Ataman: The Art of Storytelling’, in Kutluğ Ataman: Içimdeki Düşman / the Enemy inside Me, Exh. Cat. (Istanbul: Istanbul Modern, 2010). pp. 31-37, (p.34).

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olutionary, a Muslim student, and a cancer patient under treatment), but also offer indefinite possibilities for spectatorial experience.”65 Another video of him, which also focuses on the problem of identity, Never My Soul (2001) here as well presents a person creating a different identity – in this case, a transvestite pretending to be Türkan Şoray66 speaking in front of the camera and fictionalizing her own life. (Figure 23) Considering the main objectives of these three works, we can see that the subjects who narrate their lives in these films have similar concepts of life and their identities, which they express through the process of re-creating new identities. As a result, in these movies, Ataman explores the ways in which identities shift and replicate while also playing with the representation of reality. Ataman describes this problematical aspect of identity in the following words: “Identity is like a jacket. People you never see will make it and you wear it. Identity is something other than you, outside of you. It is a question of perception. You can be aware of it and manipulate it, play with it, amplify it, or mask it for infinite reasons.”67 Manipulation and play with one’s identity, as referred by him, manifest themselves in a variety of ways in his videos: at various points, the subjects present themselves in a way that is different from who they are or are lying about themselves, and at other times, they change their clothes or put on makeup to disguise themselves. Ataman manipulates reality in this way, either by making the manipulations more evident or simply by focusing on the many representations of reality. As previously described, Ataman’s works are often centered on persons who experiment with the relationship between being themselves and others, or in other words, who demonstrate the possibility of transformation of identities. Stefan’s Room (2004), in the same vein as his earlier works, depicts Stefan’s passion with tropical moths while also demonstrating his excitement over the transformation of these caterpillars into butterflies. Beyond the video’s primary emphasis, the way that Ataman designs the exhibition hall reveals the metaphorical meaning of the work. Projections are on all five screens. One of the projections tells a story, and this screen is called

65 66 67

Cüneyt Çakirlar, ‘Aesthetics of Self-Scaling: Parallaxed Transregionalism and Kutluğ Ataman’s Art Practice’, Critical Arts, 27, 2013, 684–706 (p. 691). A famous actress in Turkish Cinema. Ana Finel Honigman and Kutluğ Ataman, ‘What the Structure Defines: An Interview with Kutluğ Ataman’, Art Journal, 63 (2004), pp.78-86 (p. 82).

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Figure 23: Kutluğ Ataman, Never My Soul (2001), video still*

*Kutluğ Ataman, Exh.Cat. p. 64.

the narration wall. The other screens show images of the moths, huge and showing all the colors, and contain pinned dead moths. These screens are called the left, right, back and ceiling walls. Ataman perceives this cocoon-like structure as a metaphor for Stefan’s desire to be something else, whilst all the time having to restrain himself within a structure. This could be his room, or his head containing his special world.68 Ataman’s placement of the screens in the film corresponds to the symbolic meaning of the narrative revealed through the video. It’s A Vicious Circle (2002), for instance, similarly instrumentalizes the screens in the same manner, and features a Jamaican immigrant living in Berlin describing the problems he experiences in his life in Berlin. Accordingly, in this twelve-screen installation, screens “are positioned in a circle, with each monitor facing towards the center so that the subject also becomes

68

‘Kutluğ Ataman.Artworks.Stefan’s Room.Description’, http://www.Kutluğataman.com/ site/artworks/work/19/ (accessed 8 December 2017).

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the recipient of his own broadcast.”69 In this regard, Ataman not only films life experiences of people with his camera, but he also employs exhibition strategies, such as the placement of screens to create metaphorical contexts, which he refers to as “video sculptures”.

Küba, 2004 Küba (2004) is a series of videos that include interviews with forty people of a shantytown area on the outskirts of Istanbul, which was shot on location. The residents of this neighborhood refer to it as Küba, which is an unofficial name for the neighborhood. This area is the home to “impoverished Turks and Kurds, religious fundamentalists, political dissidents and other disparate individuals who are bound to solidarity by their outsider status.”70 For this movie, Ataman interviewed with forty people of this neighborhood, each of them shared their unique personal stories and experiences about living on the outskirts of Istanbul. Ataman spent more than two years getting to know the people of Küba, as well as filming their talk while “narrating the stories of their lives in an uncontrolled stream of language. The majority of those interviewed leave a lasting impression with their arresting stories of sometimes tragic, sometimes bitter events. (…) Ataman seeks to fathom the boundaries—both geographic and mental—of an urban area.”71 This piece is another example of Ataman’s unique display techniques, which he employs in order to provide the viewer with a special experience. His idea is to create up 40 screens in front of a chair and display 40 distinct narratives on each screen. (Figure 24) The viewers will be able to walk around these monitors and select the story that they would like to hear in this manner. Ataman provides the following explanations for the work’s preparation process and its overall purpose: Over three years I interviewed 56 people and selected 40 for the final piece. All these people are very different, but in the end, there is something that connects them. They claim to be free and independent because they reject 69 70 71

‘Kutluğ Ataman.Artworks. It’s a Vicious Circle.Description’, http://www.Kutluğataman. com/site/artworks/work/60/ (accessed 8 December 2017). “‘Küba’ Exhibition Opening Invitation” (TANAS Gallery, Berlin, April 2008), SALT Research Turkish Artist Folders. Kutluğ Ataman, ‘Küba’, in Küba: Journey Against the Current (Vienna: ThyssenBornemisza Art Contemporary, 2006), p. 19

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Figure 24: Kutluğ Ataman, Installation view from Küba (2005), Carnegie International, Pittsburg, USA*

*“Küba” (2004), Carnegie International, Pittsburg, ABD, 2005 – “Küba” (2004), Carnegie International, Pittsburg, USA, 2005, Salt Research Library

the greater society – yet they have to pay for this freedom doesn’t really exist. They talk about being so happy in Küba, and yet they also talk about constant problems they experience (…) some would not think Küba should be document as history, but I do. My Küba project is the Kurds exhibition – as opposed to Turks. Through their dealings with the society, it appears that Ataman is once again questioning the position of others in this project. Using this approach, he intends to draw attention to their point of view as well as the difficulties that they are experiencing. A resident of the neighborhood named Güler, for example, confesses that being married to her own rapist, who happens to be her aunt’s son, and that as a result of this marriage, she has a son who has medical conditions. Soner is a film enthusiast who collects Hollywood movies, and he identifies with Hugh Grant in the film, “Notting Hill”. Hakan, who is obsessed with Enrique Iglesias, is another person who has the same type of obsession. Despite his financial difficulties, Erol is obsessed with pigeons, and as a result, he steals birds from others. During his time in prison, Bulent recalls his experiences as a teenager after he killed two people. Nejla is a muscular, mas-

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culine young lady who enjoys soccer and always beats the local boys. She also reveals that she is the boyfriend of their next-door neighbor’s daughter. Due to their personalities, Ataman has likely chosen these people for their different characteristics, in this case, maybe it can be called “unusual” personality characteristics. His strategy entails the notions of being an individual in a community, and the stories he told showed it by proving that people had a distinct and unique identity with their own particular characteristics and interests. Kurdishness, another layer of complexity that can cause communication challenges, is one of the main focuses of these videos due to their language barrier. They describe their every-day life, encouraging the audience to put spatial thinking into practice and imagine their lives in this area based on their statements as it is called as ‘alternative zone to the state experience’ as Rogoff proposes in her article and she adds that, Something very different takes place (…) that is the constitution of an alternative zone to ‘state experience’ – that of ‘deregulated experience’. Women speak of marriage as a necessity, a required right of passage. (…) Men speak of work or the lack of it and of fighting. There is little pleasure in any of these markers of a regulated adult life and there is absolutely no unity of subject, thought and encompassing the world.72 In this instance, the act of speaking is associated with the formation of this ‘deregulated experience’. As a result, the viewer is challenged to listen to their story in a different way, as Rogoff describes it, “speculatively not empathically” 73 as well as to imagine their life in a spatial context with different voices from this area. As a result, Rogoff’s perspective on this piece is consistent with Ataman’s exhibition approach of establishing an island-like zone with the monitors and armchairs, which corresponds to what this work is attempting to achieve in terms of spatial configuration.

Paradise, 2006 Paradise (2006) is a multi-channel video installation by Ataman that features video interviews with people of Southern California that were primarily 72 73

Irit Rogoff, ‘De-Regulation: With the Work of Kutluğ Ataman’, Third Text, 23.2 (2009), pp. 165–79 (p. 178). Rogoff, 178.

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filmed in Orange County. Through the interviews that Ataman conducts with the residents of this area, the work focuses on the concept of paradise associated with this area. (Figure 25) The work is comprised of video interviews with people from all backgrounds of life who have one thing in common: they all live in Orange County. They range from star and car-obsessed teenagers to an Emmy Award-winning producer who volunteers as a character in Pageant of the Masters, Laguna Beach’s famous annual festival featuring tableaux vivants. Mike Davis, one of Southern California’s most well-known apocalyptic chroniclers, is among those in attendance, as well as members of the local laughter yoga club. Doctor Robert Anthony Schuller, the 1960s founder of the drive-in church and commissioner of the Crystal Cathedral, which was designed by Philip Johnson and is one of Orange County’s seven wonders, shares his insights about the idea of paradise.74 Examples include a video interview in which resident Carole Wilson describes how to communicate with angels and her own spiritual experiences as part of this work, which is part of the overall project. Ataman selects various characters from among the people to weave a complex narrative together once more. The majority of these conversations are devoted to the concept of creating a joyful life and their own personal paradise. According to the project description on Ataman’s official website, Ataman continues to investigate the processes by which the following are accomplished: one’s personal narrative reveals how we construct and define ourselves, what emerges from these stories is that these people work very hard to create a cultural brand, considered outside the norm. Although the individuals that make up this community might have different lifestyles, they have the common goal of living a good and happy life.75 As a result, he investigates this frequently asked subject surrounding the conception of paradise. Taking into consideration that everyone has their own definition of paradise, he seeks to examine this concept from the perspective of those who live in a place that invokes images of sunshine, perfect weather,

74

75

‘Paradise: Kutluğ Ataman: Kutluğ Ataman, Aimee Chang, Norman M. Klein, Irit Rogoff: 9780917493430: Amazon.Com: Books’, https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Kutlu ğ-Ataman/dp/0917493435 (accessed 13 December 2017). ‘Kutluğ Ataman. Artworks. Paradise. Description’, http://www.Kutluğataman.com/site/ artworks/work/68/ (accessed 13 December 2017).

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Figure 25: Kutluğ Ataman, Paradise (2006), video stills*

*Kutluğ Ataman, Exh.Cat, p. 92.

and beautiful landscapes. Ataman demonstrates how this region might be tied to marketing strategies by considering the stereotype of a ‘paradise on earth’ as a reference point. Through this lens, he examines how people perceive themselves and their idealized notions of paradise, while also calling into question the standard-

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ized narratives that have developed around this area. For the second time, he challenges the building of identity by following an established stereotype about a community while also depicting the simulated side of reality. In connection with this, Ataman explained in an interview that his work is “really about showing how identity itself is fabricated,” and that “all my characters and subjects are in fact fake in a way because they are reconstructed during the editing.”76 Ataman’s works, as a result, are concerned with the idea of the contradictory dimensions of identity, notably the identity of these particular subjects in an area. The issue of portrayal of identity in Ataman’s works raises questions about documentary practices and research methodologies, as well as the representation of identity in his works. According to Ataman in Laurence’s interview with him about this work, “I was looking at different dynamics and trying to be as even as possible,” he says, before adding that he does not claim to have conducted a scientific survey. “I do not make documentaries” says the director. As he goes on to explain, he was interested in how the concept of branding a certain lifestyle and a particular geographic place is accomplished.77

4.1

Questioning the Ethnographic Methods in Ataman’s Artistic Practice

Considering these two pieces, “Küba” and “Paradise,” together and analyzing them in light of the previously described documentation and exhibition approaches, as well as their approach to the subject and methodology, is a convenient approach to understand their representational practices. Matching ideas have been put into practice in these two works, but from very different perspectives; whereas in “Küba” the story of a community living their own individuality in a closed society challenges social stereotypes, in “Paradise” the story of people reinterpreting a stereotype about a region is told through their individual stories and their interpretation of a common idea is told through their stories and interpretation of a common idea in both works. Aside from this, Ataman argues that the communities in these two works are essentially

76 77

‘Kutluğ Ataman & Atom Egoyan’, Flash Art, 2016, https://www.flashartonline.com/articl e/Kutluğ-ataman-atom-egoyan/ (accessed 14 December 2017). Robin Laurance, ‘Turkish Video Artist Kutluğ Ataman Reveals the Other Side of Paradise’, The Georgia Straight, 06.02.2008, https://www.straight.com/article-131132/the-ot her-side-of-paradise (accessed 13 October 2017).

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similar, as demonstrated by the following statements: “Paradise is exclusive, the doors are locked from inside. In Küba, the doors are locked from outside, because people do not want them to come out. But nevertheless, they both create their own identities in exactly the same way—by dreaming themselves and mythologizing and giving away some of their freedoms to gain, in exchange, this membership card.”78 This idea of self-mythologizing is also a recurring motif in Ataman’s work, which is seen in most of his work. His piece “Witness” from 2006, which was created using the oral history approach, documents Ataman’s old Armenian nanny as she recalls her early memories. She, on the other hand, suffers from amnesia, and as a result, she has difficulty recalling her memories of Armenian history and culture. It might be said that this work has demonstrated the limitations of her witness and her statements in this regard. Likewise, as Demos has shown out, “as is it can also entail an act of encountering the impossibility of transmitting experience, that is, the failure of memory and recognition.” 79 Put together, we can see that Ataman’s artistic work is concerned with the limitations of documentary filmmaking in connection with the mythical side of identification and the experiences, memories surrounding people’s lives in context. Ataman, on the other hand, intends to understand the idea of already established identities in a selected community in the videos “Küba” and “Paradise.” He aims to convey the lives of the people who live in these communities by the questions he asks to them, but he also hopes to deal with the things that make up communities by focusing on the aspects in which people are different from each other. As he explains in one of his interviews, that he “attracted to unusual people”80 , and chooses interviewees that he finds interesting to identify significant characteristics of these people. As a result, he depicts these communities in all of their heterogeneity, contrasting parts of their lives with stereotypes. According to Çakırlar, Artworks Küba (2004) and Paradise (2006) can be taken here as a turning point in Ataman’s career, where his project of individual life-stories, or portraits via long streams of talk, unsettling its own documentary ethnographic

78 79 80

Robin Laurance. Demos, “Kutluğ Ataman: The Art of Storytelling,” 7. Kutluğ Ataman, p. 31.

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setting or mapping, shifts its focus to a revised cross-cultural aesthetic of queering ideological narratives of geography, history, and community.81 In both projects, Ataman captures individuals of the community in their natural settings in order to represent their way of life through these videos. In this context, these projects present themselves for interpretation using videoethnographic approaches, or they raise questions about the difficulties associated with ethnography as a method of research in which as a way of illustrating heterogeneity. At the same time as he is placing heterogeneity at the core of his research and utilizing his practice to confirm the findings of this research in these communities, he is also structuring his research around the hypothesis of heterogeneity. In these two cases, Ataman employs the participant-observation method, with an emphasis on observation, to delve deeper into stereotyped images of these communities—on the one hand, the neighborhood of “Küba,” which is defined by the Kurdishness of its residents, and on the other, the concept of “Paradise,” which is associated with the residents of Southern California—to delve deeper into stereotyped images of these communities. In order to determine the stereotype content embedded within this community or interpret the cultural stereotypes in both circumstances, Ataman portrays the interviewees as people who are expressing their uniqueness to represent the complexity in these groups. He establishes an ethnographic dialogue by asking them questions about their life during the video interviews in order to have a better understanding of their lives. In addition, he constructs this process as a way of rejecting the concept of marginalization, which derives its approach from Given the fact Ataman’s artistic practice and the method in which he approaches the engagement process, there is an important issue related to the role of an artist in field research, or more specifically to the “artist as ethnographer” in reference to Foster. In addition, Ataman’s engagement with the community must still be considered in terms of his position during his research. The effects of the pseudo-ethnographic role set up for the artist or assumed by him or her, according to Foster (1999) in his article Artist as Ethnographer, have rendered him being “skeptical about the effects of the pseudo-ethno-

81

Çakirlar, “Aesthetics of Self-Scaling: Parallaxed Transregionalism and Kutluğ Ataman’s Art Practice,” 685.

