Open Table İştirak Program 2011-2012

7 October 2011 – 6 June 2012

A monthly discussion program titled ‘Open Table’ has been initiated at Depo in 2010. Open Table is organized by artist Mürüvvet Türkyılmaz and some of the issues focused in the first year of the program in the discussions between invited artists, curators, collectives, critics and lecturers working in different fields are: the role of art in gentrification, militarism and war economy, art criticism, artistic practices in public spaces, participatory art, and curatorship. Documentation of all discussions organized last year is available at Depo to be watched and copied in dvd format.

This year, Open Table invites Murat Germen, Burak Delier, Ali Artun, Siyah Bant, Zehra Şonya ve Özgül Ezgin, Aksu Bora, Ahu Antmen, Nil Yalter, Yasemin Özcan Kaya, Neriman Polat, and Erdoğan Yıldız.

This year, Mürüvvet Türkyılmaz will continue to present an addition to the program that will function in different ways titled ‘the Next Table.’ By inviting different collectives to the Next Table, she will provide them a space where they can present documents related to their work before the discussions. It is aimed that these presentations will connect to the discussions.

The Open Table discussions will be held in Turkish.

www.acmasa.blogspot.com

PROGRAM

7 October 2011, 18.30
Quests for autonomy within the framework of the relationship between art and capital
Speaker: Murat Germen
His Guest: Ahmet Elhan
Next Table: RecCollective

Murat Germen will discuss with his guest Ahmet Elhan and the participants-audience the spaces in which his works are shared and circulated in.

2 November 2011, 18.30
Debate: How do we Produce? Grasshoppers and Ants
Moderator: Burak D.
Participants: Burak A., İz, Işıl, Orton, Önder, Zeynep

“In this “debate,” the differences / similarities between the changing conditions of art production in Turkey and forms of production in contemporary capitalism will be addressed and various exit strategies will be discussed. What kind of problems are actors working in the field of art, who can be defined as “creative subjects,” faced within this situation so-called “creative capitalism,” “social production,” or “factory society”? Should we work and produce more or should we abandon the context creating these problems and search for ways to create new situations? What are the limits of the validity of these two strategies, at which points do they include or exclude each other?

This “debate” will also refer to the performativity of this pedagogical format and in this way make visible performativity, an important property of the field of art…

2 December 2011, 18.30
Contemporary art – Contemporary Authority
Speaker: Ali Artun

This week Açık Masa’s guest Ali Artun will open to discussion the following questions: “How is contemporary art articulated to contemporary politics and culture? In our time are there possibilities for art to resist?”

6 January 2012, 18.30
Freedom of expression in the arts, artists’ rights and strategies to deal with censorship
Speakers: Siyah Bant

24 February 2012, 18.30
Where have we ended up? Sterile exhibitions, closed boxes…The marriage of convenlence between art and gentrification
Speakers: Arzu Yayıntaş, Neriman Polat

In Turkey there was a fast and therefore unhealthy leap in contemporary art especially in the past five years. In the current situation, contemporary art is limited to large scale, sterilized institutions and galleries. Medium and small scale alternative organizations are disappearing and initiatives or independent collectives are struggling to survive. Art production and artists are trapped in a web of relationships. While institutions prioritize exhibitions that will support their collections and sponsors, in the absence of a ground for criticism they don’t feel any responsibility towards the artist and they make their own rules and fashion the field as they wish. With an increase in ‘project’ oriented production, the critical and independent artist organizations of the 90s are forgotten, erased from memory such that the existence of an independent organization is now impossible or even old fashioned. What one dreams of now are sterile exhibition spaces, closed boxes and solo exhibitions. Perhaps art first needs to confront the exploitation in its own field and needs activism for its own sake. The marriage of convenience between art and gentrification, exhibition slaves, unpaid participants: the artist, the doormen, those who benefit from relationships, those who make projects, the disparity in exhibition budgets… We need new definitions and self-criticism and to stop and say no to the speed, over-production and over-consumption brought about by mobility. We need to stop and start questioning in which directions we were scattered.

