ISEA2011 Art Event Overview


[Overview] [Venues] [Presentations] [Workshops] [Art Events]

  • Art Exhibition - Uncontainable:

      Uncontainable: Cumhuriyet Art Gallery, Taksim, Istanbul. The ISEA2011 Istanbul exhibition is titled UNCONTAINABLE. Its focus is on the development of contemporary arts at the intersection of art, science and technology, which by innovating and breaking boundaries are redefining not solely contemporary aesthetic but also our social and political environment. The ISEA2011 Istanbul exhibition is titled UNCONTAINABLE. Its focus is on the development of contemporary arts at the intersection of art, science and technology, which by innovating and breaking boundaries are redefining not solely contemporary aesthetic but also our social and political environment. The curatorial concept for UNCONTAINABLE explains the conceptual underpinning of the exhibition and its structure, which hosts multiple exhibitions strands and events. As Artistic Director for this exhibition – together with Özden Sahin, the Program Director – I wanted to showcase the complexity of contemporary social interactions and the role that technology is playing in redefining contemporary aesthetics. UNCONTAINABLE is part of the official Parallel Program of the Istanbul Biennial, which allows us to provide a diverse perspective on the contemporary developments within fine arts aesthetics.

      In officially presenting this event I would like to stress the importance that it will play in re-defining the aesthetics of the interaction between art, science and technology beyond the divide artificially constructed of New Media vs. Old Media.

    Various Locations — Uncontainable & Untitled

    Uncontainable & Untitled is an exhibition strand of the general ISEA2011 Istanbul exhibition entitled Uncontainable. The title Uncontainable & Untitled is an homage to the 12th Istanbul Biennial – Untitled and plays on the contemporary relevance of socio-political issues at the intersection of art, science and technology. The dispersed nature of contemporary events and technological advancements presents viewers both with the fascinating possibilities and the problematic realities of contemporary art & life.

    Sirket-I Hayriye Art Gallery — Uncontainable: Broken Stillness

    The relationship between technology and speed has been closely associated with the development of progressive technology in the 20th century and now in this century, with the ubiquity of personal computers, mobile devices and networks, with rapidly increasing capability. It has been an expectation that machines will work faster and more seamlessly in the service of making society more flexible and agile. Unless procedures go wrong in the mainstream, data transfer, manipulation and creation is rarely questioned. Notably Paul Virilio commented on these developments observing that speed is so much a part of our engagement with society that we are dependent on it, while apprehensive or even fearful that the technology of speed may break, stop or cause accident and disaster. This subject has of course been the subject of much science fiction over the last 120 years from HG Wells to James Cameron. Current debate, such as that present in ISEA2011, focuses on our relationship with digital data and the complexities that have arisen in terms of creative practice, data storage, the environmental impact of working with digital data, and new forms of socio-economic grouping that are being created by social media and data mining.

    The subtle, beautiful and hypnotic works in UNCONTAINABLE: Broken Stillness use digital practices to examine the border where well-established forms of imagemaking, especially painting and photography, meet the possibilities offered by new technologies. Through custom written software or hacked packages the artists use a fusion of the analogue and the digital to engage the politics and development of image-making in contemporary visual arts. The works manipulate data to create images that reside between the moving image and the stills of painting and photography.

    Kasa Gallery — Uncontainable: Hyperstrata

    Hyperstrata looks at the process of layering, sedimentation, hybridization and transmediation of contemporary aesthetics. The artworks chosen reflect one or more of these criteria and are a current example of the historical transformations that contemporary techno societies are provoking and witnessing. The pixel becomes from time to time a contemporary media tool to overlay images with 21st century’s aesthetics. The pixel is a layer that reflects previous and new r-evolutionary developments.

    Cumhuriyet Art Gallery/Maksem — Uncontainable: Second Nature

    The exhibition crosses cultural and discipline boundaries. A cultural bridge has been constructed, based on a framework of both Maori and European knowledge. Five themes from within European and Māori world views were located: cosmological context, all is energy, life emerged from water, anthropic principle and integrated systems. All the selected works address more than one of these thematic regions.

    Nuru Ziya Hotel — Uncontainable: Terra Virtualis

    UNCONTAINABLE: Terra Virtualis brings together several allusions: both the past and future of Australia in relation to the rest of the world, and the notion of exploration that the linguistic pun on Terra Australis implies; Australia’s perceived position as an international leader in virtual art.  Virtual art locates and presents new points of potential, and forces new openings into actuality. The time of the contemporary is virtual time, and only virtual art can meet the challenges of our virtual times.