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graphic role set up for the artist or assumed by him or her.”82 In accordance with Foster’s warning, it becomes essential to be skeptical of these community-based methods as a representation process, since questions about artistic authority arise as a consequence of these works. Specifically, these kinds of artistic practices conducted with closed communities such as in the case of “Küba” require more responsibility because of the issue of revealing identities. As Çakırlar mentions in his article, “recalling also that the Kübans did not allow the artist to exhibit this work in Turkey, I would argue that there is a considerable risk and challenge for an artist to attempt to portray a community – that excessively invests in its own regional belonging and refuses to be represented in Turkey – to a global audience.”83 In addition to this aspect, if we look back at Ataman’s research approach, we can see that by considering the residents of these communities as informants, Ataman strengthens his role as an ethnographer. This ‘pseudoethnographic’ form as Foster calls it, is strongly associated with the ethnographic turn in arts, which is characterized by an ethnographic approach to interviews. Although both video installations by Ataman reveal innovative approaches to ethnographic filmmaking, they differ in terms of how they make use of exhibition space and how they incorporate significant film grammar. In this regard, Basu writes, “Küba provides greater inspiration for the reframing of ethnographic film when one considers not only their subject matter or how their audio-visual raw materials were gathered (important as these factors are), but in how these materials are articulated within a ‘exhibitionary context’: a context in which the work of art is activated.”84 Ataman’s arrangement of these two video sculptures encourages visitors being an observer in this work, while at the same time playing with the possible roles of visitors. By presenting altered narratives and engaging viewers with storytellers face-to-face, Ataman encourages visitors to conduct their own anthropological analysis of these communities. The method allows for new horizons in ethnographic film, by allows the audience to take an active

82 83 84

Hal Foster, ‘The Artist As Ethnographer’, in Return of the Real: Art and Theory at the End of the Century, 1st edn (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 171–205 (p. 205). Çakirlar, “Aesthetics of Self-Scaling: Parallaxed Transregionalism and Kutluğ Ataman’s Art Practice,” 694. Paul Basu, “Reframing Ethnographic Film,” School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2008, 104.

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role. Therefore, Ataman avoids any uncertainties or complaints of stereotype and/or the issue of representation by distributing the role of an observer between him and the audience, he encourages the audience to participate simultaneously in these two phased research processes.

5.

Doing Archival Ethnography: Tayfun Serttaş

Tayfun Serttaş is an artist, writer, and researcher who resides in Istanbul. His art has been displayed in cities such as Istanbul, New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw, Beirut, Athens, Thessaloniki, and Frankfurt.85 At Istanbul University, he majored in Anthropology during his undergraduate years. For him, the most important reason for studying in this field was the relationship between plastic arts and cultural heritage. After his bachelor’s studies, he continued to pursue interdisciplinary studies in order to combine two different academic disciplines, and he concentrated on archival studies for his Master of Arts degree at the Yıldız Technical University, Art, and Design Faculty Interdisciplinary Art program. He received his degree in 2007 and wrote a thesis on the subject of “Photography and Minorities in Istanbul in the Context of Modernism and Cultural Representation”86 and his research for this project focused on photography within the context of “Modernism and Cultural Representation” which he made research in around 40 institutional archives of minorities in Turkey.87 Taking a look at the history of photography in Turkey, Tayfun Serttaş maintains that non-Muslim communities have had a monopoly on the medium for 60 years since the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Even if one owns a photography studio, it takes a long time to put photography to use for Muslims, especially until it becomes necessary in passports and identification cards. Muslims are used as decorative components in Orientalist photographs in order to create a cultural representation in early photography. 88 Consequently, as a result of his interest in these situations, cultural representation became the primary focus of his thesis.89

85 86 87 88 89

“Bio,” Tayfun Serttaş (blog), n.d., http://tayfunserttas.com/bio/. ‘Biography’, Tayfun Serttaş http://tayfunserttas.com/bio/. (Accessed: 14.07.2017). Examples include the Agos newspaper archives, Synagoge archives, Hospital and Religious group archives of non-Muslim communities in Turkey. e.g., Taking photo of women from Beyoglu region in an Ottoman Bath. Personal Communication with Tayfun Serttaş (Istanbul, 30.06.2016).

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In many ways, Serttaş’s MA thesis can be considered the first of his works, as it is the first to address cultural issues through the use of archives in conjunction with academic research methodologies. He visited a variety of archives, including visual archives, public and private archives, object collections, and public spaces. He became primarily involved with visual archives as a result of this involvement, and this eventually became his area of specialization. Interdisciplinarity is a major emphasis for him, and he is interested in learning more about how his artistic work may be linked into it. Rather than working with several disciplines at the same time, he defines interdisciplinarity as “looking, analyzing, and evaluating from the perspective of one discipline to the perspective of another discipline.” 90 Therefore, he describes his work as interdisciplinary research into the social interruptions that have occurred in the recent history.

Studio Osep, 2009 Serttaş’s archival work, Studio Osep, 2009, is a presentation of the photographer Osep Minasoğlu’s photographic archive. (Figure 26) Tayfun Serttaş met Osep Minasoğlu, an elderly Armenian studio photographer, on the street ten years before the “Studio Osep” exhibition, and the two remained close friends until Osep’s death in 2013. Along with Osep’s poor living conditions, he was unable to protect his archive; as a result, he unconditionally gave certain photographs from his archive to Serttaş in order to ensure their long-term preservation. Serttaş claims that he considers this archive to be a part of photographic cultural heritage and he adds that, If you look at a wedding photo that was taken in 1940s, it is only a wedding photo, but if you look at a wedding photo which was taken in 1940s from today’s perspectice, it is more than a wedding photo because it contains lots of dress codes, man-woman relations, different postures, hierarchical poses. All those relations give an impression and information about life in 1940s.91 Therefore, those photographs enable us in comprehending the zeitgeist of the respective times. Photographs, in turn, gain diverse meanings as time passes, and they are valuable as historical documents of their subjects. We

90 91

Personal Communication with Tayfun Serttaş. Personal Communication with Tayfun Serttaş.

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are now able to comprehend the significance of these photos. Time also conveys a sense of purpose to those photographs. Serttaş considers a photograph taken in the 1960s to be a significant document since Istanbul has transformed tremendously since then, and those historical testimonies are critical in understanding this transformation, which is why it is vital to preserve these archives.

Figure 26: Tayfun Serttaş, exhibition view from his archival work Stüdyo Osep (2009)*

*“Studio Osep | 2009,” Tayfun Serttaş (blog), accessed July 21, 2018, http://tayfunserttas.c om/works/studio-osep/.

Additionally, Osep’s photography provides an important means of documentation in the Eastern Turkey region due of the fact that the images he captured are documenting the people in a big city. Those images highlight the latest fashion trends, and by doing so, they reveal to the people in the East what people had been wearing in Istanbul. Osep was apparently documenting the fashion codes and trends that were popular throughout his years in the studio with his photography. (Figure 27) So his photographs can be considered as a mediator to guide and inspire. Osep was also a set photographer who worked on movie sets during those years, and he was also active in the LGBT communities in Istanbul at that time period. Osep’s archive did not contain any photographs of Armenian people, marriages, or children since he was not actively involved in the Armenian community in Turkey as an Armenian photographer. Despite his Armenian background, Osep was a vocal opponent of traditional conceptions of Armenian identity. In 2009, Osep’s works were gathered up by Serttaş, who chose to organize an exhibition and publish a book on them consequently. What he does with this exhibition is the documenting of documentation, as well as demonstrating the potential of photographs that serve as historical documents. A 90-year-old Armenian gentleman, Osep attended the exhibition to give a lec-

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Figure 27: Tayfun Serttaş’s, photos from his archival work Studyo Osep (2009)*

*Tayfun Serttaş, Stüdyo Osep (Istanbul: Aras Yayincilik, 2009), Istanbul, p.129-130.

ture, and the majority of the people who attended this event were expecting him to share his memories of old Istanbul with them over the course of the show. The subjects of his speeches included homosexuality, parties, his issues with the mafia, toilet problems in Taksim, and cats in Beyoglu, among other things. For Serttaş, Osep was truly honored by the exhibition; he even brought his pen with him to the opening to sign books for visitors. In addition, it is critical that these works have been made available to the public, and Osep would have witnessed this encounter at the exhibition before his death in 2013.

“Foto Galatasaray – Studio Practice by Maryam Şahinyan”, 2011 The photo archive of a female Armenian photographer was the focus of the second archive that Serttaş researched. He received this archive from a friend, which had been preserved in an old warehouse of an Armenian building until the day he began working on it.   Şahinyan’s photo library was digitalized, catalogued, analyzed, and sorted over the course of three years, and the result was an exhibition of her photography archive and a book with the title of “Foto Galatasaray – Studio Practice by Maryam Şahinyan”.

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Figure 28: Tayfun Serttaş, photos from his archival work Foto Galatasaray – Studio Practice by Maryam Şahinyan (2011)*

*Tayfun Serttaş, Foto Galatasaray: Studio Practice by Maryam Şahinyan: (... Prepared in Tandem with the Exhibition Titled “Foto Galatasaray” Held at SALT Galata between ... 22 November 2011 - 22 January 2012) (İstanbul: Aras Yayıncılık, 2011). P.303-304.

Although similar in content to Osep’s collection, Şahinyan’s archive may be distinguished from Osep’s archive due to Şahinyan’s involvement with the Armenian community in Istanbul and her extensive photographic documentation of the community’s special occasions. Serttaş was particularly interested in the notions of intimacy and involvement in the Armenian community since she is a religious woman. These were the primary concepts that he had been looking for in this project. According to Serttaş in an interview, “as a woman, she built an autonomous space for photography, and her studio cannot be seen from the outside because it does not have a window.” 92 In particular, the representation of lower-middle-class, minority women who were living in Istanbul during these years is what makes this archive so valuable, as it is not easy to access this kind of extensive information about this population in Turkey. (Figure 28) For Vasıf Kortun,

92

‘Studio Osep | 2009’, Tayfun Serttaş http://tayfunserttas.com/works/studio-osep/ (accessed 11 November 2018).

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There are several roles that Serttaş as the interlocutor took on: the scientific restorer who cleaned, stabilized, digitized and digitally restored with his assistants many thousands of images for nearly two years; a researcher of the life and times of Maryam Şahinyan; an artist who has for the exhibition inventoried novel scenes of looking at the images and invented new narratives; and an activist who has mobilized the power of these images to tell a devastating tale of the lost communities of Istanbul.93 Serttaş employed a particular approach for this project than he did for his previous project, “Studio Osep.” He has built a database for “Foto Galatasaray,” as if he were working on an anthropological project, in order to tag the photographs. Whenever he looks at someone, he notices plenty of tags on them, most of which are dress rules, such as jewelries and rings, as well as necklaces and other details, all of which may signal to which social class they belong. Initially, they label all of the clothing codes that will allow them to search for and identify the pictures in the archives. He recalls that there are 14 tags in all, all of them are for hats. In addition, they marked all of the wedding photographs with the according to the gowns and accessories that they wore on the photo.94 Commenting on the image was another method: if someone recognizes a person in the photograph, they may provide a brief description of the individual’s background. Following the exhibition, they had “open tag days” during which they invited primarily elderly members of the community who could identify those featured in the photographs. A total of about 5000 names was collected through this organization. Working with small communities provided him with a distinct advantage during this process. There were specific mailing lists to contact them, and because his publisher “Aras” was Armenian, they were able to reach out to the Armenian population, particularly in Istanbul. It is likely that they were informed of it and attended the activities when it is announced in the Armenian newspaper Agos.95 Consequently, with the assistance of this network, he was able to conduct his research more efficiently. According to Ünsal, there are a number of factors that contribute to the significance of this project: 93 94 95

“Two Introductions to Foto Galatasaray,” March 26, 2012, https://m-est.org/2012/03/26/ two-introductions-to-foto-galatasaray/. (Access Date: 29.07.2017). Personal Communication with Tayfun Serttaş. Personal Communication with Tayfun Serttaş.

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Figure 29: Tayfun Serttaş, photos from his archival work Foto Galatasaray – Studio Practice by Maryam Şahinyan (2011)*

*Serttaş, Foto Galatasaray: Studio Practice by Maryam Şahinyan: (... Prepared in Tandem with the Exhibition Titled “Foto Galatasaray” Held at SALT Galata between ... 22 November 2011 - 22 January 2012). p.65.

Foto Galatasaray serves a relatively large population of women over its sixty-year history, in comparison to other studios at the time. The second important factor is Maryam Şahinyan’s non-Muslim identity that facilitates the representation of many different religions and sects to in her studio. This is also due to the stability of Şahinyan’s religiously conservative

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lifestyle. The third crucial element is the studio’s institutional relationship and partnership with the surrounding Armenian churches and schools through Şahinyan’s Armenian identity. (…) These three central (normative) criteria are professional reflections of the schema of identities that Maryam Şahinyan embodied personally throughout her life. (…) Maryam Şahinyan archive expresses a particular sociological territory in Istanbul’s exclusive social layers in which the photographer and the clientele shape each other.96 As this quotation points out, there are numerous levels to this work, each of which demonstrates the project’s historical and sociological relevance in a different manner. These features were primarily concerned with Şahinyan’s gender and non-Muslim identity; nonetheless, Şahinyan’s black-and-white photographs capture an era of Istanbul between 1937 and 1985 that was rich in cultural diversity. (Figure 29)

5.1

The Case of Archival Research as an Artistic Practice

Many scholars have questioned the relationship between art and archive in the present era, particularly during periods when archival works have acquired relevance as a result of the growing number of practices. For instance, The Arab Image Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Beirut that was formed in 1997, is one of the world’s key figures in ‘archivalism’. According to its mission statement, the foundation’s goal is to collect, conserve, and research images from the Middle East, North Africa, and the Arab diaspora.97 Akraam Zaatari, a founding member of the Arab Image Foundation, has played a significant influence in the dissemination of archive works in the art world. In a manner similar to Serttaş’s working approach, he conducts historical research in order to build alternative historical narratives. In addition to Zaatari, who is also a member of The Arab Image Foundation, Walid Raad is an important figure in this movement. Raad developed an imaginary foundation named ‘The Atlas Group’ in the late 1990s, in order to

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97

Merve Unsal, “Foto Galatasaray in Three Different Contexts,” May 23, 2012, htt ps://m-est.org/2012/05/23/foto-galatasaray-in-three-different-contexts/. (Access Date: 23.07.2017). “Arab Image Foundation,” accessed August 16, 2017, http://www.fai.org.lb/Template.as px?id=1.

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accommodate and contextualize his expanding production of works chronicling the Lebanese Civil Wars, which are generally dated 1975–1990.98 With the help of instances that are similar to these, the notion of archive as an artistic concept has been defined and explored in the context of the problem of representation, the role of institutions, and the ability of art to elevate this concept to a broader extent. Ranciére illustrates this shift from ‘critical art’ to ‘testimony art’ in the following sentences: “In a first step, then, a shift takes place, as strategies of critical clash are replaced by those of testimony, archive and documentation, processes seeking to give us a new perception of the traces of our history and the signs of our community.”99 While these archival procedures attempt to provide the viewer a new understanding on the history, these two artistic projects of Serttaş mentioned above raise questions regarding the use of archive for the investigation of cultural and demographic aspects of a community. Accordingly, Hal Foster asserts in his essay, Archival Impulse, for instance: The work in question is archival since it not only draws on informal archives but produces them as well and does so in a way that underscores the nature of all archival materials as found yet constructed, factual yet fictive, public yet private. Further, it often arranges these materials according to a quasiarchival logic, a matrix of citation and juxtaposition, and presents them in a quasi-archival architecture, a complex of texts and objects.100 Re-examining these two projects in the light of theoretical analyses, it is possible to see that Serttaş creates new public archives by using private collections. Considering the development processes, Foster describes this dynamic in his essay. Employing archive materials in artwork is a discussion that Serttaş’s projects introduce to the public. An exemplary demonstration of this idea is Foster’s assertion that the main goal of archive art is to establish a connection between the past and the present. He brings out the fact that “again, this is not a will to totalize so much as a will to relate-to probe a misplaced past, to collate its different signs (sometimes pragmatically, sometimes parodistically), to ascertain what might remain for the present.”101 The connection of

98

“BOMB Magazine — Walid Ra’ad by Alan Gilbert,” accessed August 16, 2017, http://bo mbmagazine.org/article/2504/walid-ra-ad. 99 Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, p. 145. 100 Hal Foster, ‘An Archival Impulse’, October, 110 (2004), pp. 3–22 (p. 5). 101 Foster, 21.

