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Apricot City A4

18/09/2011 @ 11:00 - 15/10/2011 @ 17:00

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18 September – 15 October 2011

Apricot City A4 at Depo’s office floor

Kayısı Kent A4 is a fanzine/zine-like-thing. Each issue is made by a different artist /artist collective and is copied and sold by mobile photocopiers in the streets of Istanbul. The first issue came out in March 2010. Depo will be hosting Kayısı Kent A4 in its office floor which is not a space designated for exhibitions. Evrim Kavcar, Burak Bedenlier, Nalan Yırtmaç, Stephan Kurr, Delphine Rigaud, Yasemin Özcan Kaya, Antrepo, Burak Delier, Jorge Méndez Blake, Yahya Madra and Ceren Özselçuk are among the contributors to the first eleven issues. Kayısı Kent A4 is initiated and run by Dilek Winchester.

The vehicle widely used by mobile photocopiers is an anonymously designed, multifunctional design wonder, combining a photocopy machine, a laminator, a car stereo and a generator on wheels. Kayısı Kent A4 is reproduced and distributed by means of the possibilities presented by this anonymous design and clings to the illegal but often overlooked mobile photocopier network like a benign parasite. During the exhibition mobile photocopiers around Eminönü, Nişantaşı and Osmanbey will continue to sell recent issues of Kayısı Kent A4.

The first issue of Kayısı Kent A4 by Dilek Winchester offers an introduction to what Kayısı Kent A4 is, and more specifically explores the intricacies and possibilities of the informal distribution network that serves as the medium through which the project is conceptualized and realized. The street vendors use recorded announcements to advertise their services. The issue also includes an interview with the experienced announcer Ece, who has done several of these announcements for a wide variety of street vending activities.

The second issue by Evrim Kavcar is titled Come City, Go City. A particular street dog is the protagonist in this fanzine. Presenting studies of this dog she often encounters coincidentally along the Balmumcu – Beşiktaş axis, Kavcar unfolds a loose story shaped around these drawings. The dog doesn’t like taxis and barks at them, while he seems perfectly fine with all the other vehicles around him. Kavcar still keeps an eye on the dog and in the exhibition she will share an update on his how and whereabouts.

An intriguing aspect of Burak Bedenlier‘s art practice is his meticulous and insistent manner of keeping a record of things in his sketchbooks. The third issue of Kayısı Kent A4 is comprised of exact copies of 6 pages from one of his sketchbooks. The original drawings can be seen alongside the copies at Depo. A cartoon strip titled “Zikcell”, a story called Bora Atalay’s “False Teeth” and an informal description of artist’s travel routes in the city, marked by stickers that are the artist’s original creations, are among the contents of Bedenlier’s issue.

Nalan Yırtmaç‘s fanzine, the fourth issue of Kayısı Kent A4, includes a selection from her work with school children at Sulukule, Levent and Bakırköy since 2003. In addition to the fanzine, an archive of magazines that were produced in the extracurricular workshops conducted by Yırtmaç will also be on exhibit at Depo. The archive includes over 30 magazines, titled Post It, Garides, Panzehir, Nitro, Karizmatik, Ergen Gırtlak, Sifon. Giving voice to many children with something to say, these magazines will bring a fun cacophony to Depo’s office floor.

The fifth issue by Stephan Kurr is titled Copy Right Now and includes a selection of photocopies from Kurr’s own archive, which he started while he was still a student in late 1980s. The images in his collection are photocopies from a wide range of sources and have accumulated over more than twenty years, yet they all share a very specific visual quality that marks the artist’s specific field of interest. Copy Right Now also includes a fragmental re-reading of an article by the Istanbul based writer Süreyyya Evren. Complementing the fanzine, a special artist’s book by Kurr, featuring a selection of these photocopies is also on display in the exhibition.

Delphin Rigaud juxtaposes stories of flying and fleeing by bringing them together through a visual vocabulary drawn from these two epochs (the present and 17th century) and these two states of existence in the sixth issue of Kayısı Kent A4. She dares to ask whether the will to survive and the determination to actualize what your imagination tells you have anything in common.

The seventh issue by Yasemin Özcan Kaya titled Leaf consists of the findings of a research process triggered by the artist’s curiosity about the history of a particular monument that she came across during a visit to Malatya in 2008. The Atatürk and Youth Monument is built by sculptors Nijad Sirel and Hakkı Atamulu in 1947. The public reaction to the nude figure in the monument triggers a chain of peculiar events. The keywords for this issue are public reaction, art in public space and castration.

Outlandish and unattainable promises of the candidates and political parties fill the air in election periods. Antrepo‘s issue coincided with the pre-election period in 2011. The collective adopts the language of these promises and turns the tables round. They bring together photographs and unsettling (fictional) news stories with striking headlines. The tone evokes humour, yet the content does not: ‘Verdict Reached for the Demolition of the Mount Ararat’, ‘Exposed to Radiation, Starving Goats Headed for the Motorway’… At Depo, Antrepo detaches the photographs from the context they had framed in the eight issue of Kayısı Kent A4, to reposition them in a domain where their independence from impositions of the news stories is reclaimed.

In According to Google: Kayısı Kent A4, Burak Delier undertakes an experiment which involves the mundane task of googling. As his simple search turns into an overflow of visual information, dominated and steered by the options the Google search engine offers, the artist consciously withholds his freedom of choice. He documents this experiment and presents us a collage of a visual dictionary; an intricate web of images with certain leaps and juxtapositions. A text by the artist accompanies this collage, in which Delier offers his reading of his experiment and raises questions about the relationship between power, the distribution of information and the manipulative control of the search engines.

Popular romance novels are called ‘novela rosa’ (pink novel) in Spanish. These pink novels are widely sold at newsagents and kiosks throughout Latin America. Jorge Méndez Blake makes reference to this specific kind of ‘best-seller street literature’ in the tenth issue of Kayısı Kent A4. He uses illustrations from a selection of classical literature ranging from works of Jules Verne to Edgar Allen Poe to create a storyboard for a love story and form a non-verbal narrative. Also among the literary works Blake uses in this issue are Treasure Island, Sherlock Holmes and Poliphilo’s Strife of Love in a Dream (Hypnerotomachia Poliphiliare).

The eleventh issue marks the first occasion the long time writing partners Yahya Madra and Ceren Özselçuk collaborate for a fanzine. While the relationship between informality and Kayısı Kent A4 serves as the triggering force and various forms of informality continually manifested in this issue, it could be argued that what is more centrally at play here is the act, state of mind and modes of collaboration in writing. Alternatively, we can claim that this issue is a parody of collaborative writing. All these possibilities and different readings aside, it is evident that Özselçuk and Madra had a lot of fun preparing this issue.

Liz Amado has supported Apricot City A4 by translating published texts. We would like thank her very much for her generosity.
Stephan Kurr’s contribution to Apricot City A4 is kindly supported by Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA).
http://kayisikenta4.blogspot.com/

Contributors: Evrim Kavcar, Burak Bedenlier, Delphine Rigaud, Nalan Yırtmaç, Stephan Kurr, Yasemin Özcan Kaya, Antrepo, Burak Delier, Jorge Méndez Blake, Ceren Özselçuk ve Yahya Madra
Initiated and run by: Dilek Winchester

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Press

11.10.2011
İyi huylu parazit
Radikal

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Details

Start:
18/09/2011 @ 11:00
End:
15/10/2011 @ 17:00
Event Category:

Venue

Depo İstanbul
DEPO / Tütün Deposu Lüleci Hendek Caddesi No.12 Tophane
İstanbul, 34425 Turkey
Phone:
+90 (212) 292 39 56 - 57