SÓNAR +D  /  Chain_Block.quation

MAR 07 - MAR 07, 2020  /  ZORLU PERFORMANCE ARTS CENTER 
Organization: Sónar Festival

New TextCreativity is one of the main forces transforming reality in the 21st Century. Today, the ideas, languages, and tools coming from the new creative communities are having a deep impact beyond the limits of creative industries and the arts. From technological innovation to business to social change, all industries and sectors are being transformed by the capacity of creators to inspire and explore new worlds. Sónar+D is an international congress exploring how creative minds are changing our present and imagining new futures, in collaboration with researchers, innovators and business leaders from all sectors and industries. For the professionals and enthusiasts, Sónar+D is a unique and inspirational environment, open and relaxed, where to discover groundbreaking new work and find opportunities, learn new skills, network and showcase their initiatives. Four very intense days of talks, demos and workshops, tech shows and exhibitions, immersive experiences, one on one mentoring and community meetups, and much more.

Sónar+D presents a series of activities designed to be of use to the various creative communities, providing development sessions, opportunities to exchange ideas and tools, as well as opportunities to secure financing. Sónar+D follows all of the stages of the creative process with one goal: To facilitate and improve relationship between creativity, technology, innovation and business in an organic setting geared towards new creative and professional profiles.

INTERGALACTIC  /  Warning.transmission

SEP 03 - OCT 20, 2019  /  ANNA LAUDEL GALLERY
Artists: Beyza Boynudelik, Şafak Çatalbaş, Alper Derinboğaz, Emin Mete Erdoğan, Horasan, Ekin Su Koç, Ali Miharbi, Ali İbrahim Öcal, Özcan Saraç, Meltem Sırtıkara, Merve Şendil, İrem Tok.  //  Curator: İpek Yeğinsü

Adopting a transdisciplinary, site-specific and participatory approach in her curatorial practice, in “Intergalactic” İpek Yeğinsü focuses on how humanity’s existing socio-cultural structures will be affected by a potential migration towards space, and in doing so, opens an independent room for discussion with regards to contemporary conceptual dichotomies like the past and the future.

In this exciting age marked by our initiatives ranging from journeying to the dark side of the Moon to space tourism, from attempts at approaching the Sun to the quest for finding life on Mars, “Intergalactic” highlights the fact that our current desire to reach beyond our planet’s boundaries is not solely based on optimistic curiosity but it is also fuelled by the inescapable realisation that we have recklessly exhausted our planet’s resources. The exhibition asks the viewers some important questions about the future of our civilisation: In an age marked by climate change, dystopian scenarios and technological utopias where all our feelings of belongingness keep eroding, will searching for salvation in deep space be able to achieve anything beyond the creation a romantic dream industry?, Will our anxieties exacerbated by the awareness that our place in the universe is not as important as we have been told for centuries, and our consequently stimulated survival instinct be able to save us from vanishing into eternity? And if our century succeeds at carrying us upwards in the evolutionary ladder, how will our socio-cultural structures be affected?

The exhibition also explores the ways in which the identity building processes, rituals, inter and intra-species communication methods of our society’s representatives might evolve and change once they settle in other planets or even other galaxies. Offering a non-geocentric critical approach to contemporary dichotomies like the center vs. the periphery, the near vs. the far, the observer vs. the observed, and the past vs. the future, the exhibition will showcase artworks of 12 artists working with various media and disciplines like painting, sculpture, video, photography and new media.

Curated by İpek Yeğinsü, Anna Laudel will present a group exhibition titled “Intergalactic”, showcasing selected artworks of 12 contemporary artists including Beyza Boynudelik, Şafak Çatalbaş, Alper Derinboğaz, Emin Mete Erdoğan, Horasan, Ekin Su Koç, Ali Miharbi, Ali İbrahim Öcal, Özcan Saraç, Meltem Sırtıkara, Merve Şendil and İrem Tok. Running between 3 September and 20 October 2019, the exhibition departs from the question of what the future will be like if we manage to bring and sustain our civilisation beyond the confines of our planet.

