Turkey in the 53. International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial

The project called “Lapses” will be representing Turkey in the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial that takes place between 7 June – 22 November 2009. The project is sponsored by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and coordinated by Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, and the curator of the exhibition is Basak Senova.
“Lapses” has been shaped by the projects that demonstrate how the perception of "occuring events" can vary and lead to the differing narrations of history because of “lapses” in collective memory - which is composed both by the media and by other surrounding environmental data. “Lapses” consists of two art projects: “Exploded City" by Ahmet Ögüt, and "Catalog" by Banu Cennetoglu, both reveal the possibility for diverse memory formations -or diverse narratives- conceivable through lapses.
The project is accompanied by a book series of three volumes. The first volume, which is edited by Basak Senova and can be considered also as the catalog of the exhibition, explores the conceptual framework, the artworks and the insights on the overall production process. Along with the text by the curator, assistant curator, and artists, contributions of Remco de Blaaij, Sezgin Boynik, Erhan Muratoglu, November Paynter, Mounira Al Solh, and Pelin Tan shape the first volume of the book.
The second volume, edited by Jalal Toufic, consists of a set of philosophical essays by William C. Chittick, Jalal Toufic and Paul Virilio, which looks into the concept of lapses with depth and from different points. Along with a variety of quotes, inserted between these essays, this volume constitutes the source of influence for the entire project.
The third volume, again edited by Basak Senova, presents four case studies discussed within the conceptual framework of this project. These are Park Hotel by Ceren Oykut, with contributions by Gökhan Akçura, Korhan Gümüs, Cem Sorguç and Levent Soysal; Postcapital by Daniel García Andújar with contributions by Iris Dressler and Hans D. Christ; Kriegspiel by Mushon Zer-Aviv and Alex Galloway; and Master Plan by Yane Calovski in company with short interviews by Basak Senova.
The assistant editor of the volume 1 and 3 is Nazli Gürlek. The design of the book series is by Eray Makal.
The Press Conference in Babylon Lounge on 28th April started with the speech of Basak Senova, the Curator of the Turkish Pavilion. Senova began by citing several meanings of the word “lapse” both in English and Turkish like fault, slipping, failing, slide, void, gap. She then mentioned that her starting point in the planning of the exhibition was “lapses occuring in our memories”. She said that our memories were reshaped each time we took up the action of remembering, but that also a lot of details were skipped/ignored in between. She continued: “ If we manage to plot these gaps or moments of lapses, it is possible for us to write new stories, make new histories and even to tell new lies. During my research I realised that the conceptual frame started to split into two different directions, one focusing on determining the lapses occuring, the other one focusing on the experiences of those who have fallen into lapses. At that point I discovered the text “Lapses” by Jalal Toufic, so decided to go to him and tell about my idea of preparing a series of books documenting the whole process.” Senova then presented the book series of three volumes.
Senova announced that this year as well, the Turkish pavilion would be at the Arsenale but this time outside, in a separate temporary building, the works of the artists facing each other, therefore the building itself implying a sort of lapse. She went on with her speech by summarizing the works of the artists Banu Cennetoglu and Ahmet Ögüt:
“Banu Cennetoğlu has designed a mail order catalog consisting of photographs extracted from their contexts over and over again. The visitor can fill in a form to order the photographs he has chosen, can then take this form home and download all the photographs if he wants to, but in no way can have the entire catalog. This work, in a way forcing the viewer to make a lapse, tells us a lot about the concept of lapses.”
“Ahmet Ögüt has created an imaginary city referring to Calvino’s Invisible Cities. This city is mostly made of buildings which have exploded due to terror attacks after the 90s. This 1/100 scale model actually has a documentary character.”
The artists took the floor in turn following this. Ahmet Ogut stated that his source of inspiration was literature, Italo Calvino and his famous novel Invisible Cities. Mentioning that he had added his own story among the existing stories of the book, he emphasized that he especially chose buildings which have been the subject of big incidents after the 90s, incidents we all have witnessed, incidents that have left a mark in our memories.
Banu Cennetoglu, told that her approach was in a way to work on the problematic photography inholds and that the catalog she prepared could maybe in this sense be regarded as “a monument on the weakness/disability of photography”. She added that the categories of the catalog were referring to known categorizations in minds like “family, youth, beauty, summer, spring, autumn”. She also stressed that she wanted the viewer to think on what they wanted to possess based on which criteria. Drawing attention on the “commercial and touristy” aspect of the Biennale, the artist denoted that she decided to distribute her work for free instead of estimating high prices on them.
Eray Makal who was the last speaker of the conference underlined that in the conceptual design of the exhibition they aimed at a plain and clean work which would not leave the artists in the shade.
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