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Serttaş’s archive projects may be found in his commitment to link with cultural memory. In a related vein, Hal Foster asserts that the role of ‘archive artist’ decides what remains for the present and that it is accompanied by the responsibilities and risks that come with working with this kind of existing visual content.102 At this stage, the process of archiving entails deciding what should be saved and what should be discarded; hence, archive works play an essential part in forming memories, and the responsibilities connected with archival art become visible. These archives also provide a chance to learn more about suppressed communities from the past, and Serttaş’s major concept for the archive was to express what is not visible by highlighting the significance of the topic in terms of its local context. The artist has selected these projects as a subject since they illustrate the processes of cultural change in Turkey, which is another reason for their significance. The subjects, methodologies, and display techniques of these two projects are quite distinct, despite the fact that they share considerable similarities. First and foremost, because Osep was still alive during the preparations for the exhibition, Serttaş had the opportunity to interview him about his life and about his archive, as well as to include him as a part of the project to demonstrate his respect and appreciation for this historically significant figure. However, in the case of “Foto Galatasaray” his only source of information was the material from the Şahinyan photography studio. Osep also made an appearance at the show to deliver a lecture and autograph copies of the book, which was released at the same time as the exhibition. “Foto Galatasaray” project, on the other hand, differed from the “Studio Osep” project in this regard, because Maryam Şahinyan was not living at the time of the project’s completion, unlike the latter. Osep Minsagoglu’s project is based on Serttaş’s personal archive, which was built up over several years and shown inside an archival framework, with the inclusion of oral history research conducted in collaboration with Osep. However, there was no opportunity to conduct oral history research with Maryam Şahinyan during the production of “Foto Galatasaray”. As a result, the contrasts between these two projects reveal themselves in their respective methodologies, particularly in terms of the use of oral history research techniques. As was the case with “Studio Osep” the primary subject was Osep himself, and Serttaş once again becomes a willing narrator to develop an oral history; however, in “Foto Galatasaray” he further develops this 102 Foster, 5.

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oral history by organizing the aforementioned “open tag days” in conjunction with the second witness statements. The primary goal of Serttaş in organizing these open tag days is to collect the memories of the community, which is aligned with Lacy’s concept in terms of the references, “that artists working with the new public art do to memories, ethnic traditions, gender or family are the way in which the new public art shapes its relation with the world.”103 Serttaş implements the foundations of this form of public art in terms of its relations with the world and brings it inside the institutions for the exhibitions in context. In this section, the discussion regarding the approach for this project can be continued on in terms of methodologies. The methods used for these projects bear remarkable resemblance to F. Gracy’s conceptualization of “archival ethnography,” which she developed in her dissertation. She proposes a definition of ”Archival ethnography” based on her study, which was described as “a form of naturalistic inquiry which positions the researcher within an archival environment to gain the cultural perspective of those responsible for the creation, collection, care, and use of records.”104 A similar setting has been generated by this research, which has placed Serttaş in the position of responsibility for such an archive. These features of archival ethnography, as well as the emphasis on the preservation and use of records, can be recognized in the overall goal of Serttaş’s work. As previously stated, these two Serttaş projects are intertwined in that they both demonstrate the potential of photographs as historical artifacts while also bringing sociocultural issues to the foreground. In this perspective, these two studies have a great deal in common with F. Gracy’s research on film preservation in terms of methodological approach, and they both employ ethnographic methodologies. In their explorations of the world of archives, both scholars grapple with the issues of ethnographic research in the archival environment. Serttaş’s research, on the other hand, has resulted in an exhibition consisting of his selection, which has enabled the inclusion of artistic practices in the scope of the investigation. For the “Studio Osep” project, Serttaş explains, “everything was shaped with the conditions of everyday information and the everyday experience we shared. I applied only of the few methods I learned at the academy or used in 103 Lacy, “Cultural Pilgrimages and Metamorphic Journeys,” 36. 104 Karen F. Gracy, ‘Documenting Communities of Practice: Making the Case for Archival Ethnography*’, Archival Science, 4 (2004), pp. 335–365 (p. 337).

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other archives.”105 The ethnographic research components of this project, as with the interviews that were conducted for the exhibition and book, may still be seen, as this procedure entailed the use of participant observation methods in order to establish a close and intimate connection with Osep Minasoğlu. For Serttaş, the process of linking this research with his previous experience in anthropology has been excluded from consideration. He states that he had to put his anthropologist identity aside because of Osep’s living conditions, and that he attempted to help him as best he could by not distinguishing himself from his life, and he adds that, “if a researcher gets lost in research, it makes it a real research at that point.”106 Through the close relationship between Serttaş and Osep, it becomes evident when looking into the project from the outset, is the reason why he chose not to participate as an observer. It is his intention to challenge the dichotomies of being an observer and being observed in the process of his work. As a result, he claims that he becomes a case in his research, and that only a third person will be able to comprehend the anthropological aspect of his research findings. The situation becomes more complicated and Serttaş may become the subject of observation, necessitating the involvement of another individual in order to comprehend this complex relationship.107 He intends to subvert the roles of observer and observed in this instance, as he is perplexing the boundaries of being a participant observer in the setting of detached ethnographic study. One of the most essential parts of the artistic project is the way in which the artist emphasizes the importance of refraining from taking on the position of observer in this project, and the way in which he separates his approaches from ethnographic research as a result. These two projects, in this regard, raise questions about the relationship between the artist as researcher and the subject. As demonstrated in these instances, new research practices in contemporary art have evolved in recent years that integrates sociocultural issues with artistic practices. These projects are significant in the presentation of photography as they document a social reality about the specific era in which these photographers lived; as a result, it is apparent that the exploration of these archives and oral histories is fundamental to the presentation of photography. These works also serve as

105 Serttaş, Stüdyo Osep, 13. 106 Personal Communication with Tayfun Serttaş. 107 Personal Communication with Tayfun Serttaş.

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a demonstration of the significance of the archive for the future of the interplay between art and anthropology. Serttaş’s works present a framework for process-based archival research, and it is critical to consider the potential contribution of this form of research to the field of art and anthropology in that they are situated. In parallel, the recent developments in archival works in history, identity, and memory in the art scene have drawn attention to the importance of archives and the purpose they serve. These contemporary debates concerning archives are focused with the history production of institutional archives, as well as the significance of archives in contemporary society and culture. This kind of critical thinking creates space for new possibilities and perspectives, and the attempts of alternative narratives have an impact on social memory by revealing diverse components of the past to the public. Significant examples of this may be seen in Serttaş’s two archive projects, which are fundamentally opposed to the representations inherent in conventional historical narratives that are linked to nation-building narratives in Turkey. In contrast to the official state narratives, this project offers an alternative approach to the presentation of the past, particularly when considering the nation-building narratives that are common in the museums in Turkey, which exclude the heterogeneity of the people who lived during the time period under consideration. Non-Muslim population, such as Armenians and Greeks, have been systematically excluded from national-building narratives. The questioning of problematic representations of the archives as well as the prevailing historical narrative of the state is perhaps one of the most significant components of these works.

6.

Doing Fieldwork as an Artist: Köken Ergun

Köken Ergun was born in Istanbul in 1976, and he studied acting at Istanbul University’s Department of Dramatic Arts. As a postgraduate student at King’s College, London, he continued his studies in Ancient Greek Theatre after completing his bachelor’s degree. He also holds a master’s degree in Visual Communication Design from Istanbul Bilgi University.108 He is presently doing his PhD at the Interart Graduate College of the Freie Universität Berlin.

108 Köken Ergun, “Turkish Artist Folders, Visual Material,” 2017, Salt Research.

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In 2001, he presented his first solo work, a large-scale installation performance, in Istanbul’s Rumeli Fortress. This initial step into art performance led Ergun to move into the field of art video and performance, and he began exhibiting in Europe and the United States 109 . His video works have been screened in film festivals in Europe such as the Oberhausen Film Festival, the Odense Film Festival, and at the Montpellier Film Festival. 110 Soon after earning his Master of Arts in Theatre and Film, Ergun began working as an assistant to American experimental theater stage director Robert Wilson in New York City. Wilson’s theatrical approach incorporates some ritualistic elements, and as a result of this partnership, Ergun’s research interests became clear, and more tended towards the research of rituals in diverse communities. After beginning of working in the field of contemporary art, Ergun went on to work in documentary and video production. One of his earliest video works was shot in a village in Denmark. According to Ergun, he had intended to film a fictional video with the locals at initially, but after a while, he found himself becoming increasingly engaged with the local community. Following that, the villagers were involved in the project, and at the conclusion of process, a collaborative video was created together. At the conclusion of this endeavor, people presented him with the golden key to the village as a gift, and his artistic project was announced in a local newspaper.111 Ergun began focusing on collaborative art and working directly with communities with this project, which was his first major collaboration. His training in performance and drama revealed itself in his interest in the ritualistic aspects of such communities, and he documented the social forms of these rituals as a result of this background. The minority communities are of particular interest to him, as his documentary projects of Wedding, Ashura, Binibining Promised Land to demonstrate. Examples include the Binibining Promised Land project, which films a beauty contest featuring Filipino guest workers who are located in Tel Aviv, Israel. Specifically, Bouteloup claims that in the instance

109 The institutions that he has exhibited include KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Arts (Helsinki), Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center (Istanbul), Exit Art (NYC), Art in General (NYC), Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe), Sparwasser HQ (Berlin), and Sculpturens Hus (Stockholm). 110 Köken Ergun and November Paynter, “The Inspiration of Home,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 29, no. 1 (December 27, 2006), pp.101–12, (p.101). 111 Personal Communication with Köken Ergun, May 10, 2016.

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of this project, in representing the other, “instead of cultivating myth, artist Köken Ergun sabotages our fascination with the exotic by looking beyond the mise-en-scène: his Binibining Pilipinas lays bare the tensions between the beauty contests organized by Tel Aviv’s Filipino community and what is happening behind the scenes.”112 In this way, the representation of the community aims to provide contrast to exoticist ideas on beauty contests of Filipino community, by exploring the socially undesirable side of the competition that are behind the scenes. In his work, Ergun makes use of rituals as a part of his overall methodology, collaborating with ethnologists to shape his practice.113 As a result, his works directly address the difficulties of identifying the contrast or common ground between art and anthropology, as well as the ways in which these kinds of collaborations might contribute to the understanding of this common ground.

Wedding, 2009 Wedding, 2009 is a three-channel video work that has been exhibited in a number of galleries and art institutions. After relocating to Berlin, Ergun became concerned about the Turkish and Kurdish immigrant communities that had migrated to Germany since the 1960s. When asked about the factors that influenced him to perform this research and video production, he states that: I started going to weddings of Turkish and Kurdish people there, and in the end, I produced a three-channel video installation. This was a professional decision too, due to my ongoing fascination with Eija Lissa Ahtila’s work, which I saw for the first time at Okwui Enwezor’s Documenta in 2002. My background is theater, so I was also interested in the theatricality, in the idea of stage, in dance, in make-up, in the movement that dominates these celebrations.114

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Mélanie Bouteloup, "Le-Journal-de-La-Triennale-4, You do not stand in one place to watch a masquerade” n.d., (April 2012), Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), p.5. “Köken Ergun - Videoart at Midnight,” n.d., http://www.videoart-at-midnight.info/47-k oken-ergun/. Conversation: Köken Ergun with Özge Ersoy, “This Has Been Our Dream,” March 6, 2016, https://m-est.org/2016/03/06/this-has-been-our-dream/. (Accessed 3 November 2017).

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As a result of his above-mentioned interests, Ergun produces this video work by assembling images from his video archive, which includes diverse footages from Turkish and Kurdish weddings held in Berlin.115 His documentation of these weddings includes the preparation process, the rituals, which include the dances and the jewelry queues.  During the montage process, Ergun realizes that he is inspired by group dynamics, and in particular by the ritualistic aspects of these dynamics, and that he wants to explore this further.116 Following that, he concentrated on the ways in which these rituals encourage change in behaviors. The documentary demonstrates the reflection of this inclination through the filmmaker’s meticulous attention to the intricacies of the rituals. For this video installation, Yıldız expresses, “What strikes the audience is the tension between the gaze of the women— who look into the camera with the insecurity of becoming beautiful or not— and the fingers of the men who count the money and keep the jewelry— with the frustration of being strong or not.”117 Ergun brings to light these moments that are concealed inside the details of these rituals through this video. He also transformed this initiative into a PhD thesis as a result of his interest in the Turkish/Kurdish immigrant community in Germany and his access to his archive, which has a substantial amount of footage recorded at numerous weddings throughout Berlin, with the title, “Rituals of Isolation: Emotional Bonding in Wedding Ceremonies of the Turkish/Kurdish Community in Berlin”. This video project takes its name from the largely Turkish area in Berlin where the majority of the footage for the film was shot, according to the artist. Ergun documented the wedding rituals of Turkish and Kurdish immigrants in Berlin, resulting in a significant video archive.118 Going back to Ergun’s filmmaking approaches, particularly close-up shots, reveal emotions that, in turn, influence the audience’s perception of the film via changing their cognition. (Figure 30) Consequently, in this circumstance, the audience’s relationship with the documentary is primarily dependent on the direct relationship with the people who are a part of the

115 116 117 118

According to Adnan Yildiz (2008), Ergun recorded more than forty wedding ceremonies during this process. (Source: http://www.vdb.org/titles/wedding). Personal Communication with Köken Ergun, May 10, 2016. “Wedding | Video Data Bank,” http://www.vdb.org/titles/wedding. (Accessed August 24, 2016). About: Wedding, https://weddingkokenergun.wordpress.com (accessed 7 November 2017).

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weddings. Thus, the audience gains an understanding of the wedding rituals of this community while also witnessing the influence of cultural codes on these rituals. This outcome was achieved as a result of Ergun’s engagement to the Turkish/Kurdish community in Berlin before these weddings.

Figure 30: Stills from Köken Ergun, “Wedding” (2009), Three-channel video installation*

*Köken Ergun - Wedding Video Stills, https://weddingkokenergun.wordpress.com/pict ures/ (accessed 12 March 2018).

When we look back at the anthropological literature on wedding photography, we can observe that it is primarily borrowed from Asian cultures. It has been known that wedding photography and videography can be used to indicate fashion, class, and modernity. It has also been noted that wedding images can stage romance and consumption using popular cultural forms that may not even be associated with the marriage ceremony. In addition, it is clear from Ergun’s work that this component of wedding ceremonies influenced his interest in this hybrid culture in general. Ergun indicates that, among other things, Weddings are another form of life performance for me, and the Turkish community in Berlin is very “grotesque”, stuck between their conservative but relaxed Eastern origins and a liberal uptight society. In a way, I have found the perfect Turkish mutant bodies in Germany, and to see them perform with their confused identities with the traditional ceremony of a wedding refreshes me. 119 The reasons that led him to this engagement and documentation process with this group are highlighted by him in these terms. His interest in this “hybrid 119

Köken Ergun and November Paynter, “The Inspiration of Home,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 29, no. 1 (December 27, 2006), p. 112.

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community” is tied to his artistic interest in rituals, which he connects to his focus on them.

Ashura, 2011 As a single channel film, Ashura, 2011 was originally designed as a three-channel video project that was shown at a number of galleries and institutions, as well as at film festivals. The film received an award at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. Ashura is literally translated as “the tenth” in Arabic, and it refers to the tenth of Muharram, on which Hussein was martyred. Ashura is a solemn day of mourning observing the martyrdom of Hussein in 680 AD at Karbala. It is marked with mourning rituals and passion plays re-enacting the martyrdom.120 This community of Caferis perform a theatre performance pertaining to the historic Battle of Karbala as part of this ceremony, and at the conclusion of the performance, they participate in a public mourning procession to commemorate Hussein’s death. In this film, Köken Ergun documents the Ashura preparations of Caferis for their ceremony in Istanbul, Zeynebiye. (Figure 31) While documenting the preparations for this ceremony, he collaborates with the people of Zeynebiye.  Ergun states that he first came across the poster for the Ashura ceremony in Halkalı, but that he was already aware of the event because thousands of people attend it on that precise date, according to Ergun., he also considers this event aligned with a theatrical production. 121 That can remind us of the works of Robert Wilson whom Ergun worked together in the past that focuses on the dynamics of rituals. As a result of his interest in rituals, he is drawn into this project and becomes actively involved in their preparation process. Especially, in his play “Einstein on the Beach”, Robert Wilson, uses ritualistic aesthetics to create artistic performances based repetitive movements that feature rhythms. In some of his works, the group’s actions have references to the idea of a rituals or ceremonial attitude. James Brook also mentions this aspect in Wilson’s plays: “Staging the mise-en-scène as a situation or synthesizing space in which gestures could find purpose enabled me to unlock the ritualistic and ceremonial aspects of human behavior which underline Wil-

120 “What Is Ashura?” BBC News, December 6, 2011, sec. Middle East, http://www.bbc.com /news/world-middle-east-16047713., accessed May 4, 2017. 121 Personal Communication with Köken Ergun, October 5, 2016.

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Figure 31: Video Still from Köken Ergun’s Ashura (2011), Three-channel video installation*

*“Ashura Video Stills,” Ashura (blog), accessed January 3, 2018, https://a shurarituals.wordpress.com/stills/.

son’s productions.”122 This demonstrates Ergun’s aspiration to investigate rituals and ceremonies through the lens of understanding the ritualistic aspects in human behaviors, as well as the influence of Robert Wilson. The methods Ergun employs are also consistent with his earlier works, such as the aforementioned video project, Wedding (2009). During the course of this research, he explained that, prior to beginning the project, he became acquainted with the people who were participating in the Ashura ceremony. In the beginning, he went there with a simple camera and did not take any photographs or record any videos. During this time frame, he is only concerned with his engagement and collaboration with the community. However, Ergun also points out that because they are a closed community, it took time to convince them to collaborate, as they can be considered as a closed community.123 One year after starting the project, he returned to the area with a professional camera and shot all of the film with three cameras. At the end of the project, he shared the images with the Caferi community to obtain their opinions on the video.