Opening on Tuesday, September 3rd, “Intergalactic” will run parallel to the 16th Istanbul Biennial (14 Sept. – 10 Nov.) of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts and will be held across three floors of the exhibition space at Anna Laudel in Istanbul until 20 October 2019. The exhibition will also present a programme of parallel activities including artist talks and curatorial tours.

THINGS OF NOW  /  G5.complexity_theory

MAY 04 - MAY 24, 2019  /  GALLERY BU
Artists: Bertan Ekici, Cüneyt Aksoy, Eda Emirdağ, Özcan Saraç, Sergen Şehitoğlu, Sırma Doruk  //  Curators: Başak Kızılçiçek, Elif Ezgi Özer

Between 4th and 24th of May, at Pavilion by Galeri Bu, with the curatorship of Basak Kizilcicek and Elif Ezgi Ozer, mixed exhibiton named ‘’Things of Now’’ meets its viewers. Modernism brought about a forced alienation to individuals. Feeling like an object produced by modern technologies, the individual became ‘’a thing’’ and found himself in a feeling of deep loneliness. The exhibiton ‘’Things of Now’’, which emerged with this feeling, aims to bring together the feeling of being a thing that the artist feels and the feeling of existing like and object with the feelings of the viewer. In the exhibition, there are works of some artists like Bertan Ekici, Cüneyt Aksoy, Eda Emirdağ, Özcan Saraç, Sergen Şehitoğlu and Sırma Doruk which involve photography, video art and installation.

BORDER_LESS ART BOOK DAYS  /  ÜBER_ALLES.ff0000 & SYSTEM.dna

APR 12 - APR 14, 2019  /  SIRASELVILER 35
Artists: Bekir Dindar, Bengisu Bayrak, Deniz Yılmaz, Irmak Canevi, İbrahim Karakütük, Komet, M.Cevahir Akbaş, Melis Cantürk, Özcan Saraç, Raziye Kubat, Seval Şener (Torun, Ankara), Umut Erbaş, Umut Toros, Yüksel Dal  //  Organization: Borderless

Border_less Art Book Days aims to showcase artists, galleries, initiatives and institutions that have publications and work with texts. The event, centrally located at Sıraselviler Caddesi, Beyoglu will foster the fields of art publishing and art-book making and become a common ground for introductions and interactions between artists, art professionals, public houses, and the public alike.  

M.E.T.A.  /  SYSTEM.dna

MAY 02 - MAY 17, 2018  /  ADAHAN Art Space
Artists: Ali Alışır, Banu Çolak, Burcu Perçin, Olcay Kuş, Ozan Türkkan, Özcan Saraç, Sibel Kocakaya  //  Curators: Hande Ergüder, Selin Holman

Every kind of value created in the process of historical and social development is desired to be transmitted to the next generations, and different lives and thoughts emerge as a reflection of the sovereignty of people in their social surroundings. Together with the cultural heritage, the entertainment industry is emerging in the late 19th century in Europe and America with an unbelievable rise. In the process of coming from the past, the world that continues to differentiate as globalization brings with it great changes. Together with the capitalist regime, a new way of life for the individual comes into play. Adorno, a German writer and philosopher, aims to draw attention to this issue by saying, 'We are getting all of our rights to be the subject of our life' while putting forward the concept of 'Cultural Industries'. From the past to the present, it is seen in the historical cycle that culture industry is numbing people. Cultural assets are transformed into standardized metal, produced only by snowflake. Most people make it their goal to put their self in the foreground and follow the period. Everything that individuals produce and consume today is in this sense confronted as a common product of industry, bureaucracies and social controls. Every target presented to the masses brings with it great social problems. Those who produce the better and desire to consume and become the goal are trapped in the steel cage that the system created with all of their self.

