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Abstract
In this paper we discuss the production of the Istanbul Biennial, and specifically that of its eleventh edition in 2009, as an event. By looking at the sponsorship, curatorial strategies, and formal aspects of the exhibitions constituting the Biennial, we explore the contradiction between the ideological and economic conditions in which it functions and its ambitious claims to radical emancipatory politics. We argue that the art event operates as a global event in which contemporaneity itself, raised to the level of the sublime, becomes a statement of the politics of aesthetics. We juxtapose the Biennial to its reactions in the form of counter-events set up by autonomous art collectives in Istanbul through which attention was brought to the actual social, political, and economic conditions the event sought to evade and appropriate in its self-construction as a universal signifier of cosmopolitan modernity.
Notes
1A closer reading of one of the former curators of the Biennial, Vasıf Kortun's (2009) appraisal of the 11th Biennial, reveals a strategic “design” process in this respect. While finding the 11th Biennial “as almost enviously perfect,” Kortun's assessment does not refer to any artistic content exhibited, but rather points to the strategy behind the planning of the event, the choice of locations, and its publicity in the global context.
2The sponsors received unprecedented coverage and attention during the press launch to which the chairman of Koç Holding, Mustafa Koç, was invited to give a speech and answer questions along with the curators and IKSV representatives. In a published statement, Koç declared: “Istanbul will by far become the center of attraction in the global art circles” (http://www.koc.com.tr/en-us/Media_Center/PressReleases/Press_Releases/10.09.2009_en.pdf).
3Kortun's assessment testifies to the fact that the “Biennial brings in a considerable number of audience to the city, who has a considerable spending capacity” (2009).
4A very similar “media event” in Turkey, which took place a few years ago, was the Formula 1 race. The race as a “media event” was not constructed with stories about the race, the drivers, or the cars (or any other issue that a car-race enthusiast would care about). Rather, it emphasized the “edginess” and “contemporaneousness” of the phenomenon. It is important to consider the nationalist substance forming around the mediatic celebrations of such events. For a nation that has not been contemporary since the eighteenth century, the capacity to host a global event itself easily becomes a source for national pride.
5The next logical step is the raising of property rates through regenerative projects in and around the areas where art centers are located or regular artistic events take place.
6“What keeps mankind alive?” or—“Who is the greater criminal: he who robs a bank or he who founds one?”
7It is not accidental that the Biennial text collection opens with Gökçe Dervişoğlu's article “Corporate Sponsorship for Arts: A Vicious or Victorious Cycle” (for the author, it is rather a victorious cycle) rather than the curatorial concept. Combined with Süreyyya Evren's paper “Neither With Nor Without You,” a bashing of the Turkish left because of its supposedly negative attitude toward contemporary art, the two serve as legitimizations and justifications for the Biennial. Given that the book also incorporates radical critical texts appearing with the institutionalized play of red and black (with frequent insertion of the red star as a graphic design element between words, sentences, and papers), this corporate apology functions on the same level of signification as quotations from Brecht or reproduction of Vyacheslav Akhunov's poster of Lenin.
8Reformulating the questionnaire distributed after Brecht's The Measure in 1967, WHW poses four questions to the audience (in institutionalized black and red letters). These are “(1) Do you think an event like this is politically instructive for the audience? (2) Do you think it is politically instructive for the artists? (3) To which lessons embodied in What Keeps Mankind Alive do you object politically? (4) Do you think our choice of form is right for your political objectives? Can you suggest alternatives?”
9Susan Buck-Morss (Citation2000) discusses several meetings between Euro-American academics and Russian philosophers that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. According to the author, in these workshops the Russian intellectuals were trying to find affiliations with what was understood as a monolithic “West” while the other side was persistently quoting Marx to bring itself closer to what they perceived as the “East.”
10“Taste and buy”—a supermarket slogan—sounds like “biennial” in Turkish because of the soft “ğ.”
11“Koç” means “ram” in Turkish, its symbol is formed by the horns of a ram, and Koç has been a symbol of the state-sponsored national capital building efforts since the early Republic. Just like its philanthropist competitor Sabancı Corporation, it grew by fulfilling the industrial demands of the Turkish state through mass government contracts as well as popular consumption goods.
13This outlet has been serving as an influential channel in Anatolian radical culture for more than a decade.
15It seems important to note that a national-socialist left has been formulated on the remains of the orthodox Left in Turkish politics during the past decade, which confronts the internationalist political discourses (which the Biennial event categorically falls into) on the grounds of an archaic notion of “impe rialism.” But the position asserted by Evren attempts to associate any kind of criticism toward the Biennal with such vulgarism, and it is particularly symptomatic when we consider the fact that the protesting artists and groups actively positioned themselves in sharp opposition to such national-socialist discourses.