122 123

James Brook, “Robert Wilson and an Aesthetic of Human Behaviour in the Performing Body” (University of Gloucestershire, 2013), 181. Personal Communication with Köken Ergun (Istanbul, 10.05.2016).

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Ergun’s primary goal was to become involved in the community by assisting them in recording their performance as well as assisting them in promoting and advertising their event. According to Ergun, he did not encounter any issues gaining entrance because the community was attempting to publicize their events. Furthermore, the concept of giving something back to the community was important to Ashura’s project in this regard. To a certain extent, this aspect alleviated the imbalance that existed between the researcher and the community. He went there for ten to fifteen days to have tea with them as they were going through their rehearsal procedure. This procedure is documented in this film project, which was created as they prepared for the Ashura ceremony. Ergun goes on to say that he was given exclusive access to the event and that at one point, he entered the backstage area with his camera when the actors were conversing with one another. This scene, in his opinion, was the pivotal moment of the video.124 The artist created a bridge between representation and reality by recording these images from the backstage area of a performance. The first screening took place at Zeynebiye, in the community’s Ramadan tent and, 125 during this screening, it was also watched by the leader of the community.126 Following that, film was screened or exhibited in various galleries and institutions. In November 2014, Ergun submitted this piece for the exhibition “Rainbow in the Dark” at SALT Galata, Istanbul. Ergun invited the community to visit the exhibition, nevertheless they were not able attend because of their distance to exhibition hall, since they are living in the outskirts of Istanbul. This exhibition curated by Sebastian Cichocki and Galit Eilat aimed to investigate how contemporary art challenges the outdated opposition between religious and secular societies.127 Ergun made a significant contribution to this exhibition by bringing the large carpet of the community from the 124 Personal Communication with Köken Ergun. 125 The Ramadan tents set up during the month of Ramadan to provide a place for people to eat together when the daily fast is broken. 126 According to Ergun, the leader of the community found the film impressive but on the other hand considered it a bit abstract. (Personal Communication with Köken Ergun, October 5, 2016) 127 “A New Exhibition at SALT Galata Explores Religion, Spirituality,” DailySabah, https://w ww.dailysabah.com/arts-culture/2014/11/22/a-new-exhibition-at-salt-galata-explores-r eligion-spirituality. (Accessed May 6, 2017)

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Figure 32: Köken Ergun’s video installation Ashura (2011) from the first screening of the video at an exhibition in Kunsthalle Winterthur, Switzerland*

*“Ashura at KH Winterthur,” Ashura (blog), accessed January 2, 2018, ht tps://ashurarituals.wordpress.com/exhibitions/kunsthalle-winterthur/.

mosque, which was a unique presentation technique. The audience could sit on this carpet in the exhibition hall while watching the documentary of the ceremony, which was encircled by a three-channel visual installation. It is true that Ergun’s purpose in bringing the carpet to the exhibition was to create a more realistic ambiance for the screening ceremony. (Figure 32) One of the events related with the film took place in SALT Galata in Istanbul and with simultaneous screening in SALT Ulus in Ankara. The title of the event was “Ethnography as Art, Art as Ethnography” which included a conversation between anthropologist Leyla Neyzi and Köken Ergun. The introduction of the event indicates, “Ethnographer Leyla Neyzi128 and artist Köken Ergun both view their respective practices as reconstructions or representations of their informants’ creative process. The conversation, based on the intersec-

128

Leyla Neyzi is a Turkish academician (anthropologist/sociologist/historian) who is currently working as a professor at Sabanci University, Istanbul.

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tions between Neyzi and Ergun’s work, touch upon topics such as reflexivity, ethics and the multiplicity of audiences.”129 As a part of this talk, Leyla Neyzi presented the oral history project “I am Free, but I am Committed: Youth from Diyarbakir and Muğla Speak” that she carried out as a project director. For this project they have chosen a province in Eastern Turkey (Diyarbakir) and a province in Western Turkey (Muğla), and conducted interviews with “young women and men mostly in their twenties from different social classes and cultural identities in urban and rural settings” to construct a comparative approach, and they “listened in detail to young people’s narratives about the past as well as about their everyday lives in the present.”130 As a result of these interviews, an archive of videos has been assembled and these videos were exhibited in Istanbul in 2012, and for the event “Ethnography as Art, Art as Ethnography” at SALT Galata. Some of these interview videos have been shown as a part of the event, as well as Ergun’s video “Ashura”. During this discussion, Neyzi and Ergun exchanged comments and questions regarding their respective projects. The primary elements that they both concentrated on were reflexivity and the amount of engagement, and Neyzi explained in detail about their project that “the participation of these young people is important for them, thus some of them took part in the project as an interviewer (...) This requires a constant close interaction with these young people and at the end, it turns into a part of researcher’s life rather than research.” 131 Following Ergun’s perspective, which places a focus on the special relationship that exists between an observer and the target group, this approach to project methodology can be found across the projects. As a result, there are striking parallels between the ways in which they both demonstrate their willingness to participate. First and foremost, this event’s focal point—the collaboration and parallels that exist between anthropology and art—opened the door to a whole different debate in terms of methodological approaches.

129

Şöyleşi /In Conversation: Leyla Neyzi & Köken Ergun, (source: https://www.youtube.co m/watch?v=Ci4GYwLSZJo) 130 “Tahayyül ve Karşılaşmalar Arasında: Diyarbakırlı ve Muğlalı Gençler Anlatıyor,” http:/ /www.gencleranlatiyor.org/static/hakkinda.html. (Accessed November 28, 2017). 131 ‘Şöyleşi / In Conversation: Leyla Neyzi & Köken Ergun’, pt. 15:15 https://www.youtube.c om/watch?v=Ci4GYwLSZJo. (Accessed 28 November 2017).

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In addition, during this conversation, Neyzi expressed her thoughts on the possibility of a cooperation, emphasizing the need of “expertise” by bringing up the display process of their project with young people, which she described. She explains that because she is unable to see the works through their visual characteristics, she places a high value on the artist’s point of view, and she goes on to say that her thoughts on the relationship between these two disciplines are based on the similarities between them in terms of concerns, senses, and themes. As an additional point of clarification, she states “what these two disciplines need is the methodological collaboration between them, as each of them need the other one’s expertise.” 132 Her approach to collaboration can also be related with the tendency in anthropology of turning back towards visuality, seen for example in the credentialing of material culture studies after a very long period of neglect and thus Neyzi’s speech emphasizes the new place of visuality that increased value across different disciplines. In an interview, Ergun mentions, “I am not surprised by the ethnographers working as artists or artists acting as an ethnographer.”133 Consequently, he acknowledges that his applied methodology has certain similarities to the fieldwork research of an ethnographer that emerges in the practice of social interaction.  From this perspective, up until the beginning of the Ashura project, Ergun positioned himself as an ethnographer or a field worker, and Zeynebiye is considered a field. While conducting his field research, he used a range of methodologies, including participation in the group’s everyday life, observing their activities, and documenting the process with a camera, which he believes has the potential to spark a discussion about inter-disciplinary connections.

6.1

Interpreting the Rituals and Ceremonies with a Practice of Anthropology in Art

A fieldwork study was used to engage with the target community in both Wedding and Ashura (as well as in some of Ergun’s other projects), and the processes were followed in both projects. His approach can be characterized as follows: first, he goes into the field with a simple camera, then he studies

132 133

SALT Online, Şöyleşi / In Conversation: Leyla Neyzi & Köken Ergun, pt. 15:15 (source: https:/ /www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci4GYwLSZJo) (accessed 28 November 2017). Sasmazer, Nilufer and Ergun, Köken, “Ritüeller Üzerinden ‘Ben’Den ‘Biz’e Doğru ‘Kitle ve İktidar’ Yolculuğu,” IstanbulArtNews, January 2014, 5, p.17.

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up on the subject, and finally, he returns to the field for the documentation process. This three-phased process, which he employs in his projects, broadens the scope of the issue by including the usage of a camera as a research tool. A simple camera is used for his first visit to the field, and it is clear he is collecting visual material for his own use and in this process, he focuses on the development of his research into the community.  This first visit’s images can be regarded archival material and an element of Ergun’s exploratory practice, given that he does not share this material with anyone else or apply it for any of his projects at this time. When he returns to the field following the process of researching, he begins working on his project using the material he has collected, and it is at this time that the aesthetic potentials of the film are unveiled. These video materials can no longer be regarded archival materials since they have been part of the artistic project itself. As an illustration, in the case of the “Wedding” project, he used a camera to shoot the wedding ceremonies and collected images from all phases of the wedding ceremony and reception. He later put together the images he had chosen to create a narrative about the ceremony, which he then displayed. The similar procedure was used with the “Ashura” project, in which he gathered some footage from the preparatory phase of the event as well as the ceremony itself, and then used this footage to construct the documentary. The result was that the shooting procedure for both projects was carried out in collaboration with the community, who were also aware that he was documenting their rituals. Furthermore, he makes the completed work available to them. As a result, it is clear these projects have been realized through the agency of these collaborations. It takes around three years for Ergun to complete all of his projects. His early works reveal that he possesses strong communication and human relations skills, and from this point forward, he wishes to work on projects that allow him to put these potentials to use. He also realizes that he does not like fiction, and that he prefers to live up to the experience by producing collectively and bringing people together. 134 So, he does not consider himself to be a studio artist in the conventional sense. The participant observation method that he used for his latter works, in particular, enabled him to get more involved in the community. Both projects, Ashura, and Wedding, are concerned with the idea of otherness: Ashura is concerned with being a minority, and Wedding is concerned 134

Personal Communication with Köken Ergun.

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with being an immigrant. The documentaries on the rituals of these communities, which are based on the concept of dialogue, serve to explain the dynamics of these minority and migrant communities. In this way, they assume the starting point of an anthropological approach that is founded on the link between identity and culture. As an artist, Ergun recommends particular strategies for the relationship between art and anthropology from this standpoint. His preparation prior to beginning filming, he says in one of his interviews, is similar to that of some ethnographers before beginning their fieldwork research. However, he prefers to examine these similarities and differences from a personal perspective, taking into account the possibility, or impossibility, of a specific link between the observer and the target group, and so views these processes as unique and time varying. In his research, he emphasizes the procedure itself. As a result, Ergun claims that “his favorite ethnographic works are in the form of diary; namely, the works which tells about the process by not making an implication or in other words, coming to a conclusion through the process.”135 This suggests that he is interested in contemporary anthropological debates and practices, and thus in the power dynamics that result from displaying representations of others. This method is frequently manifested in anthropology through reflexivity, even self-reflexivity. Examples of ethnographic diaries might be considered of as self-reports for fieldwork that capture the researcher’s experiences. This fosters reflexivity by putting the researcher’s experiences into context. Despite the fact that Ergun makes frequent references to the diary and the open creation process, it is difficult to ascertain a self-reflexive approach in his work. Pink describes being a reflexive ethnographer “involves interrogating how we are situated with the ethnographic research.”136 It would be possible to see how dissimilar features of these communities have influenced the artist as a result of this process. Another reflexive methodology that may be used in this circumstance would be to reflect the process of the investigation through the rituals of the community. To a certain extent, he interacts with the group in order to document their rituals, but he does not employ any methods that are relevant to his own reality and instead retains his position

135

136

Sasmazer, Nilufer and Ergun, Köken, ‘Ritüeller Üzerinden ‘Ben’Den ‘Biz’e Doğru “Kitle ve İktidar” Yolculuğu’, IstanbulArtNews (Istanbul, January 2014), 5 edition, (p. 17), Istanbul. Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, 37.

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as an observer of the processes. It is therefore critical to discuss his works in terms of reflexivity, as the researcher’s interaction with the community becomes more of a concern at this point.

7.

Situationist Strategies in Everyday Life: Dilek Winchester

Dilek Winchester is an artist located in Istanbul who works in a variety of media. During 1994 and 1995, she attended Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, and between 1995 and 1998, she attended Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London. Her master’s degree is from London Guildhall University (2002), and her PhD is from Marmara University (2009) in Istanbul which is practice-based.137 Among the topics that she addresses in her work are translation, literature, language, drama, oral history, and emotional expressions, to name a few. Her selected exhibitions include Century of Centuries, SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul (2015), Anyone Could Be a Sculptor One Day, Spot Production Fund, Istanbul (2014), HomeWorks, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2013), Here Together Now, Matadero Madrid (2013), Selling Snails in the Muslim Neighbourhood, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Munster (2013), and a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (2012).138 In the framework of socially engaged art, her artistic activity can be seen as formulating and applying various strategies of collaboration and participation. As a result, the fundamental topics and methods of her works are social communication and engagement that brings people together.

Çay, Çekirdek, Çoluk, Çocuk (Tea, Sunflower Seed, Children etc.) (2005) One of Winchester’s artistic projects that can be considered in the framework of collaboration and participation, Çay, Çekirdek, Çoluk, Çocuk (Tea, Sunflower Seed, Children etc.) was carried out in Diyarbakır with the Kurdish women working in a laundry.  The psychologist Arzu Soysal, who specializes as a psychotherapist and psychodramatist, cooperated with her on this project. Based

137 138

“Dilek Winchester, Visual Material,” 2017, SALT Research Turkish Artist Folders. “Apexart:: Apricots from Damascus:: Atif Akin and Dilek Winchester,” accessed September 15, 2017, http://apexart.org/exhibitions/akin-winchester.php#sthash.aA22FYNC.dp uf.

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on a free association game that was played with the women in this area, the project was conceived and implemented. During the game, Winchester and Soysal brought damaged or forgotten objects that they had found around their house. For this particular game, each woman chose a personal object that they identify with themselves. At the conclusion of this project, a book was created, which contained photographs of the objects in inquiry. Nonetheless, as Winchester acknowledges, the photographs of the women were not included in this volume as a result of the artist’s deliberate decision. She also remarks that, if they took photos together as a memory of their collaboration, she would not prefer to use it.139 As a result, the memory photographs are not included in the final product of the project. It also demonstrates the artist’s approach to applying documentation procedures, as well as her ethical decision in relation to the challenge of displaying faces while documenting and collaborating with this community. Specifically, this project serves as an example of how to build a ’game’ to gain a better understanding of a community, and in this context, it requires proper examination. The artist is aware of the fact that games can be used as an agency for the development of trusting relationships because they provide a platform for interaction. Another similar project was conducted in a middle-class area of Istanbul with the mothers of Winchester’s friends, Likör ve Çikolata/Liquor and Chocolate (2006). This project is designed similar to the project titled, Çay, Çekirdek, Çoluk, Çocuk (Tea, Sunflower Seed, Children etc.) that includes the same free association game – just the actors and the location of the game is different. A fruit or vegetable that represents her and her family members was chosen by the player during the game, and the book is an arrangement of still-life photographs and texts that were produced while documenting the process.

Kayısı Kent A4 – Apricot City A4, 2010 Kayısı Kent A4/Apricot City A4 is a fanzine/zine-like-thing that was published as a project initiated by Dilek Winchester. Each time, a different artist or artist collective made each issue and copies of this zine sold by the mobile photocopiers at the streets and various neighborhoods around Istanbul. Apricot City A4 managed to survive on the streets of Istanbul between February and 139

Personal Communication with Dilek Winchester (Istanbul, 30.03.2016).

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December of 2010. It was Dilek Winchester herself who put together the inaugural edition of the zine. Subsequent issues were made by several artists including Evrim Kavcar, Nalan Yırtmaç, Delphine Rigaud, Stephan Kurr, Jorge Mendez Blake, Burak Bedenlier, Yasemin Özcan Kaya, Burak Delier and Antrepo.140 PVC pushcarts, which are multifunctional vehicles that include a laminator, a copier machine, a generator, and a cassette tape player, were used to distribute Apricot City A4 throughout Istanbul. (Figure 33) During the day, pushcart operators can be seen all around the city, but particularly in Eminönü, Osmanbey, and Kadiköy. A considerable number of these operators are from Eastern Anatolia, namely the city of Malatya, which is well-known for its apricots. Some of their vehicles named “Kayısı Kent I, II...” (Apricot City I, II…) and fanzine’s name referenced these inscriptions. During the exhibition, copies of this zine were printed and stapled on these modest portable pushcarts and sold, on demand, for a few Liras.141 In this project, the connection was predicated on reciprocal benefit, as street vendors were also earning money off of the zines they were selling to people. Winchester, on the other hand, admits that convincing street vendors to sell the zine was a difficult task for her to accomplish.142 Before beginning the project, she states that she has spent a significant amount of time with them in order to explain the scope of the project and her objectives. In order to build trust with the street vendors, she must first conduct a delicate face-to-face communication process with them. She then begins the project by creating a series of fanzines that will be copied and sold by these street vendors across the city. This basic review of her works demonstrates the main methodology of the artist, which is open to interpretation in light of recent critiques of socially engaged art and is particularly useful for determining at which points she employs anthropological research techniques. Significantly, she refers to this approach in contemporary art in Turkey by addressing Nil Yalter as one of the first representatives of this art practice, who is also referred to as an inspirational artist by Winchester. Winchester admits that, in Turkey, appreciation of Yalter’s value in Turkish art occurred around 2000s, which she thinks is really

140 ‘Kayisi Kent A4’ http://kayisikenta4.blogspot.com. (Accessed 15 September 2017). 141 “Apexart:: Apricots from Damascus:: Atif Akin and Dilek Winchester.” 142 Personal Communication with Dilek Winchester.