CROSSED DESTINIES  /  ÜBER_ALLES.ff0000

APR 05 - APR 12, 2018  /  BILSART Art Space
Artists: Özcan Saraç, Bengü Karaduman, Lara Kamhi, Uygar Demoğlu  //  Curator: Ipek Yeğinsü

The Castle of Crossed Destinies (1973) is an ideal example of Italo Calvino’s experimental approach towards fictional narrative. This work which may also be defined as a ‘semiotic novel departing from the symbolism of tarot cards, is composed of two sections, namely “The Castle of Crossed Destinies” and “The Tavern of Crossed Destinies”, each containing eight short stories. In both settings, a group of individuals gather around a table and, unable to put their adventures into words, tell their stories through the images on the cards. The grid-like structure that emerges as the cards come one after another generates an archetypal network encouraging the reader to join the game as well. The stories occasionally become intertwined; while some cards repeatedly appear with varying meanings, others become indispensable for more than one narrators’ purpose. The result is an extraordinary pattern in which, in Calvino’s words, “the meaning of each card depends on its place in the sequence of cards preceding and succeeding it”. The sequence of images composing the stories is also reminiscent of concepts like cinematic narrative and montage; it is possible to argue that they even generate a Kuleshov Effect’. This effect can be considered valid for moving images in general, and is also at the basis of the exhibition’s narrative structure.

The two sections in the exhibition, each with a duration of two weeks, establish an analogy with the book’s two respective sections. Moreover, each section in itself has been structured in a way to present one video work by one artist for one week, each produced specifically for the exhibition. Here the main objective is to initiate an intellectual exercise on the narrative effect generated by the sequence of works within the exhibition as well as on each artist’s response to the conceptual framework; to revisit Calvino’s semiotic experimental field within the context of video art via two different artist duos with ‘crossed destinies’. During the curatorial process, the discovery of the fact that Ergin Çavuşoğlu’s work Desire Lines / Tarot & Chess (2016) was exhibited a few months ago at the same venue and was based on the same text, added yet another exciting layer of meaning to the already existing ones: the exhibition space’s own history, emerging from the sequence of visually oriented activities it presents.

CONFUSION  /  ARTIFICIAL.constitutional_rights

DEC 02 - DEC 05, 2017  /  MACAO Milano
Artists: Ayşe Tuğ, Can Aksan, Cansu Gürsu, Deniz Aktaş, Elif Demirci, Eşref Yıldırım, Dele Memed, Genco Gülan, Levent Duran, Melih Sarıgöl, Oddviz, Merve İşeri, Özcan Saraç Özge Kul, Özgür Demirci, Selçuk Artut, Tuğberk Selçuk, Uğur Çakı, Uluç Ali Kılıç and Zeyno Pekünlü  //  Organization: Kopuntu Network

The exhibition is the first part of our event. Curated by Milen Nae, this exhibition welcomes 18 artists from Turkey, regardless of their residence addresses. This exhibition aims to bring together the different experiences of homelessness, groundlessness and constant displacement, while at the same time centers on this question: Is it possible to create a new sort of diaspora among those who share the same emotions and experiences but not the same space, nationality, language, race or religion? Our artists Ayşe Tuğ, Can Aksan, Cansu Gürsu, Deniz Aktaş, Elif Demirci, Eşref Yıldırım, Dele Memed, Genco Gülan, Levent Duran, Melih Sarıgöl, Oddviz, Merve İşeri, Özcan Saraç Özge Kul, Özgür Demirci, Selçuk Artut, Tuğberk Selçuk, Uğur Çakı, Uluç Ali Kılıç and Zeyno Pekünlü search for an answer in this exhibition, through the conceptual titles of Confusion, Home and Hope.

Solidarity, not Solitude! Until now besides its interdisciplinary events that took place in Italy, Germany and Sweden, including talks, exhibitions, screenings and live performances, it has published a quantity of different genre of writing including academic articles, articles, journalism pieces, critiques, essays and literary pieces in its online platform kopuntu.org. This digital platform, together with the interdisciplinary events, aims at creating an inventory of conceptualization of the experiences that are encountered in these mentioned digital and physical spaces and thus keeping alive the memories.

