Red Bull Art Around in Arnavutköy

ISTANBUL

Departing from the Derridean concept of “hauntology,” Red Bull Art Around Arnavutköy this year is bringing the works of 14 artists together around the theme of “Ghosts.” 

The exhibition connects a never-ending nostalgia feeling towards the past with an unrealized imaginary of future. 

With reference to those dreams which had once been dreamt of and later got detached in some way from our collective memory, the exhibition raises the question: “How many different ghosts do we hold inside?” 

The exhibition moves on a trajectory following this neighborhood’s past, destruction, annihilation, rebirth and hidden parts. 

Can Büyükberber contributes to the exhibition with an interactive augmented reality work that is installed in the pub “Any,” located in one of the oldest manor houses of Arnavutköy. 

While taking part in the work, the audience find themselves to be identifying with an anonymous identity of the future. This identity might be conceived as an otherworldly being, a ghost of the past or a representation of the consciousness that has left the body. 

Canavar’s mural painting is placed on the facade of a building in one of the backstreets of Arnavutköy. This mural which is the opening gate of the exhibition to the underground makes a reference to the past, bringing into light insects as both nourishing and consuming parts of the ecosystem. 

Bahar Yürükoğlu’s installation that she produced with colorful plexiglasses for a hidden garden in the backstreets of the neighborhood binds together the end points of the natural and the superficial. 

The installation conceptualizes a space for the future and thus questions the binaries, such as existence and absence, past and future, nature and civilization. Constructing an alternative imaginary of future through links to biology, ecology and art, sculptures of Pınar Yoldaş are reminiscent of a queer imaginary of the future, thanks to their cyborglike structures. Communicating with the audience from inside a fisherman’s aquarium, these sculptures also propose a distinctive ecosystem. 

Ali Emir Tapan’s audience-centered performance in a desolated warehouse is chasing up those ghosts that we create on the virtual space. He questions the contemporary notions of “surveillance” and “voyeur” by putting the viewer into the position of the “viewed.” 

Guido Casaretto’s sculpture, resembling a meteor that hit the earth, is both challenging for the audience’s optical and physical perception, and also interpretive for the rupture in Arnavutköy’s demographic structure. Ilgın Seymen’s installation recalls a chemical reaction, taking place on a fishing boat on the coast. 

Underlining the toxic features of the plastic materials that we use in daily life, this work brings up the issues of sea pollution in Arnavutköy and the problematic way that Kazıklı Yol—the built road on the sea—relates to the environment. 

Uğur Engin Deniz’s video is transforming a view of the neighborhood—a once-existed view that we only see the traces of today—into abstract and geometrical images, cross-layering the ever-changing architecture of the neighborhood on a trans-historical level. Sabo’s paintings and drawings narrate a fictive story by transforming the house it is located in. A scientist who lived in Arnavutköy and a virus which contaminate the residents of the neighborhood are the main characters of this story. Begüm Yamanlar’s video, resembling the layered texture of the neighborhood, confronts us in one of the backstreets, located inside an arched structure that survived the centuries. 

Eda Aslan’s installation, showcasing the sculpture molds that are not used anymore, stands like a monument dedicated to the former residents of the neighborhood. Each of these amorphous objects vivifies an individual work, reminding the shell of a being which has long lost its essence. 

Pınar Marul’s installation emerges at the outer surface of a manor house from 1898 that was used to be a dress-making atelier in the service of the palace. With its mystical appearance and delicate form, the work carries the undesirable and the invasive power in its core. 

Ceylan Göksel’s sound installation of anonymous drone sounds emanating from an unknown source absorbs the sound scape of the neighborhood into a dystopian construction. The photograph selected as a result of an open call which addressed the students meets with the visitors in the front of the walls surrounding a church, located at the heart of Arnavutköy. 

The exhibition, curated by the Collective Çukurcuma team, including Naz Cuguoğlu, Mine Kaplangı and Serhat Cacekli, will run through May 20. 

In parallel with the works that the 14 artists created for the specific spots of the neighborhood, conversation meetings with the artists and curators, night tours and “spooky” video screenings are being held as part of the exhibition program on May 10, 17 and 20.