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Figure 33: The first issue of Dilek Winchester’s 2010 fanzine project Kayısı Kent A4 and one of mobile photocopiers as one this projects distributor at Osmanbey, Istanbul*

*“KAYISI KENT A4: Osmanbey,” KAYISI KENT A4 (blog), March 21, 2010, http://kayisikenta4.blogspot.com/2010/03/osmanbey.html.

late.143 Another reference for her was Susan Hiller, an anthropologist working as an artist.144 The key influences on Winchester’s art practice that led her to deal with social issues through a collaborative process may be traced back to these sources by taking these considerations into account. Winchester’s practice, on the other hand, differs from those of the previously named artists in a number of ways. In the first issue of Kayısı Kent A4 - Apricot City A4 features an introduction to the concept and objective of this project, as well as a description of how the distribution network operates in the city. Furthermore, it contains a transcript of an interview conducted by Dilek Winchester. The PVC pushcarts that served as the center of this project broadcast recorded tape announcements to passersby in order to promote their services. It is noteworthy that

143 Personal Communication with Dilek Winchester. 144 For detailed information on Susan Hiller’s works, see: 4.2 Referred Artists in ArtAnthropology Collaborations.

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the first issue has an interview with the experienced announcer Ece, who is the voice actor behind the sound recordings that are continuously played in the tape recorders of these pushcarts. This voice is apparently known to anyone who lives in one of Turkey’s major cities, particularly Istanbul, because it has become a part of the everyday life therein. Winchester undertook a preliminary investigation in the record-sellers’ bazaar and on the old peninsula of Istanbul, where she inquired of the record sellers for Ece’s contact information. She stated that she visited multiple record shops and other similar locations until she discovered her phone number, and that after conducting further research, Winchester contacted her. As a result, Winchester maintains, Ece invited her to her own apartment, where she explained how she got started delivering these announcements and her own experience with voice acting.145 It can be considered a crucial part of the project because it includes research into the issue as well as transcribing of the results of the investigation that Winchester conducted.

7.2

A Situation of Encounter and Participation in Winchester’s Works

Kayısıkent A4/ Apricot City A4 demonstrates how an artistic project can incorporate research practices at various levels; for instance, while developing an ethnographic fieldwork in the preparation process of the project, Winchester searches for mobile photocopiers around the city with an aim to persuade them to take part as a seller of fanzine in the project, and at a later stage, she conducts another research to locate the announcer Ece to conduct an interview with her. Winchester brings together a range of methodologies in a single project. Herein, two theoretical approaches are brought to the forefront in order to comprehend the project in its entirety: “Encounter” and “Participation”. In terms of the encounter concept, I would like to start by mentioning the distribution of zines as an instrument for facilitating encounters. Indeed, this method requires considerable effort since street sellers are decentralized and continually moving throughout the city, making it difficult to meet them at a certain location and time. In the same way, since these PVC pushcarts are not stable, finding the fanzine in the city is entirely dependent on the idea of luck or coincidences. As a result, these conditions demonstrate why the term “encounter” is critical in understanding the overall structure of this project. 145

Personal Communication with Dilek Winchester.

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In this instance, zine serves as a tool for accelerating encounters, or creating a space for encounters. In the same manner, for the project Çay, Çekirdek, Çoluk, Çocuk (Tea, Sunflower Seed, Children etc.) (2005), through the game, we may observe the instrumentalization of everyday objects and gain a better understanding of the dynamics of Kurdish women’s lives through the objects with which they identify themselves. In addition to the interpretation of the concept of encounter in her work, her project can be viewed in the theoretical consideration through the link of Santiago Sierra’s project in Venice Biennale, titled Persons Paid to Have Their Hair Dyed Blond (2001). For this work, Sierra invites illegally working street vendors in Venice with migrant background to have their hair dyed blond by paying them in return when the art world elite comes to Venice for the biennial. As a result, he made a point of emphasizing the presence of these street vendors for the biennial visitors. If we interpret these two works correlatively, Winchester’s method differs from Sierra’s in several ways, the first of which is the payment to the community. She does not directly pay them; on the contrary, she provides them with a material - a fanzine - to sell in addition to the income they generate from the PVC pushcarts. Meanwhile, she draws attention to the fact that they are a part of everyday life of the city. The importance of encounter in artistic practices recalls the Situationists that place art in everyday life by removing the boundaries between art and life. These practices are used to challenge and subvert art, forms of cultural expression and the urban environment. They are usefully deployed in a nocturnal, urban environment to challenge the emotional, physical, and experiential planning of cities. Therefore, drift, change, chance, encounter, and adventure underpin the Situationists techniques for integral art on a human scale.146 These practices place a strong emphasis on diverse types of participation that are based on the concept of encounter, also with reference to psychogeography methods, which has a lot in common with the various forms of action in this project that depends upon an exploration of the city through a spatial perception. In addition, Marcus has proposed that anthropology and comparable forms of practice can be linked together: there is even a more relevant parallel world of endeavor in the arts with which the fieldwork tradition in anthropology might connect and compare

146 Adam Barnard, ‘The Legacy of the Situationist International: The Production of Situations of Creative Resistance’, Capital & Class, 28 (2004), pp.103–124 (p. 108).

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itself. This is the modernist line of installation, performance, event-based conceptual art movements with roots in Dada, Surrealism but also the Situationists and Fluxus, among others. The scene of spectacle in such art works, created in the context of real-life situations, is what is imagined rather than the scene of encounter of anthropology, but the two are not unrelated and it would be interesting to use this affinity to think through what anthropology might learn from such art projects.147 The significance of artistic interventions in real life, as addressed by Markus, is informed by avant-garde artistic practices such as surrealist conceptions of encounter and chance. Additionally, these terms demonstrate a growing interest in experimental activities in anthropology, such as integrating the “encounter” concept to fieldwork studies. I consider that George Marcus’ (2006) approach to this prospective engagement is key to understanding the motivations underlying Dilek Winchester’s artistic practice, which presents as an alternative to fieldwork research. The project begins with her contacting the field, which is comprised of the target community in motion, and she collaborates with them through the distribution and sale of the fanzines. To put it another way, she hopes to affect the way people think about the city through this practice by highlighting the importance of walking around the city with an open mind to new experiences and encounters, also known as flânerie as a practice. In light of this investigation, the participant observation approach developed by Dilek Winchester adds another dimension to the topic, in addition to the experimental strategies that the project employs in accordance with Situationist principles and practices. In the context of art and anthropology, this artistic process exemplifies the growing number of practices in the arts in which artists take on the role of participant-observers in order to better understand the dynamics of a community, which are becoming increasingly common. To put it another way, as Desai points out, “artists spent time in communities informally talking to various people, reading about the community and often conducting interviews in hopes of gaining an understanding of the experiences of the community.”148 Winchester’s research on the announcer and the encounter concept in her works is based on a focused inves147

Marcus, “Contemporary Fieldwork Aesthetics in Art and Anthropology: Experiments in Collaboration and Intervention,” 269. 148 Dipti Desai, ‘The Ethnographic Move in Contemporary Art: What Does It Mean for Art Education?’, Studies in Art Education, (2002), pp. 307–23 (p. 309).

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tigation into the recent shift in contemporary art of artists who use ethnography as an artistic practice. As a result of this investigation, a range of issues regarding the relationship between art and anthropology are raised.

8.

A Critical Approach to Documentation: Artıkişler Video Collective

Artıkişler is a video collective based in Ankara, Turkey, established by a group of independent documentary and video directors as a visual art platform in 2007. Collective’s works deal with the question of how videos contribute to social activism and change, and thus engage with the history of activism and social disciplines. According to the description of the collective, their work focuses on issues such as ethnic discrimination, political violence, and massacres towards Alevis, Kurds and Armenians, anti-democratic policies, urban transformation, and gentrification, forced migration, refugees, labor in urban space and collective social memory. While bringing these issues into focus, they aim mainly to effectively influence the audience. Video research, video activism, political space, collective practices, visual memory, and autonomous archiving are the key concepts for their works.149 Some video installations of the collective have been shown on various platforms: “The Fire and The Wedding” (multi-channel, 2007-13) is on Kurdish forced migration and their fight for the bread in Turkish metropolis. “Surplus of Istanbul” (multi-channel, 2014) explores the waste production in Istanbul’s two districts that are under violent urban transformation plans, also discusses ethnic and class discriminations in the city. “An Ankara Resistance” (12 channel, 2012) is about urban transformation projects run by the municipality, and the story of one resistant neighborhood and their struggle against big patrons. “Poison in the Land” (3-channel, 2012) tells the tragic stories of people who were injured by mines in Syria border, done in collaboration with Human Rights Association”. “Stadium” (2-channel, 2015) focuses on football as a survival strategy for African refugees in Istanbul. “Tahayyül / Imagination I-IV” (multi-channel, 2015) is a video serial on the political collective memory of the country: the Alevi massacre in 1994, a story of a demolished Armenian church, the Tekel 149 The collective is organized around the website http://artikisler.net/ and they publish their videos and texts regularly through their official website.

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tobacco workers resistance that lasted 78 days in Ankara in 2010, videograms of the Gezi uprising, and the route and life struggles of Syrian refugees starting from Syrian border to Istanbul.150 Currently Alper Şen is working as the coordinator of “Artıkişler”. He was born in Ankara in 1977 and graduated from the department of political science, and then started his master’s degree in Cinema. Alper Şen’s involvement in collaborative video-activism projects goes back to 2000, as he has been working with diverse video collectives in Turkey and Europe.151 In addition to the documentary of “Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara”, he directed two documentaries on football in Germany and France and worked on ‘Antoni Muntadas’ video project “On Translation: Açık Radyo”. He was also the co-curator of the video exhibition “The Fire and The Wedding” exhibited in Istanbul and Diyarbakır.152 Alper Şen is also a former member of Ankara-based video-activist collective Karahaber153 with Oktay Ince. This collective was the first video-activist group in Turkey and was particularly active between 2005 and 2011. Mostly they aim to investigate the possible connection between images, ideas, and actions. The first videos that they released were focused on Mehmet Tarhan154 ’s press statement on conscientious objection, honor killings, and hate crimes against LGBT people. Kara Haber’s purpose was to increase awareness of these situations. 155 The roots of this approach in video-making reach back to the 1920’s, to the group of Russian filmmakers “Kinok” who gathered around the Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov. The Karahaber collective was influenced by Vertov’s works, and their practice is centered on the principles of collective image production as a result of this. They used images of political struggle and docu-

150 “Artıkişler Kolektifi,” accessed September 15, 2017, https://www.facebook.com/artikisle r.wastedworks/about. 151 These video collectives include VideA, Cinema for Peace, Film Collective, KozaVisual, NisaMasa and Karahaber. 152 Alper Şen, Özge Çelikaslan, and Pelin Tan, eds., “Istanbul’un Artığı – Surplus of Istanbul” (Istanbul: Friedrich Ebert Stiftung & EU Sivil Düşün Programme, 2014). 153 Karahaber means ‘Black News’ in Turkish. 154 Mehmet Tarhan was the first person refused to perform military service in Turkey. Therefore, his statement on the refusal of mandatory military service has an importance in Turkish history. 155 B. Soydan, Türkiye’de Anarşizm: Yüz Yıllık Gecikme, Bugünün Kitapları (İletişim, 2013), p. 324.

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mented issues pertaining to workers’ movements, as well as other struggles and demonstrations throughout Turkey. Clearly, collective work and archiving were significant areas of interest for their works as a result of their collaborations. According to Depeli’s article, their approach to the images possesses the following characteristics: The Karahaber collective started out with the inspiration from Vertov and under the banner “From the image of the action to the action of image”; with the intention to change the world through the images they produced. Rather than following a constructivist approach, the group sought to establish the relationship between the image and representation from a reflective/mimetic perspective, manifested on the autonomous power of the images, in order to bring about political change and collective action.156 Artıkişler is the latest collective that Alper Şen has founded and worked with. Timescapes Project in 2005 was the first art project with which they have been involved. This project investigates the aesthetics of non-linear film montage, which does not follow a standardized format, in order to investigate a new form of cinematic narrative through the collaborative work of artists from various countries in West, South, and Eastern Europe. Both members of the Artikisler Collective, Oktay Ince and Alper Şen were involved in this project. Projects are still being developed by the Artikisler Collective, which continues to operate under the ideals of collective working. They exhibit their work with other collectives that have similar orientations and senses of direction, focusing on breaking point issues of Turkey’s recent social history. Their recent exhibitions Surplus of Istanbul (2014–15) and The Fire and the Wedding (2012–13) took place in Istanbul, Diyarbakır, Belgrade and Berlin. They have also been included recently in some group exhibitions such as, The Good Cause: Architecture of Peace and Vocabulary of Hospitality, Studio-X, Istanbul (2015), and the third Çanakkale Biennial (2012). In 2005, Artikisler Collective has presented a series of video works in 14th Istanbul Biennial in 2015. The reediting of footages of Tekel Workers resistance from the digital media archive of ‘bak.ma’, in addition to the found footages, is also included in the presentation. Tekel Workers resistance was an action against the privatization of Tekel tobacco factories in 2009. Thousands of workers gathered in Ankara and set up a camp for their resistance. 156

Gülsüm Depeli, ‘Being an Activist Camera: The Case of the Karahaber Collective in Turkey’, Current Sociology, 64.1, 2015, pp. 122–39 (p. 126).

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Demonstration of the workers confronted by excessive force and police brutality. Various video recordings of the resistance have been collected and digitalized by the members of Artikisler Collective for this work. It is possible to think of this archive in this context as a political act. This instance and their body of work illustrate that they were primarily concerned with the functional aspects of filmmaking rather than the artistic and aesthetic appeal. They documented social movements and resistances in order to create an archive that would operate as a resource for social justice. As a result, their early video works are plain records of the struggles. In other words, they do not regard the camera to be anything more than a recording device and a medium for distributing videos through their websites.

Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara, 2007 In 2001, “Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara” started with Alper Şen’s acquaintance with the garbage collectors in Ankara who have Kurdish origin from Hakkari. These scavengers were forced to leave their hometown after the Turkish Military burned the area, including their village, due to the conflict with the PKK. Consequently, they moved to Ankara. Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara (2007) tell the story of these scavengers who pick paper from the garbage to sell to recycling companies in Ankara. (Figure 34) This documentary also shows these garbage collectors’ struggle against the police. Collecting and selling papers is restricted due to the standards of European Union on paper recycling, therefore they experience brutal police violence. Artıkisler recorded this violence and were thus able to prove the occurrence of police brutality. Moreover, they have managed to draw public attention to this injustice by sending footage of this film to an independent leftist TV channel, Hayat TV. This is one of the most significant impacts of the film, as the documentary helped the scavengers to win their case and supported them in their struggle. Alper Şen worked with one of his friends during the shooting process of the film. His friend “Mustafa”, who normally works as a doctor in Ankara, was with him during the whole filming process. At one point, the camera pans over Mustafa, and Alper Şen asks him about his motivation for shooting this documentary. This scene was at the point that scavengers did not want Mustafa and Alper Şen around with their cameras because of the ongoing conflict. Correspondingly, Alper asks Mustafa this question:

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Figure 34: A still (06’08”) from Artıkişler Collective’s video Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara (2007), 70’*

*Artıkişler Collective, Hakkari’den Ankara’ya Kağıtcilar / Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara, accessed January 18, 2018, https://vimeo.com/724441 71.

“Are their lives interesting?”157 Alper Şen’s discomfort about being in the role of an “observer” while shooting and the possibility of being involved in this project as a result of their interest, manifests itself in this provoking question which caught him off balance. (Figure 35) This question was also skeptically directed to himself for being doubtful about documenting the everyday lives of scavengers. After that point, he remarks that, he comprehends that it is not a “reality of life”; it is just an ordinary reality. At that point, Alper Şen realizes that their work accidentally corresponds with anthropology.158 This resemblance implicates the theoretical debates in anthropology in the context of how researcher is situated within the ethnographic research context. Another important aspect of the documentary is that the boundaries between the researcher and the participant, in this case, the garbage collectors,

157 158

Artıkisler Collective, Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara, 2007, 3' 10", https://vimeo.com/ 21502584. Personal Communication with Alper Şen (Istanbul, 10.04.2016).

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Figure 35: A still (3’12”) from Artıkişler Collective’s video Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara (2007), 70’*

*Artıkisler Collective. Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara, 2007, 3’ 12”, htt ps://vimeo.com/21502584.

were somehow eliminated. In this context, there is a noteworthy scene in the documentary. During the recording process, the scavengers switch roles and start to play the role of the interviewer by asking each other questions while shooting each other with the camera.159 This turn plays a significant role in terms of the theory and practice of documentary by virtue of converting the roles of the observed into the documentary filmmaker. In other words, the boundaries between the observer and the subject disappears in this contextualization. In such a way, camera is no more a tool for documentation but an interesting object that belongs to everyday life. In this sense, this corresponds to the usage of camera in the works of Rouch, that the camera influences the situation itself with its presence. Another relevant work of the collective, Destroyed Sinan, tells the story of Kurdish peasants in Diyarbakır in the struggle for their land. This video was shown at the 65th Berlinale – Forum Expanded Section with a panel talk with Angela Melitopoulos. During part of this released talk, they discussed the

159

Artıkisler Collective, Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara, 2007, pt. 1:00:37. https://vimeo .com/21502584.

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structure of the video and video-activism.160 Destroyed Sinan is a restored video, as a result of the violence in this area since the 1990s. A villager called Mecit Avanos filmed it, and during the filming, a military policeman attacked him, thus the tape in his camera was ripped and damaged. Before this event, Oktay Ince and Alper Şen had been following the struggle of the village. After obtaining the damaged film, they restored it and then released it with their comments.

Surplus of Istanbul, 2014 Surplus of Istanbul (2014) is a video research piece carried out by Alper Şen in which he followed the waste collectors in Istanbul, especially Beyoğlu and Ümraniye. All the videos, texts, photographs, and news about this subject are collected in its official website.161 This project is also related to the works of the Artikisler and Karahaber collectives produced since 2001 in Ankara and Hakkari. The project was supported by the Sivil Düşün EU Program, a program launched by the Delegation of the European Union to Turkey to provide support to NGOs, civil collaborations, networks, platforms, and activists that work in rights-based activities. This project has been shown as a video and photograph exhibition titled “Surplus of Istanbul” at Depo, Istanbul in 2014. It deals with the working and living conditions of waste pickers, as well as the causal dynamics, such as migration and unemployment, that lead them to undertake this economic activity.162 Through the documentation, it is aimed to show the consequences of as urban transformation, occupational safety and health, child labor, ethnic identity, migration on the lives of waste pickers. For this project, Alper Şen follows the traces of rubbish in Istanbul. According to Şen, this video journal serves as a kind of mapping.163 In addition to showing the system of waste management in Istanbul, this work touch upon the issues of identity, migration, and gentrification.

160 65th Berlinale - Forum Extended Panel, “What If ? Revisiting the Images,” 2005. https://vime o.com/122266028. 161 ‘İstanbul’un Artığı’, İstanbul’un Artığı http://istanbulunartigi.net/ (accessed 15 September 2017). 162 ‘Video Platform Artıkişler Kolektifi Redefines Waste’, Hürriyet Daily News, http://www. hurriyetdailynews.com/video-platform-artikisler-kolektifi-redefines-waste.aspx?pageI D=238&nID=65294&NewsCatID=38. (Accessed 15 September 2017). 163 Personal Communication with Alper Şen.

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8.1

Rethinking Artikisler Collective’s Practices Through Anthropology

The works of the Artikisler Collective can be examined through the lens of visual anthropology. In the first instance, their approach to ethnographic films includes concerns about the connections between their works and ethnographic and documentary cinema methods in general. Alper Şen uses the well-known American silent documentary Nanook of the North (1922) as an illustration of their point of view, directed by Robert J. Flaherty.164 It has been frequently remarked that, it is not a regular documentary film, and can in fact be seen lying between “fiction” and “documentary”. Many of the activities seen in the film were performed for the camera rather than simply being “documented” by it, so “the filmmaker actively involved his subjects in the filming, telling them what he wanted them to do, responding to their suggestions, and directing their performance for the camera”.165 Consequently, this documentary raises questions about how reality is represented on film. For instance, Nanook’s name was in fact Allakariallak, and his “wife” shown in the film was not really his wife. Nonetheless, notwithstanding its cultural or aesthetic significance, this film serves as a fundamental arena for critical arguments in documentary filmmaking. Şen takes this form of documentary as a reference point because it highlights s the role of fiction in the documentation process. He makes the following statement: Actually, Nanook is an imaginary person, he does not even exist. It exists but just in the world of Flaherty. No matter how hard we try, this Nanook will be ever Flaherty’s Nanook. Maybe he has another name, we cannot ever know. (…) It says, this is a reality, and it speaks about one reality: This is what Eskimo is.166 He maintains this way of thinking in the production of documentary as it only shows the constructed and one-sided reality about the subject. With these conscious decisions about the theoretical framework of documentaries, Artikisler brings the ethnographic film tradition into discussion in terms of the implications of the “fictional”.

164 Personal Communication with Alper Şen. 165 W. Rothman, Documentary Film Classics, Cambridge Studies in Film (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 1. 166 ‘Personal Communication with Alper Şen’.

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Another case that Alper Şen brought up to exemplify their approach was “Uprising” (2013) by Peter Snowdon. This film is “entirely based on videos made by citizens and long-term residents of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen.”167 Snowdon creates an imaginary Arab revolutionist in this video. This work deals with such concepts as Arab Revolution, Arab Spring and through this conceptualization; he creates a fictional “6-days revolution” documentary, which is made by combining YouTube videos. For Şen, it is fictional but also it is certainly real, as it constitutes real activist images about the revolution.168 Through the comparison of these two documentaries, it could be said that “Nanook of the North” is attempting to disprove misconceptions about Eskimos. “The Uprising,” on the other hand, evokes preconceptions about a subject or an event in the audience. These two documentaries demonstrate the potential of images while also demonstrating how the narrative, scripts or editing prevent the images of being fully themselves or being distorted, just like opinions control knowledge. Therefore, “Artikisler” positions their documentary practice by analyzing the predicaments of documentary in terms of theoretical debates. They are generally aware of the fact that encounters are one of the most essential components of the visual research, and they work with the motivation to maintain most of these possibilities around the encounter factor. As a result, their output is built on approaches that portray their daily life as a whole, with its encounters, that may find their reflection in which Ingold integrate art with anthropology, as a way of understanding of ‘living with the world’169 . Furthermore, these processes correspond to the concepts of filmmaker Rouch on encounters, and by engaging in active research while being open to encounters, it may be possible to open up new pathways of witnessing situations that articulate and represent the idea of “truth.” Artikisler Collective’s strategy is based upon is that images should be made available to the public rather than going into private ownership. It is possible to notice a reflection of this principle in their imagery, as well as their

Ilka Eickhof, All That Is Banned Is Desired: ‘Rebel Documentaries’ and the Representation of Egyptian Revolutionaries, 2016. pp. 13-22, (p.21). 168 Personal Communication with Alper Şen. 169 Ingold embraces anthropology as a form of interpreting life as a way of moving in the world. For further reading: Ingold, T. 2011. Being alive: essays on movement, knowledge and description. London: Taylor & Francis.

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approach toward collaborative working methodologies, in their artistic practices. The documentary “Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara,” which was previously mentioned, contains an excerpt that highlights their point of opinion on the subject. This prevents them from having to accept the role of observer through giving the scavengers the control of the camera. In other words, they discover a method of overcoming the problem of ethnographic authority as a result of their efforts. As members of the Artikisler Collective investigate the topic of staging dialogues while conducting a research or documentation project, this documentary demonstrates their technique by presenting nonfictional and everyday conversations between scavengers, in addition to interviews within other members of the collective. Considering these scenes, this video work resembles Heike Becker’s project, How We See Our Culture: Photographic Self-Representations from the Cape Flats, South Africa in many aspects, as this project also involves providing cameras to the residents in the periphery of Cape Town to represent their culture visually.170 Changing the role of the observer and observed with this scene also addresses another power relation that corresponds to the story-telling function of the subject of research— even as Deleuze calls it “story-telling function of the poor”: “What is opposed to fiction is not the real; it is not the truth which is always that of the masters or colonizers; it is the story-telling function of the poor, in so far as it gives the false the power which makes it into a memory, a legend, a monster.”171 As a result, through interrogating and deconstructing power relations between masters and colonizers, as well as between observer and observed, Artikisler closes the distance to the truth, as Deleuze refers to it. I consider that the shift in power dynamics that occurs during the process of visual documentation is vital to overcoming the problem of single-voiced ethnographic authority, which has been a source of contention in critical anthropology since the 1980s. This debate in cultural anthropology, which calls into question the authority of the ethnographer, is particularly evident in Writing Culture, edited by James Clifford and George Marcus. In addition, they make the following observation on dialogical processes in the preface to this book:

170 For further reading: Heike Becker, “How We See Our Culture: Photographic SelfRepresentations from the Cape Flats, South Africa,” Visual Anthropology 28, no. 5 (October 20, 2015): 373–97, https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2015.1085791. 171 Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, 150.

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Polyvocality was restrained and orchestrated in traditional ethnographies by giving to one voice a pervasive authorial function and to others the role of sources, “informants,” to be quoted or paraphrased. Once dialogism and polyphony are recognized as modes of textual production, monophonic authority is questioned, revealed to be characteristic of a science that has claimed to represent cultures.172 As a result, Artikisler’s method can be considered in a constructive way in relation to the Writing Culture debates in anthropology. As can be seen in the dialogue between the scavengers in the film “Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara”, they are concerned not to dominate the conversation and take over the subject matter entirely. By calling into question the one-sided authoritative dialogical processes in place, the target group is no longer seen as “informants” with a critical ethical standpoint, which might have a consequence of not putting them on the margins in the society, or namely not to marginalize them. This positioning is also reflected in the words of Alper Şen, who asks in the middle of the video: “Are their lives interesting?”. In this context, the query signifies a questioning of who is observing what and for what purpose. I adopt that this question was a reaction to the paralysis caused by the difficulty of collaborating with scavengers. At this point, he is confronted with the difficulties of locating appropriate ways for observing the lives of scavengers and changes his focus to his friend and collaborator Mustafa, expressing his concern about the issues that have arisen as a result of the collaboration and observation. Art and anthropology are being engaged in this manner, and this presents some issues for the artists involved. Moreover, Artikisler Collective’s works and texts have numerous references to social sciences and particularly to anthropology. While pursuing their bachelor’s degree at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, they had their first encounter with documentary filmmaking. They began to partici-

172

J. Clifford, G.E. Marcus and N.M.) School of American Research (Santa Fe, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, Advanced Seminar Series (University of California Press, 1986), p. 15.

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pate in Ulus Baker’s 173 courses held in GİSAM174 . They were impacted by Baker’s theoretical approach to video and documentary filmmaking during these courses, and they eventually put his theories into practice with their own videos. In terms of reconsidering cinema and documentary practices, their works and writings include various references to Ulus Baker’s theoretical approach. For instance, the book that they released for the “Surplus of Istanbul” contains an article of Baker’s, “From Opinions to Images: Towards a Sociology of Affects”. This article is the abstract of Baker’s doctoral thesis that aims to examine a sociology of affects in parallel to documentary filmmaking by considering the transformation of images throughout the time. For Baker, it is becoming important while “everyone can observe how each generation ‘thinks’ with images more than with texts and how powerful are today’s technologies of images.”175 He proposes a new image type influenced by Godard’s videographic works and Debray’s videosphere. In this book, Baker maintains that “when documentary transcends being just a document, it really becomes documentary”176 With this approach, he aims to build a structure of a visual sociology that cannot be pragmatically categorized or archived. Largely, he explores that, while, we are living in the age of images, how can we resist mainstream sociology of opinions with images and affects. The lack of visual practices in text-based social sciences leads to disregarding significant stores of information that can easily transferred via images to create powerful visibilities, so Baker situates this theory of sociology of affects in parallel to documentary filmmaking. The fact that this correlation exists becomes more definitive when we reconsider the critiques of representation in anthropology. In response to what has been termed “the crisis of representation” these arguments have compelled for more use of visual methods, particularly ethnographic film, photography, and documentary filmmaking, as well as an investigation into the 173

174 175 176

Baker was an influential figure in contemporary political theory in Turkey, both as a prolific author, and as a professor of sociology, media, and film theory. From late 80's till his early death in 2007, he frequently wrote for major Turkish scholarly journals. (Source: http://pyromedia.org/redtv/ulus.html) Audiovisual Systems Research and Application Center of Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Alper Şen, Özge Çelikaslan, and Pelin Tan, “Istanbul’un Artığı – Surplus of Istanbul.” p. 86. Ulus Baker, Kanaatlerden Imajlara: Duygular Sosyolojisine Doğru, 5th ed. (Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, n.d.), 288.

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function of visual methods in portraying culture. The expansion and intersection of visual methods with many disciplines of artistic practice has resulted in the emergence of new difficulties linked to ethical and political perspectives in the ways of making art.  Artikisler Collective’s work, for instance, not only provides a theoretical and practical foundation for visuality and social sciences study, but it also poses a number of research concerns in terms of the problem of representation, which I consider is really fundamental. Following a thorough examination of Artikisler’s theory and practice, the conclusion has been drawn that his documentary approaches and methodologies provide creative and unique ways of thinking about the issue of anthropological representation.

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CONCLUSION Precisely as arts practice differs in its objectives from the history of art, however, so anthropology differs from ethnography. It is here; I believe that the real potential for productive collaboration between art and anthropology lies. Tim Ingold1 Art’s relationship to the social is either underpinned by morality or it is underpinned by freedom. Claire Bishop2

Evaluation of the Theoretical Discussions The main research subject of this dissertation resides in the junction of contemporary art and prominent anthropological debates, which is a rich research field in terms of theory and practices. The theoretical debates on art and anthropology relations that serve as the foundation for the research, which is based on the literature on recent debates in this area, were introduced in order to completely examine this topic. I examined the anthropological approaches to contemporary art as well as the implications of relational art in anthropology, and I presented the rising literature on the linkages between art and anthropology, as well as the various perspectives of scholars in this field (e.g., Foster, 1995; Marcus and Myers, 1995; Schneider and Wright,

1 2

Tim Ingold, Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (Taylor & Francis, 2013), 387. Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, p. 276.

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2006; Sansi, 2015). In addition, the number of publications in this field of study keeps rising, which is encouraging. Recent experimental strategies and critical procedures in anthropology, which have manifested themselves primarily in the engagement with audiovisual methodologies, have created a fruitful area of interdisciplinary research in this context. As a result, the dialogue between anthropologists and artists is becoming more extended. The debates over this hybrid area were also raised crucial questions on the issues related with the representation, participation, observation, as well as the social and aesthetic implications of these practices. On the other hand, Writing Culture critique (Clifford and Marcus, 1986) on the scientific authority of anthropology -that manifests itself in the practice of writing- influenced academic forms with new ways of experimentation, especially by turning towards the reflexive methods. Moreover, while Clifford was addressing anthropology, as a “hybrid practice” (1988), he was signaling the transformations that emerged in anthropology towards the interdisciplinary engagement with art. At this point, the main question appeared in regard to the main shared concern of these practices of doing art and doing anthropology. In this dissertation, I aimed to discuss artistic practices that provide a ground for anthropological inquiry by revolving around the question of the shared concern. When Marcus introduced the concept “aesthetics of fieldwork” in his essay Contemporary Fieldwork Aesthetics in Art and Anthropology: Experiments in Collaboration and Intervention (2010) as a way of experimentation for the practice of anthropology, his attempt was signaling new ways out of the classical anthropology practice. Again, related with the tendencies towards experimentation, anthropologist Tim Ingold criticized ethnography, as it excludes the new methods of doing anthropology, and he claimed that by leaving ethnography, interdisciplinary collaborations with different fields would be possible, such as combining art practice with anthropology.3 Today, anthropological methods are intertwined with the artistic practices to generate productive engagements and potentialities between two disciplinary areas. With the global emergence of socially engaged practices in art, the significance of anthropology became evident, especially through the concepts of “collaboration” and “participation” that were already a point of concern in anthropology. As a result, anthropology has emerged as a significant source 3

Tim Ingold, “Anthropology Contra Ethnography,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, no. 7 (2017): 24.