We are all going through a period in which we lose our grounds, continents, venues, and domains one by one, both literally and metaphorically and the only off-ramp for our memories, souls, need for conversation and coexistence are to construe and construct meanings in already existing venues that are available to us. This is neither an easy path nor completely voluntary for us, however as acrid as it is, it is also exciting. Macao, in that sense, occupies a crucial and unique place. It is, for us, one of the places to be, in our greater aim to further explain ourselves and to create productive and novel encounters. Nevertheless, Macao does not let us only use a space that it owns together with offering us numerous potential encounters to last with fruitful collaborations, but it also provides a creation and production space that aims to be inter-disciplinary as well as experimental. It must be noted that this experimental aspect of our interdisciplinary entity refers to a social experiment, which employs a counter-understanding to the mainstream narrative of diaspora that continues investigating further means to conceive an alternative definition.

In this manner, we are excited to present you our Macao Milano contribution to this collaboration: Confusion. The word kopuntu has two different meanings in the Turkish dictionary: the first diaspora, and the second, a torn piece. The concept of our event stems from the exact gap between these two lexical meanings of the word Kopuntu. This gap, while defining the two different phenomena, also designates the unbreakable bond between and mutuality of these two concepts. This gap is exactly what creates the Confusion: the bemusement between “a torn piece,” signifying an active search for a physical and mental venue to express ourselves, and “diaspora” in which we can hardly find any of those venues. Confusion thus rests upon two other equally important trivets: Hope and Home. Imagine that we are stuck in our Homes and our Hopes, which leaves us with nothing but Confusion. On the other hand, it is possible to conceptualize these three umbrella terms of the event in an alternative way, which appeals to our foundations as Kopuntu in a more sincere way. Confusion for us is always emphasized, in every legal, political and daily venue of our lives, regardless of residency either in Turkey or abroad. We are all in a search for Home and Hope, and in this regard, Confusion refers to a both (or either) procedural and chronic situation that defines primarily a mental displacement. This mental displacement is the origins of our aporia for a rather homelessness but not rootlessness, hopefulness but not despair and lastly, being solidarity but not solitude. Therefore, we keep on saying: Solidarity, not Solitude!

ACROSS THE LINE  /  CHAIN_BLOCK.Equation

NOV 14 - DEC 25, 2017  /  ZORLU Performance Arts Center
Artists: Özcan Saraç, Kerim Dündar, Gülfidan Özmen ve Zeynep Budak, Bilal Yılmaz, Betül Aksu, Ethem Cem, Deniz Derbent, Hazal Döleneken, Ufuk Barış Mutlu, Ege Selçuk ve Meltem Şahin  //  Organization: British Council 

Creating artworks out of the trace of interaction between technology, physical objects, and various disciplines, the exhibition focuses on the sense of exploration when one goes across the line. Bringing the experience of Istanbul’s chaotic urban texture with physical structures and advanced technologies through concrete installations, mechanical structures, and digital surface deformations, Across the Line looks for a new balance and harmony at the heart of this meta-structure. Having gone beyond their lines into others and interacting with each other at the meeting, points to give birth to this collaboration and harmony, artists are inspired by the creation of a cognitive utopic living space. Numeric values placed in tactile objects, electrical currents, light pieces, mechanical structures and sounds encourage onlookers to ponder that the utopia of creating one’s own future is only possible through a collective consciousness and the flexibility and transparency of lines between concepts.
Each work tells its own story in relation to this utopia, continuing to build a dialogue with the visitors, to interact with their lines, and to invite them into their own lines.

O+OMA+A  /  ARTIFICIAL.constitutional_rights

SEP 20 - OCT 21, 2018  /  MIXER Gallery
Artists: Ahmet Duru, Ali Elmacı, Ali Şentürk, Alican Leblebici, Ayşe Hilal Ateş, Berk Yüksel, Elif Esen, Evren Erol, Gökçen Dilek Acay, Hasan İlkan Cebeci, Meliha Sözeri, Meltem Şahin, Murat Can Kurşun, Nur Gürel, Oğuz Emre Bal, Özcan Saraç, Özgür Ballı

The exhibition takes its name after the Automata Theory, which examines the mathematical interaction of man and machines, covers the story of a fictive machine. It leaves the audience, who cannot see but feel its existence by intuition, with the discovery process of the appearance and the functioning of this machine that is directly connected with the production process of the artists.

In an age that man becomes mechanized, the machine becomes humanized and contemporary is constantly questioned, the exhibition reinterprets the Manifiesto Blanco which predicts that the developments in technology and science will provide new forms and new display options for the artworks day by day. This manifest, which is shaped in 1946 in Buenos Aires and claims that the technological and aesthetical attitude will change, covers the idea that the artists should design artworks while benefiting from the technological developments. Even though the term technological usually can be understood as ahead of its time, this manifest argues that the "technological" is contemporary. In this post-digital age which we could not separate the technology and production from each other, the exhibition that brings 17 artists who use different devices together, pushes us to question the changing aesthetic perception in this transition process.

The exhibition also covers the artists who were selected among the winners of bang. Art Innovation Prix which was coordinated by the ArtBizTech in 2017 for the first time. bang. Art Innovation Prix includes works of data art, bio art, new media and hybrid art that are produced with the curiosity and will of exploring of human beings. In Automata exhibition along with the different and new works of these artists, the works of artists who are working with traditional materials come together. The exhibit invites the audience to become a part that constantly working machine.

BANG.PRIX  /  G-20.Complexity_Theory

MAY 25 - JUN 03, 2017  /  42 MASLAK Art Space
Artists: Ali Alsamarei, Andre Karge & Gökçen Dilek Açay, Ayşe Hilal Ateş, Berk Yüksel, Didem Toy & Esra Çomu, Elif Esen & Neşe Topçuoğlu, Ersin Öztürk, Hasan İlkan Cebeci, Merve Güzel & Oğuz Emre Bal, Murat Can Kurşun, Oğuz Emre Bal, Özcan Saraç, Özgür Ballı, SM Abdullah Al Mamun

Today’s “post - digital“ era with hyper-dynamic digital moments and incredibly fast pace of information flow transform the dynamic and intellectual paradigms into innovative ideas by inspiring from art. Bang. Art Prix has born out of bits, atoms, neurons, genes which help human beings shape the future by exploring new habitats. At the same time, it creates a new environment for artists to combine abstraction and aesthetic relationships in science, art and innovation contexts. The sudden emergence of new inventions in the nineteenth century has taken its place in history. With the advance of technology now it has left its place to “innovation” and “avant-garde”. New technologies such as biotechnology, augmented reality, virtual reality are reshaping our experiences and redesigning our future. Alexander Galloway states that the digitalization of objects in the post - digital period has not only created a link between the self and the world, but also changed our behaviors and thinking styles. Thanks to these new aesthetic judgements artists create new forms supported by science and science is inspired by art for the new… bang. Art Innovation Prix is triggered with curiosity and exploration desire of human beings who are a part of the world flora and faureas. Young artists combine this desire with science and hi-tech such as genetics and cellular biology, big data, image processing to create art pieces in data art, bio art, new media and hybrid arts categories.

OBSERVED TRUTHS  /  CHAIN_BLOCK.Equation

JAN 20 - MAR 01, 2017  /  MIXER Gallery
Artists: Mutlu Aksu, Eren Bayrak, Irmak Canevi, Özcan Saraç, Ezgi Tok  //  Curator: Selin Turam

Reality can be interpreted as the process of transforming imperceptible concepts into perceptible ones. While performing a review on the relativity and necessity of the concept of reality, the exhibition questions the concept of Reality shaped with regard to the references the elements of perception create within themselves. In line with this reference, it is the indiscipline itself, where ways of perception are perpetually diversified and adapted on, that is Absolute.