    Cumhuriyet Art Gallery/Maksem — Uncontainable: Signs of Life / Robot Incubator

    Curator: Kathy Cleland

    In the Signs of Life: Robot Incubator exhibition there are robots that look like machines but display human-like psychological behaviours, a humanoid robot that looks like a sculpture come to life, a doll-like robotic automaton performer and interactive modular robots that display hybrid machinic/biomorphic characteristics. Robots aren’t born biologically. They are designed, built, programmed and incubated by their human parents as they develop and grow through different versions and iterations. The artists in this exhibition show a diverse range of evolving robotic progeny from the machinic to the humanoid. Although very different in their appearance, these robots all display emergent signs of life and personality through their behaviour and movement.

    Cumhuriyet Art Gallery/Maksem — Uncontainable: The World is Everything and That is the Case

    Other ISEA2011 Art Exhibitions:

    Kasa Gallery — Not There

    The art exhibit Not There presents works that are not physically in the gallery but are visible through mobile phones and do not physically exist in real spaces, but appear virtually in a variety of locations: the Giardini of the Venice Biennial, Piazza San Marco, the Samek Art Gallery and Kasa Gallery in Istanbul.

    Çemberlitas Hamam — Southern Ocean Studies

    The Southern Ocean Studies seeks to develop a sensibility to the dynamics of ecological complexity as pattern and felt experience rather than quantity and measure whilst respecting the underlying science.Tom Corby presents on the cupola of the Çemberlitas Hamam The Southern Ocean Studies (with Baily and Mackenzie) a series of installation artworks that employ and comment on climate models of the Circumpolar Tide. The projection will adorn the cupola of the Çemberlitas Hamam built by the Architect Sinan in 1584. Lanfranco Aceti, ISEA2011 Istanbul Artistic Director and Conference Chair invites you to participate in an official ISEA Gathering at the Çemberlitas Hamam to discuss issues of contemporary ecology, melting of the poles and the importance of water in world culture.

    Building Food Lab & Apparel — Sensual Technologies

    Location: Building Food Lab & Apparel, Serder-i Ekrem Caddesi 27, Istanbul. An exhibition  exploring the relationship between the body and sensual/sensing technologies through performance and dynamic garments. The installation will offer an interrogation of practices that are indebted to the innovative exchange between the sensual, visceral and new technologies.

    Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb (Croatia) — Dislocations

    Re-interpretations, mis-interpretations and unrelated contexts create new modalities of perception and understanding, leading to the rediscovery of the self and human commonalities beyond local realities and globalized stereotypes. Dislocations presents artworks that are
    inspired by or reference acts of war and the dislocated realities that we live in.

    ISEA2011 Istanbul and the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Croatia, present DISLOCATIONS, an art program of recontextualizations and transmediations, which sees the participation of Songül Boyraz, David Cotterrell, Charles Csuri, Mathias Fuchs, Danielle Roney and Jeff Conefry. The event is in collaboration with Kasa Gallery and sponsored by Borusan Müzik Evi. For its world premier Dislocations will also introduce to the world audience Random War, the new transmediated artwork on Facebook by the digital pioneer Charles Csuri, inspired by a 1967 plotted drawing by the same title. Re-interpretations, mis-interpretations and un-related contexts create new modalities of perception and understanding, leading to the rediscovery of the self and human commonalities beyond local realities and globalized stereotypes. Dislocations presents artworks that are inspired by or reference acts of war and the dislocated realities that we live in. Dislocations is part of the Official Parallel Program of the 12th Istanbul Biennial.

    The Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb (Croatia) — Geometries of the Sublime

    ISEA2011 Istanbul and the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb present GEOMETRIES OF THE SUBLIME. This is an art program that focuses on the world pioneers of contemporary geometric and digital arts. The program sees the participation of Charles Csuri, Roman Verostko, Paul Brown, and Manfred Mohr. The event is in collaboration with Kasa Gallery, Istanbul. Geometries of the Sublime artists have characterized the second half of the 20th century and experimented with digital technology, art and science – searching through chaos for perfect forms and the sublime.


    Concerts and Performances: