We arrived in Istanbul evening to find a more subdued than expected 84th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey which had been moved at the last minute to the Asian side of the city.
Upon arriving we took a minibus straight to The Apartment Project to meet with its founder and director Selda Asal who runs the space with the two other artists Ceren Oykut and Neriman Polat.
After introducing ourselves and our organisations, Selda talked about the history of Apartment Project, its past and current projects including their project 2+1 which is one of the Special Projects as part of the Istanbul Biennial. She also spoke about the structure of her organisation, how they are funded, their relationship to the Biennial as well as her own practise. During the discussion she showed us some video documentation of their recent projects.
Afterwards they took us to dinner in their local restaurant. This was a good opportunity for the group to meet and relax and find out more about each other’s work.
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First impressions of Istanbul by road... hard to say, was middle of a full on national celebration, the exact political context I cant quite remember; just after elections and a while after the win of the AKP party who for many threaten the secular identity of Turkey with possible moves to a more islamist non secular future ... its pretty bizarre visiting a country with nearly zero knowledge of a really complicated situation...Turkey seems to be on a threshold of change and flux in every way and its an interesting place for a Biennial; shifting contexts for contemporary art and cultural practices taken as given in Europe... anyway of course I dont really feel like going straight to a gallery with suitcase in tow but its a really great meeting with Selda. The apartment project obviously means alot to the local artistic community and its nice that this is our first port of call a more artist run space most relevant to most of our practices I reckon...For me was very useful to meet angelika wieland, Selda's mate from Berlin over dinner; Im meeting up with her at Club Transmediale in Berlin next year as she is pretty relevant to SoundNetwork.
Of course the best thing is that Selda also knows a nice restaurant nearby... Its an interesting space and our first introduction to the general rule that everything is selff financed and I think fiercely independent because of that...its a good start!!
Just tried to add a flickr embedded slideshow but no joy im afraid...cant seem to add an image either...
Cheapjack is Ross from SoundNetwork
Have a look at the days photos here
Selda and all the artists and curators that we met in Istanbul were very generous hosts, they made us feel very welcome.
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