The effort to measure and define the Observable is an act of conceptualisation carried out by Imagination that urges to reach the limits of the Unobservable. Observed Truths presents different solo projects from five artists; Mutlu Aksu exposes the transformation processes of natural and experimental development based on `replication` and `reproduction` while developing perspectives on the transformations occurring within the process.

Irmak Canevi’s composition of unexpected elements creates a questionable stability that bears possibilities of another world hidden beyond ‘matter’. The artist also interprets the vagueness of memory and bygone presences with reality. Özcan Saraç portrays the elements which we have made a part of our reality and those we could not; basing them as his research on the validity of the `human` system. Ezgi Tok mediates the reciprocal evaluation of two elements of reality and readdresses the relationship between the measuring instrument and the measured. Eren Bayrak questions the formats visual perception developed for mass-production and allows us to observe our visual reality from different viewpoints, which is shaped according to the projections of mass communication devices.

SESSIONS  /  SYSTEM.dna

JUL 15 - AUG 13, 2016  /  MIXER Gallery
Artists: Abdurrahman Ateş, Betina Hobeş, Burak Çolak, Devran Öksüz, Doruk Pireci, Ece Öz, Emine Gündüz, Eren Bayrak, Fatma Çiftçi, Filiz Piyale, Gizem Ünlü, Kemal Yıldız, Mediha Didem Türemen, Melis Cantürk, Mutlu Aksu, Okay Özkan, Ozan Ersizer, Özcan Saraç, Özge Parlak, Sami Aslan, Sercan Koçak, Şahin Demir, Uğur Aksu & Burak Tutkun  //  Curator: Selin Turam

Since the day it was established, Mixer aims to make art reachable to everyone, while creating platforms for young artists to show their works. For the first time this year, Mixer has initiated the exhibition series Sessions, where a group of artists is selected from various applications under an Open Call, to be exhibited in the summer period.

For the inaugural edition of Sessions I, taking place between July 15 to August 13, 2016, 23 artists have been selected, ranging from various mediums to different levels of education and research. The show consists of a wide selection of artists who have improved their practices and researches through particular mediums and diverse fields.

MAMUT ART PROJECT  /  GENERATED.Binary & SOFTWARE.Labels

APR 20 - APR 24, 2016  /  KÜÇÜKÇIFTLIK Park
Artists: 51 Artists  //  Organizators: Seren Kohen, Ekin Kohen, Tuba Kocakaya

Mamut Art Project, Turkey’s unique art event dedicated to engaging emerging artists with new collectors, galleries and curators returns this spring, providing an important platform for 50 up-and-coming creative talents working in a range of disciplines throughout Turkey. Sponsored by Akkök Holding, the 6th edition of Mamut Art Project will be held in 2018 at Istanbul’s KüçükÇiftlik Park.

We accept applications from independent contemporary artists (without any restrictions of age or medium) during our 2 month application period. Next, our jury of 5, which changes each year, determine who gets to participate in our upcoming project. Each selected artist gets 10 sqm. of individual space, to show their work to Turkey’s most known collectors, curators and gallery owners, and also to art lovers throughout the event (4 days + preview night). Artlovers discover new artists each year and take their first steps into collecting art with our affordable art concept.

ACT FESTIVAL  /  ISOLATION.Manifestations

MAR 20 - MAY 20, 2015  /  BERN, ZURICH, BASEL
Artists: Jony Valado, Anastasija Kadisa, Angela Stoecklin, Beat Unternährer, Clemens Fellmann, Denise Palmieri, Géraldine Honauer, Jessica Cooke, Joana Castilhos, Julie Bärz, Lou Sturm, Marie Konalian, Maya Minder, Milky Diamond, Özcan Saraç, Sabrina D’Agostino, Simone Steinegger, Ye Ye

ACT is a performance festival on tour, at that time consisting of three public performance evenings in the mentioned cities.
Mostly individual performances were shown, as well as performance videos, acoustic interventions and interactive and performative installations. The works were demonstrated one to three times. The students of the respective university took over the organization and the responsibility of the program at the venues.