CONCLUSION

of reference and inspiration for these socially engaged art practices, while art practices have become increasingly involved in the anthropological field. For the growing interest on anthropology in contemporary art, Hal Foster has first coined the term ‘ethnographic turn in arts’ with his seminal critical essay The Artist as Ethnographer (1995). Foster presented a challenge on the relationship between artists and anthropologists by explaining the confluence between them through the notion of ‘envy’. He stressed that, artists, as well as anthropologists, envy each other’s position, and criticized this engagement through the role of artists, in which he points out as “pseudo-ethnography”. Indeed, Foster’s skeptical analysis was addressing an essential issue on the ‘authorship’ that puts the artist in the position of representing ‘other’ and the uncertainties and challenges regarding the engagement with communities that is mainly linked with power relations. He stated that artists represent ‘others’ for their own artistic recognition that he calls as “self-fashioning”. Currently, however, it is possible to look at this convergence from a new perspective considering the growing literature and experimentalities in art. By examining the trajectory of art from the modernist to the postmodernist periods, it is possible to trace the development of an anti-aesthetic stance that has become common in contemporary art. Furthermore, with the radical transformation of anthropology that leads to auto-critiques within the discipline itself, the groundwork for critical distance from ethnography was laid (Ingold, 2014)4 . Art was moving further away from aesthetics, whereas an approach within anthropology was shifting away from ethnography as a method of observation. Presently, it becomes important to interpret this transformation through the changing disciplinary critiques on the institutional structures. Thus, it would be possible to comprehend the debates revealed around the dissimilar values on ethics and aesthetics of the creations in the area in between art and anthropology. While the general literature focuses mostly on the possibilities of developing an artful anthropology through experimentation, I examined the foundations for developing an art practice that is concerned with yielding anthropological imports that has been exemplified through the cases I examined in this research. As part of this investigation into the prevalent methods and strategies of the artists and their works, I investigated the grounds that provide 4

For further reading: Tim Ingold, "That’s enough about ethnography!," HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4, no. 1 (Summer 2014): 383-395.

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a productive avenue for the discussion of social engagements of artists and their observation and documentation processes, as well as the unstable positions of aesthetics and ethics in these works. However, I did not only examine the implications of these practices in terms of art and anthropology involvement, but I also presented the literature concentrating on the ways in which these socially engaged practices are aligned with the discourses of existing framework, especially through their institutional connections. As a result of all the foregoing, this dissertation presents an alternative narrative on the emergence of social engagement in contemporary art in Turkey, while also contextualizing the “social turn”. In theoretical framework, I investigated the case of Turkish contemporary art by examining the largescale relationships between art and anthropology, as well as the wide range of variation in these endeavors in terms of the relationship of aesthetics and ethics. Specifically, I maintained that the increasing dynamism of contemporary art scene in Turkey, as well as its significance on international scale, have contributed to the ever-changing practices of artists towards social alignments. This shift toward social practices serves as the foundation for further investigation into the position and involvement of the “contemporary” in Turkish art.

Overview of the Case To understand the increase of social practices in contemporary art in Turkey, it is necessary to reconsider the emergence of “contemporary” within the art circles. This transformation, however, did not occur abruptly. The neoliberal regulations emerged in 1980s formed the ground for the transformation and thus, 1990s contemporary art was marked by a change of leaving state’s modernist view on art. The state’s support for art and culture, on the other hand, was notably missing during this process. Consequently, the emergence of contemporary art took place with little to no support from the state to do so. Through a reconsideration of these dynamics, I aimed to trace the history of contemporary art in Turkey with respect to the changing dynamics in the involvement of social and political references in art, and I examined the impact of institutionalization on the tendency towards social engaged practices in contemporary art in Turkey. As a response to this question, I maintained that institutional support provided the ground for the proliferation of these artis-

CONCLUSION

tic practices that inclined towards the works referring to social and political issues. In Turkey, the establishment of “contemporary art” is an outcome of globalized neoliberal regulations that emerged in the 1980s, in conjunction with the engagement of artists with international art scenes. This period marked by the transition to neoliberalism in Turkey was also the period when the banks began to create their own art collections. Relatedly, the number of exhibitions, museums and galleries supported by private sector has dramatically increased. In this period, the rise of new mediums in art, such as installation and video art, was undertaken by a few numbers of artists. These artists such as Altan Gürman, Füsun Onur, Nil Yalter, Şükrü Aysan and Sarkis that have a background on international art scene were pioneers of introducing these new tendencies and methods in Turkish art. These artistic practices can be considered as signals for the change. The new practices that can be titled under the experimental and conceptual artistic frameworks, thus, have laid the groundwork for further developments in contemporary art. However, the acceptance of “contemporary” to refer to these new practices took some time in the art scene. In addition to the internationalization of the art scene, the social implications of the coup d’etat in 1980 and the sociopolitical changes were significant factors in the tendency towards the social engagement through art, as the artists worried by the coup and experienced the aftermath of the conflict themselves -as they also have been subject to major changes in political and social life. It is not possible to think that artists could be indifferent to the sociopolitical transformation; hence they preferred to express the impacts of these changes in their works. Prevailing artistic interest in socio-political issues has instigated new methods and approaches in Turkish art that have continued to be influential since the beginning of Istanbul Biennial in 1987. In the following years of the Istanbul Biennial, new methods emerged for exhibiting the artists’ work, addressing the social life in the city and thus instrumentalizing the city for branding through culture. The Istanbul Biennial, in general, not only drew attention to Turkish contemporary art in the international art world, but also it transformed the practices of the artists by presenting the city with its social background. By doing this, Biennial not only provided the ground for artists to explore the relation between the city and its cultural dynamics, but also it expanded the field of social practices in art by focusing on the collaboration and participation. Consider the significance of young generation artists in

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changing the image of Istanbul as just a tourism and exotic location, which itself is crucial in this context. Turkey’s participation in the global art market as a growing art scene entailed the representation of local issues in artworks. This was also signaling a total disengagement from oriental representations of Turkish art in the exhibitions abroad. Aside from the new perspective that the Biennial brought to the art scene, the emergence of some financial institutions as supporters of private galleries, and the financial capital’s interest on art had a significant effect on the shift towards social practices in art in the 1990s at large. With the shift in funding from philanthropic organizations, most of these institutions aimed to provide a framework for alternative practices in art that challenged with the conventional tendencies. This financial support enabled artists to deal with the challenges of the post-studio era. The consequences of the changes mentioned above, artists were able to leave the traditional gallery context, and focus on the production process rather than the work itself. The artistic productions tended towards the embracing with the world outside, the media of painting and sculpture left their place to performances, workshops, installations, and video art. With the inclusion of ‘relational art’, the ‘process’ or the ‘relation’ itself gradually became the result of the work. The institutional support for these practices provided the ground for the artists to produce and exhibit their work. In these art practices, the direction towards using art for making positive changes in society was generated with the practices of collaboration and participation. Rather than focusing on the artwork with an outcome, these artists aimed to focus on the process of art production, and thus their practice was accomplished outside the established organization of exhibition systems. Correlatively, these investments coming from the private sector emerged from the idea of democratizing the arts. Thus, the 1990s contemporary art in Turkey was marked by a certain disengagement from the modernist view on art and its high-culture references. The role of Turkey’s EU-integration also contributed to these changes, as the essential goal of this process was raising awareness to democratic values. European cultural policies for the support of cultural exchange attempted to present multiculturalism in Turkey through the agency of art, and these policies gave rise to artistic practices aiming to create social change through art. Therefore, cultural institutions not only contributed to civic solidarity for achieving democratic society through the agency of art, but also provided the ground for the emergence of the ‘social’

CONCLUSION

in art practices with an emphasis on the ethnic differences. The emergence of contemporary art thus accompanied with a democratic discourse. The emergence of the private sector and the internationalization of the art scene contributed to the art’s democratizing impact on public with their support to art. From this perspective, it is possible to trace the contribution of institutionalization, along with the impact of globalization, to the emancipation of artists that lead them to oppose with the modernist concept of aesthetics, while also opposing with the discourses of Turkish nation-state construction. With an emphasis on human rights violations in Turkey, art functioned as a ground for expressing the state oppression. In addition to this, the translations of the important theoretical sources on social sciences and art theory written in the 1990s have been published simultaneously and this affected the transformation that paved the way for the synchronization with the global cultural production. Until that point, art practices synchronized with the prevalent tendencies in the global art world. By and large, artists reflecting the socio-political realities of their time could only have developed with the dynamism that non-governmental institutions brought to contemporary art. With all these changes related to institutionalization, artists became more involved in the issues related to the ethnic differences. Also, the cooperation with Western art institutions and curatorial strategies played an important role in these changes. Therefore, I underlined the impact of globalization and the growing private sector support to art for the proliferation of socially engaged art in Turkey as these changes created a space for the emancipation of artists since the 1990s. During the second half of the 1990s, the focus was made on ‘relational aesthetics’ that Bourriaud introduced in the contemporary art world. With the recognition and the proliferation of relational art in the global art world, the impacts of this tendency became apparent in the works of artists from Turkey. Remarkably, a new generation artist that are active after 1995 that uses video as a medium to represent social issues emerged. Considering the argument related with the time span, it is possible to argue that the new generation emerged after 1995, were more attuned to the transformation in contemporary art that came with the ‘relational aesthetics’ – as they easily shift the aesthetical concern with the relationality. However, for the previous generation of artists that were active in 1980s but still continued to produce in the 1990s, Ali Akay (2008) refers them as they produce with a more serious process and with more references to aesthetics

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embedded in their political concern.5 (e.g. Nil Yalter, Sarkis and Karamustafa) Based upon this comparison of two generations, it is critical to question the changing role of aesthetics throughout the time in the social practices in contemporary art. Thus, I investigate the works in the context through this contextualization.

Discussion of the Works in Context As a result of these changes mentioned above, a growing number of artists tended towards the representation of social issues through art as I demonstrated in the case of Turkey. Even if these works can be considered with their outcome or with their exhibited form in the galleries, they were including a process of engagement with the specific communities. This was the setting in which they were gradually moving closer to the realm of anthropology inside a methodological framework. Specifically considering this methodological framework, in this study I emphasized the role of anthropological ways of working in the artistic practices of artists from Turkey. Hereby, to understand the role of these practices as a medium to establish social relations, I discussed the selected works by looking at how artists define the anthropological questions in this context. I questioned the motives of these artists to generate works with social practices and the forms of engagement in their works. These pursuits of the artists have usually taken place with the objective of social change through collaboration with the communities, in order to bring more visibility to their problems and give voice to the membes of these communities. In Turkey, these communities were all possible subjects for an ethnic conflict. In general, the works I am focusing are mostly engages and documents communities living in marginalized areas with different ethnic identities and social groups. Besides, the concern on ethnic identities in art has been come forward with the fall of Berlin Wall and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. At this point, after the 1990s, artists were more interested in the issues such as migration when big cities began to play important role in the global commitments on migration – and accordingly, Istanbul gained its cosmopolitan identity in this process. Istanbul biennial played a significant

5

For further details: See the discussion on Akay’s argument on the pages 83-84.

CONCLUSION

role for the emergence of socially engaged work by presenting the city with its urban setting, which is accompanied by some curatorial strategies.6 I argue that the motivation to create these works is similar to the socially engaged practices with the communities that aim to raise awareness to the lives in the marginalized areas and the minority communities. They thus position themselves with their works as mediators for social change. The objectives of these projects are essentially political considering the problems related to an emphasis on the concept of “otherness”. In the framework of potential of art in doing social research, each of these artists that I examined came up with a particular form of doing anthropology related context and approach. By questioning these various tendencies, I traced the shared concern of art and anthropology through the Turkish case, aiming to increase awareness to the implications of doing social research as an artist. Throughout the research process, I acknowledged that the works I focused of the artists, Nil Yalter, Gülsün Karamustafa, Esra Ersen, Kutluğ Ataman, Tayfun Serttaş, Köken Ergun, Dilek Winchester and Artikisler Collective employ different methods for the conceptualization of social lives, and thus intersects with anthropology in diverse levels, through their different kinds of attention, presentations, and methods. For instance, Tayfun Serttaş was approaching to his research-based practice with an experience coming from his background on anthropology degree. Likewise, Köken Ergun has participated in public discussions about his work with anthropologists such as Arzu Öztürkmen and Leyla Neyzi, and he has collaborated with them. Alongside these examples, all those artists had some references to anthropology that they declare in various interviews. These engagements demonstrate the inspiration from recent debates and practices related to anthropology and therefore, these pieces are significant in terms of collaboration with anthropologists. The richness in terms of experimentation constitutes a productive scope to investigate distinct features of these practices with a focus on the theoretical conceptualization of art and anthropology relations. Ethics and Aesthetics Nil Yalter can be considered as a pioneering artist in terms of approaching art with an anthropological thinking through her works

6

To illustrate these curatorial strategies towards the social practices in art, it is important to mention the names of the curators throughout the Istanbul biennials, such as: Charles Esche, Hou Hanru, Vasıf Kortun, and most recently Nicolas Bourriaud.

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before the 1980s. While she is implementing anthropological practice to represent the impacts of immigration on the lives of workers in several places in Europe, she presents them with artistic intermediations, by using photo and video documentation together with the objects, texts, and drawings. In terms of the exhibition techniques, some of these works are comprised of remarkable interferences with regards to combining various media. For instance, exhibiting the objects collected throughout the research process, presenting drawings related with the photographs, texts, and in general, all the found objects and traces of the research presented together with the documentation. These artistic interventions capture the lives of these people in subject in a very unusual way and form an intensified description of the experiences (e.g., Rahime the Kurdish Woman, 1979). It is possible to observe her aesthetic concern reflected in many of her works with tactile experimentations combined with her research processes. Likewise, Gülsün Karamustafa’s works play a significant role in tracing the history of the movement towards social practices in art in Turkey, as they reflect the changing paradigms in the world with an artistic sensitivity. With Unawarded Performances, Karamustafa brings together the stories of illegal Gagouz women workers in Istanbul, by documenting their lives, and placing the “dialogue” concept at the core of the process. While doing this, she does not leave her ‘artistic sensitivity’ as she states in her own words.7 While moving with her camera during the interviews, she does not only show the houses where these women are working in order to reflect the contrast in their life, but also, she reflects that she does not leave the aesthetical concern behind. In the same manner, in another work A Playground in the Net of Gendered Relations (1996) she uses mixed media of newspaper article and video installation together, that is also a representation of collage aesthetics. These two artists that were active in 1980s, Nil Yalter and Gülsün Karamustafa were supporting the Ali Akay’s (2008) argument of whether the artistic practices have been transformed after 1995, as these artists were producing with a different strategy in terms of aesthetics by embedding the aesthetical concern in the sociopolitical representation of the work. It is possible to notice that new generation of artists was more attuned to the new critical approaches to the aesthetic elitism and thus abandoning aesthetical concerns. Most of the works that put participation at the core of the process directly opposes with the aesthetic principles. Significantly, rather than the aesthetics, this new generation 7

Karamustafa, “Unawarded Performances,” 155.

CONCLUSION

of artists prioritizes the building of relations with the communities in an ethical way. Rancière’s considerations on this ‘aesthetic separation’ form a productive ground to interpret the characteristics of art and politics that is prevalent in the works of new generation artists. As mentioned in the text, their works identified with their political concern and ethical approaches with a significant disconnection from aesthetics. However, this disconnection is a form of resistance to the modernist view of aesthetics with an intention to dematerialize the artwork. The tension coming from the separation itself is present as in the works of political art, as Rancière states “the political becoming of art, then, becomes the ethical confusion in which, in the name of their union, art and politics both vanish”8 , as he also defines it as the ‘contemporary ethical turn’. Nevertheless, in this synthesis, the works are already identified with the political concerns of the artists, which does not leave enough room for an interpretation or for establishing a connection with the works as a viewer. According to Rancière, art is not “political because of the messages and sentiments it conveys concerning the state of the world”, or because of the approach in which “it might choose to represent of society’s structures, or social groups, their conflicts or identities.”9 It is political because of the distance to these functions and framing of the time, and space in this process, this establishes the autonomy of the experience in relation to art. The theory of Rancière enables the reconsideration of the function of aesthetics in the frame of art and politics.10 With a joint emphasis on the aesthetics in the works, Karamustafa while moving with the camera in the house to show the empty space and random objects, she does not only reflect the contrast in the lives of these Gagouz women, but she reflects a more substantial reality about their lives that we can grasp through a sensous experience. A similar context is pertinent for the works of Nil Yalter’s presenting an alternative reality with the fictional aspect of the videos, the collage aesthetics and the objects related with the context presented along with the videos and photographs. These strategies

8 9 10

Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, p. 182. Jacques Rancière, Aesthetics and Its Discontents, trans. by Steven Corcoran (Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, 2009), p. 23, Cambridge, Malden. As Bishop influences from the ideas of Rancière for the discussion of socially engaged art’s problematic relationship with aesthetics, this approach coincides with the perspective of Bishop in this sense.