7 March 2012, 18.30
So, I am a Feminist?!Art, Women and Feminism
Speakers: Ahu Antmen, Aksu Bora, Canan

What are the implications of ‘being a woman’ in the art world? Are the social reflections of patriarchy and gender discrimination projected into art? Is the dominance of the masculine culture also effective in the art world? How is the woman artist defined and represented in the history, institutional structure, and contemporary critical mechanisms of art? Has feminism played a role in the articulation of women’s experiences and the increased visibility of women in the art world? Can and should art be an instrument that can subvert the established gender regime?

29 March 2012, 18.30
“Art On the Island Under Ceasefire”
Art practices in conditions of turmoil and uncertainty, migration, identityless/ness and opposing stances
Speakers: Özgül Ezgin and Zehra Şonya
Their guests: Zeynep Yasa Yaman and Başak Şenova

24 May 2012, 18.30
“Art in education, education in art”
Speakers: Gülçin Aksoy, İnsel İnal and Evrim Kavcar
Next Table: Ortak Müfredat

Open Table will host a discussion about education, particularly focusing on the topic of art education. Artists who are part of the academic staff of various universities will be talking about their experiences, suggestions and the areas of movement and exchange which they have been trying to carve within different institutional structures. They will try to open up a discussion on possibilities of taking the learning experience, which seems to be caught up between conventional, skill oriented, hierarchical art education institutions and the market logic of neoliberal ideology invading the educational system, into a realm which might be empowered by critical thinking and practices.

Some questions which aslo relate to the activities and intetions of Ortak Müfredat (co-curriculum) initiative which was formed a while ago through research and study trips to Fine Arts Faculties in various cities, might offer opening lines of thought for this session of Open Table:

• Is it possible to open up space for discussions in order to motivate a critical assessment of the current state of art education?
• How can alternative approaches and critical strategies in education be expanded and shared?
• What is the relationship of art education to the notions of contemporary art and artist?
• How can contemporary art practices find a space within skill oriented, introverted and hierarchical institutions?
• What kind of environments which promote collaboration and social practices could be shaped through educational institutions to go beyond providing young and professional artworkers for the market?

6 June 2012, 18.30
“identity/otherness – yesterday/tomorrow”
Speaker: Nil Yalter
Her guest: Derya Yücel

In the works she produced since the 1960s bringing together aesthetic and ideological perspectives Nil Yalter has focused on the issues of constructed cultures, migration, exile, displacement, multiculturalism, labor and sexism. Revealing metaphorically the nomadic displacements between memory-modernity and archaic-contemporary world, the artist proposes the activity of feminine elements in the aesthetic field as a creative force. Yalter’s works, nourished by the disciplines of poetry, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and ethnology and owing their uniqueness to the personal/individual contextualization of these disciplines, are perceived as an artistic stance where feminist, Marxist and post-colonial thoughts intersect. In her production containing plain narratives and taking shape between art and documentary, the artist makes use of diverse media ranging from illustration to new media. Nil Yalter’s bold and enlightening works subvert patriarchal narratives and are parallel with feminist art movements around the world.
A discussion with Nil Yalter, an avant-garde artist who has been a leading figure for the generations of contemporary artists following her, that will focus on her art practice and her identity as a woman, feminist and migrant artist; a conversation between Nil Yalter, her guest Derya Yücel and the participants revolving on an axis between yesterday, today and tomorrow…

Speakers: Murat Germen, Burak Delier, Burak A., İz, Işıl, Orton, Önder, Zeynep, Ali Artun, Siyah Bant, Ahu Antmen, Aksu Bora, Canan, Neriman Polat, Arzu Yayıntaş, Özgül Ezgin, Zehra Şonya, Zeynep Yasa Yaman, Başak Şenova, Gülçin Aksoy, İnsel İnal, Evrim Kavcar, Ortak Müfredat, Nil Yalter, Derya Yücel