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of the artists not only open the way for a certain aesthetic experience for the viewer, but also establish the ‘autonomy of the experience’. Experimentation and Potentialities In this respect, the field of aesthetic experience can change its reference points in the works of artists with a specific difference in artistic intervention; by creating the aesthetic sphere in the exhibition space, as it can be called as exhibitionary practice. For instance, usage of the exhibition space considering the spatial configuration and its significant film grammar, particular works of Kutluğ Ataman (Küba, 2004; Paradise, 2006) demonstrate new ways of experimentation for anthropology. This kind of intervention in the traditional documenting methods incorporates early efforts to create an imaginary sensory environment for the viewer by enabling them to choose which video-interview they want to watch. 11 In addition to the Ataman’s experimental narrative construction, multi-screen video works as Esra Ersen’s Passengers (2009) and Köken Ergun’s Wedding (2009) confronting the linear narrative of the films and challenging the existing stances by proposing alternative ways of representation for anthropologists working with film. For instance, Esra Ersen’s Passengers (2009) not only documents the lives of the communities but also drew attention to the places where these people live and presents these images in one of those screens. These referred artistic strategies forms one of the directions towards the anthropological interest on art with different potentialities on presenting the research process. In terms of experimentation, the works of Tayfun Serttaş and Dilek Winchester shows how the anthropological research can be combined with other medium. Winchester’s work Kayisi Kent A4 approaches the field entailing selected community as a presence in motion and presents special way of experimentation, with reference to the encounter concept in Situationist practices. These practices are used to challenge and subvert art, forms of cultural expression and the urban environment. In the case of art and anthropology, this artistic process is coinciding with the argument of George Marcus (2006) in terms of aesthetic implications of the fieldwork. Moreover, Serttaş’s two projects are connected to each other through the potential of those photo archives to serve as historical documents and that they both address the sociocultural background of the related communities. Again, through the connection of artist as social researcher, the projects with 11

Consequently, anthropologist Basu refers to the exhibition setting at Küba (2004) for transforming audience to the “audience-ethnographers”.

CONCLUSION

an archival aspect have been impactful on their presentation of photography to document a social reality about the past; hence not only show implications of the archive for the future of the art and anthropology relationship, but also address questions about where a research process might take place as a practice of art. In general, the artistic strategies of these works potentially may spawn interest among anthropologists to the extent of imagination and experimentation of these art practices. Ethical Implications of ‘Relationality’ Even though the visual media and exhibition methods are open to interpretation through its extensive and widespread anthropological potential, I aimed to address the social engagement process in these works, as the social interaction raises issues on the politics of ‘relational aesthetics’. The artistic practices were mostly applied to create a dialogue with the communities living in the margins of the cities. The artists often created situations with unforeseen consequences by engaging in a dialogue with these communities with the objective of documenting their lives. I therefore consider the production processes on its own as an objective, as they create events with the intention of drawing attention to sociopolitical issues. While addressing the ‘otherness’ aspect, they employ a wide range of research methodologies; but in general, it is possible to examine them under the context of participant observation methodology. This processes involves variable methods as informal interviews (Nil Yalter, Gülsün Karamustafa, Kutluğ Ataman), observation through the participation in the life of the group (Esra Ersen, Köken Ergun, Artikisler Collective, Dilek Winchester), analyses of particular documents that are associated with a community (Tayfun Serttaş), as well as personal biographies and life histories of the subjects (Tayfun Serttaş, Dilek Winchester). While many of them prefer collaborative and participative methods, a number of them employ research methodologies such as conducting interviews with members of the local community in order to gather first-hand information. Each of these interviews were motivated primarily by a different set of factors than the others. For instance, Kutluğ Ataman uses this method for a deeper understanding of the stereotyped images of these communities -in both of his works “Küba” and “Paradise”. His intention of addressing the cultural stereotypes rather than the typical representation of the community would be a questioning of the representation of ‘otherness’. However, his intention shapes the narrative of the work, he keeps his position that takes the form of ‘authorship’ in this process, and thus his strategy

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of focusing on the ‘stereotypes’ is not reducing unequal power relations in his works. There appears another issue on the ethical implications of these types of works that situates the moral sensitivity essential in the process. There were several strategies to deal with this issue of ethics, respecting the rights of others, collaborating with the community, overcoming the issue of artistic authority, activating the audience, and so on. Kester (2011) specifically emphasized this ethical dimension for a ‘conversational aesthetics’ rather than the ‘relationality’. Is the ethical framework, however, necessary for these practices, or is insisting on the dialogue with an ethical emphasis forming a new kind of ‘repressive form’ as Bishop (2012) mentions? Considering this dichotomy in the context of artistic practices, I have noticed for most of these cases that the major emphasis lays on the ethical concern in the process of social engagement. For instance, Köken Ergun addresses ‘ethics’ in developing social relations with the community, specifically for his work Ashura (2011). Rather than starting his projects directly or begin filming, he prefers to start when he feels that they are becoming friends with the members of the community.12 In a similar manner, Esra Ersen engages with communities at particular sites and cooperates closely with the target communities with an aim to build a trusting relationship with them.13 For, Tayfun Serttaş, the close relationship between him and Osep, takes the research process to another level, in which allows him to leave the ethnographer role behind in this process. Their ethical concerns manifest itself in the ethics of rejection of authorial presence. Bishop addresses ‘consensual dialogue and sensitivity to difference’ as common statement in these artistic strategies and describes this discourse around socially engaged art as with the term of ‘ethical turn’. By contrast, to challenge with the forms of authorship, she argues ‘unease, discomfort or frustration’ as strategies, rather than emphasizing the ethical concern directly.14 At this point, it becomes critical to ask: Is an awareness of ethics would be sufficient to circumscribe these practices as models of democracy of art, or should the artists find more challenging strategies to reject the authorial presence rather than focusing on the right ethical choices throughout the research process? If they should find some alternative strategies of ‘uneasiness’ 12 13 14

Personal Communication with Koken Ergun. Personal Communication with Esra Ersen. Bishop, Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, 26.

CONCLUSION

as Bishop mentions, would it necessarily put into practice with a less emphasis on political correctness? I argue that the simple dichotomy of ‘antagonism’ against ‘conversational’, would be incapable to cover the scope of the works examined in this research, as there are a variety of dynamics at play in this context. Nor over-insisting on ethical concern with conversational practices (Kester, 2011), neither confronting with the ethical concern (Bishop, 2012) through a more direct approach rather than working with the disquiet of offending someone, would therefore properly function. But, as an alternative to these approaches, I exemplify some challenging strategies to reverse the power relations in the research process through the works of Artikisler Collective. With their work Scavengers from Hakkari to Ankara (2007) they do not only show the garbage collectors’ everyday lives, but also draw public attention for their struggle against police brutality by giving visibility to their resistance. I argue that their works provide some critical interventions on the problem of representation that comes with the documentation process, as I considered as a strategy that reverses the power relations by directing the camera also to themselves, by asking the question of: “Are their lives interesting?” I claim that it is critical to discuss the primary objective of the artists, which brings them to the context of interactions with people, which presents itself in this questioning. I consider what might be ‘interesting’ here is the research process itself15 , namely the expectation of the artist to collaborate with communities in order to represent their lives through artistic practice. However, the significant undertaking here is being skeptical regarding the assumptions that lead them in the context of social engagement. Only by reevaluating of these objectives, artists may pursue a reflexive and critical voice that would develop methodologies challenging the power relations. In this context, self-reflexivity would renounce authorial presence by presenting the position of artist in the representation process, which in return would serve as a case for the growing debates on representation on the practices between art and anthropology. I argue that, to overcome the challenges of social practices, artistic practice would benefit from the theoretical questioning on the methodologies of anthropology.

15

Here, I refer to the ideas of Alper Şen from Artikisler Collective that is mentioning the ‘camera’ is something interesting in the research process. See Appendix I: Personal Communication with Alper Şen.

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Taking Bishop’s perspective as a reference point, (2012) –specifically ‘uneasiness’ as an approach– I maintain that this standpoint does not necessarily apply to the cases present in Turkey due to the rapidly changing and complex political environment in the country. These changes do not occur only in political level, but also in the social level related that has a considerable impact on the cultural actors by forming an increasing pressure –that may also result in the self-censorship of the artists. Developing trusting relationships with the communities thus becomes a challenging process for the artists working with anthropology and focusing on the social issues.16 There is less room for courageous approaches to be implemented because of increasing social and political pressure, especially by refraining from sensitivity even if it leads the artists to a self-censorship. However, self-censorship of the artist and censorship as a whole are already present in the case of art scene in Turkey due to the fluctuating impact of the political atmosphere. As a result, I aimed to investigate the examples that involved social and political dynamics, that can be clarified in detail. The main intention of this dissertation was that the art-anthropology relationship could learn from the cases of contemporary art from Turkey. Provided that, I consider that strategies as self-reflexivity would be a significant approach to borrow from anthropology that can challenge with the authorial presence of the artist -as I have demonstrated in the case of Artikisler Collective. The questioning of the presence of the artists and their political acts provides a useful framework to comprehend the ethical and political challenges of participation and collaboration processes.

General Evaluation As postmodernism lays the foundation for the new artist role of representing minority issues, gender equality and women’s rights and identity related issues in general, the institutional history of art thus tended towards the demonstration of identity politics through art. I noticed that these art projects focus on the issues of social conflict in general, by concentrating on social and cultural identities. Therefore, issues of race, class or ethnicity become the essential features of these practices. Accordingly, looking at these practices in 16

For instance, Kutluğ Ataman’s work Küba (2004) cannot be shown in Turkey because of the political reasons coming from revealing the identities of people living in that area.

CONCLUSION

the global art world from a social scientific perspective becomes more significant; to observe the dynamics of transformation in the culture industry as the socially engaged art in Turkey also appeared as a parallel global model with the growing contemporary art economy. In terms of experimental methods in anthropology, there has been a longstanding debate in anthropological circles that lead them to be more engaged with artistic practices. This research brings together contemporary art and anthropology that is crucial to comprehend these art practices in the global scale with a specific regional characteristic. With this research, I claim that the future art and anthropology collaborations can learn distinguishing practices and methodologies from these cases from Turkish contemporary art, because of their diverse ways of experimentation, and their new artistic approaches on socially engaged art that challenge the existing ones. The works I examined represented a diverse variety of techniques in terms of anthropological interest in art, especially considering the video installations displayed as a part of collage or the multiple-screen videos that create an unconventional sensory environment. The engagement of art and anthropology through the shared critics of institutions and politics of representation along with the critiques on socially engaged art practices increasingly extend the area of potentialities of experimentation and novel theoretical contextualization. In this regard, photographs, videos, drawings, installations, and other media combined with data collection process of the artists capture the cultural structure and dynamics of the communities. Herewith, the usage of images to study and represent a community, artists increasingly adopt visual media techniques to document and interpret the lives of the communities with an inclination towards social sciences. They use visual media as a way of representation of social life, while this research draws attention to their methodologies with their objective of participation with the communities. All of these cases have their own significant process while presenting the issues of social context. In this respect, this research inquires, the distinguishing methodologies of these works in terms of art-anthropology relations. These methodologies differ from each other depending on the characteristics of these practices, in the manner that it can address unique strategies for art or distinctive methods for anthropology. For this potential of convergences, anthropology scholars (Schneider and Wright, 2006; Sansi, 2015; Grimshaw and Ravetz, 2015) tended towards to establish connections with the visual

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anthropology and the growing number of artistic practices linked with social engagements. As presented in these cases, an increasing number of artists today produce works using ethnographic methods such as participant observation or many other references to anthropology in general to challenge the institutional structure of the disciplines. Considering this development, this research addresses the works that inquire into the cultural differences that are characterized by issues of social and political conflict and while doing this, it questions the position the artists in the context of social engagement. Starting from this point of view, I stressed the process of artistic production with its potentialities of experimentation; thus, these works must be evaluated with regards to critical anthropology, specifically in a methodological frame in the context of relations with human subjects.

Concluding Remarks The artists subject to this research have been chosen among others according to their variable practices in terms of their approach and forms of works, along with their connection of their works to the relevant debates. These cases have significance not only in terms of reflecting domestic political issues inherent to Turkey, but they also manifest novel methodological ways and experimentalities in art and anthropology engagement. To acknowledge the differences in this context between practices on a universal scale, this research discusses this engagement in the cultural context of Turkey by expressing how the socio-political issues prevalent in Turkey represented with these works. Yet, it is necessary to consider these works totally related with the nonEuropean-American context, as most of these works mentioned above have been exhibited in Europe or North America. By adopting this frame, I presented the refunctioning of anthropology in the artistic domain and showed how key debates in contemporary and critical anthropology functions for the interpretation of these works addressing sociopolitical issues. While the role of “aesthetics” is crucial in these practices, it is critical to demonstrate how these works move away from aesthetics and more towards questions of “production process” and “ethics.” As a result, I focused on the artistic research process rather than the final output. This research, as a contribution to recent debates between two fields, is limited by its emphasis on practice-based artistic research and documentation in the arts in conjunction

CONCLUSION

with anthropological approaches. Nonetheless, this approach to understanding socially engaged art practices expands the scope and visibility of future research. The research can be expanded to include art and activism in Turkey, specifically urban activism, by examining artists’ connections with the urban. Through the intersections of urban studies, anthropology, and art, it is possible to focus on the growth of social events, participation processes, and the role of cultural institutions. The theme of participatory forms in contemporary art in Turkey can be explored by reconsidering the strong emphasis on activism in these practices and the way they create ’microutopias,’ as Bourriaud refers to them in Relational Aesthetics (2002). By considering art’s social performativity in the formation of social relations through the creation of events, it is possible to investigate the possibility for social change; however, it becomes vital to investigate the impact of these creative interventions on social relations. By concentrating on pertinent cases, the critical examination of the convergence of art and anthropology can be expanded to include socially engaged art criticism (Bishop, 2012; Kester, 2011, Lind et al., 2005), considering ongoing debates about social practices in art. Central motivation throughout this research has been the idea that art and anthropological interactions can benefit from creative strategies and practices of contemporary artist from Turkey. By investigating social processes in artistic practices from a variety of perspectives and through an anthropological lens, I highlighted the ramifications of these practices in order to deepen theoretical discussions regarding anthropological perspectives on art. Today, as we witness an increase in collaborations and experimentations between contemporary art and anthropology, it is critical to study the new potentials in social art practices from a range of perspectives in order to establish future interconnections. Given the fact that all practices have unique characteristics associated with their location, the relationship between art and anthropology should therefore situate and compare various parameters such as curatorial strategies, institutionalization structures, and linkages to the international cultural arena in various locations. The main intention of this research, in particular, has been to contribute experiences and practices from a region that have been underrepresented in ongoing discussions about the relation of art and anthropology. Throughout the research, I noticed that in an area in which domestic politics creating political tensions and polarization that are reflected

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on everyday lives, the social practice of artists becomes more complicated to handle. At the same time, these social and political complexities result in finding new perspectives and strategies in terms of artistic practices. With this contextualization of the research subject, productive challenges, and practicalities in terms of commonalities of art and anthropology aimed to be highlighted through the distinctive characteristics of contemporary art practices from Turkey.

Acknowledgments

Writing this book had a big impact on me, not only in academic terms but also on a personal level. I would like to pay special thankfulness, warmth, and appreciation to everyone who has supported and helped me along this journey. First and foremost, I would like to express my greatest appreciation to my thesis advisors, Prof. Dr. Bärbel Küster for her generous support, encouragement, inspiring suggestions, and valuable feedback during the writing period; also Prof. Dr. Kerstin Wittmann-Englert for her guidance, motivation, and support throughout this process. I would like to thank Assoc. Prof. Levent Soysal for his constructive comments, extended discussions, and warm encouragement since the beginning of the research. Their guidance and vast knowledge helped me a lot during the time of my research and writing of this book. My sincere thanks also go to Prof. Dr. Zeynep Kuban, Prof. Dr. Oguz Haslakoglu, and Dr. Banu Karaca for their insights into the relevance of this study. During the research, in several institutions I acquainted with some scholars and individuals who helped me a lot: I am very grateful to the staff in SALT Research Library, Akbank Sanat Library, Istanbul Modern Library, Library Archives of Istanbul Technical University, Library Archives of Bogazici University, Royal Anthropological Institute Library, Library Archives of Ethnologisches Museum Berlin, Library of TU Berlin, Archives of Kunstbibliothek Berlin, Library of Staatsbibliothek Berlin. I would like to express my gratefulness to transcript Verlag for the great collaboration, especially my project manager Isabell Schlömer. I would also like to thank the DAAD Stibet Program that provided funding support for my research and thesis writing. I express my genuine thanks to the artists included in this study, particularly Gülsün Karamustafa, Esra Ersen, Tayfun Serttaş, Köken Ergun, Dilek Winchester, and Alper Şen from Artikisler Collective. They openly shared the

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details of their artistic practices and interpretations about the subject of this research during my case study. I must express my very profound gratitude to my friends, colleagues, and my extended family that were always supportive. This book would not have been materialized without their encouragement. In particular, I owe my deepest gratitude to my partner Utku Öğüt for all the patience and support; to Özge Sezer for her practical and emotional support and encouraging discussions in the library; to Nagehan Uskan for her continuous encouragement during the writing process, and to all my friends for their constant motivation since the beginning of my academic journey. I would also like to acknowledge my mother Şafak Akalın who has been a constant source of inspiration and encouragement to me throughout my life, for her belief in me, as well as to my whole family for their unconditional support.

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