The contemporary Turkish fine-arts scene is subordinated to the neo-liberal cultural economy to a relatively low degree, although there are very visible passages and articulations in between. However, corporate sponsorship reigns over this domain; the only channels for domestic and international public exposure are the fine-art venues in Istanbul that are financially well-supported through corporate sponsorship, and they are monopolized by two curators who hate each other’s guts – not for aesthetic reasons, but because the cake is just not big enough. Nevertheless, as a result of the cultural exchange regimes brought about by the global economy, Istanbul is now more exposed to contemporary art from elsewhere in the world, and artists who come from wealthy families or are simply adventurous have more chances to experience the art scene in the U.S. or Europe. The first difficulty these artists face is the problem of competing with their European and American colleagues, who have far greater financial resources through grants, corporate sponsorship and other means – even welfare would be a great financial support for the Anatolian artist. There is, however, another difficulty awaiting them as well: just as Turkish anthropologists are expected to carry out research on Anatolian village life, as artists they are expected to reflect the pains of being a woman or a gay in a fundamentalist, patriarchal society, or produce exotic images of the poor people in the streets of Istanbul slums, or talk about the cultural difficulties of immigrants and their sad problems in becoming orientated, or appeal to perverted erotic fantasies of the East left over from a misinformed colonialist imagination. Other critical issues are reserved for European and American artists, especially issues concerned with their urban culture and political system. If a Turkish artist wants to tackle issues related to other geographical regions, or if his/her work is influenced by features of other cultures, s/he is again faced with this “license” problem – you either have to be a native or a Western artist. After some time, it becomes a more attractive option to return to Istanbul to exploit the possibilities opened to you by virtue of your being an “artist who worked in New York for a while”, and do the kind of work that is interesting to you under more reasonable living conditions.

But still, these conditions offer a fertile space that creates certain advantages for Turkish and other similar non-Western artists, and through them, provides a potential opening for the art world: the intellectual richness that comes from growing up in contradictory transitional phases. A certain group of artists who grew up in the transition period of the 80’s, and younger ones who have developed political awareness have been able to become familiar with previous social conditions without being affected by them. Neither of these groups followed 70’s avant-gardism or bought the “new values” of 90s’ neo-liberalism. They are not interested in the art market; they try to distance themselves from the corporate art world and to stay in the common terrain of the public sphere – this kind of common ground is quickly becoming extinct in the West through the increasing privatization of public spheres. They are not “professional artists”; they can earn their living on the outer fringes of the culture industry or through other forms of intellectual labor. This gives them the freedom to work without the constraints of commercial mechanisms and competitions for grants. With this combination, they are continuing the tradition of a highly intellectual, experimental and political artistic practice (something which Turkey missed in the overtly and uni-directionally politicized atmosphere of the 70’s and which has now been almost abandoned, ignored or decontextualized by the institutionalization of contemporary arts in the West) and cultivating the bio-political field of everyday life. These positive conditions are supported by a sort of negative technological advantage: although they work with similar digital technologies to those of their European or American colleagues, these “cultural producers” mostly do not have the financial means to buy ready-made technological solutions, which forces them to become experts with their tools, utilize technology more practically, and sometimes develop their own technologies.

In a very short space of time, a promising situation has arisen on the peripheries of the empire: the possibility of a new collective subjectivity and a new form of artistic practice, an art without “artists” and “art institutions” - something which is not likely to be possible in the “nerve centers” anymore.

The xurban collective is one of this new type of “cultural producers” – or “advanced amateurs”, as they call themselves. They live in Ankara/Istanbul/New York, and their work incorporates photography, video, computer graphics, installation and interactive digital media. They sign their collaborative projects as a collective and claim that collective work overcomes and excludes the problem of the artist’s identity from the practice of art. In past years, their collective work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennial, in Istanbul, the US and Germany, and they will take part in the coming Istanbul Biennial.

Aras Ozgun: You work as a collective: What kind of resources and consequences does "collective work" bring, and how do you evaluate a collective form of artistic production with regard to "artist subjectivity"?

xurban: Working collectively is more fun than using the methods of a self-reflexive artistic ego. The process-based artistic collectivity dispenses with the need for inspiration of the divine kind, dreams, childhood, and the personal experiences of a lifetime. The dialogues within the collective become an intellectual projection, mostly of a political kind. In this sense, the ‘creative’ transgresses itself and “I/We” consent to the same ethical attitude towards the objects of the “artwork”.

Aras Ozgun: We can probably talk about there being certain structural differences in the field of artistic production and circulation between the East/Turkey and the West/elsewhere. What are these differences and how do they affect artistic production (formally and textually). How do these structural differences relate to artists' subjectivities? How do you play with these differences in your experience - while working both here and there? What are the political consequences of these differences in a more general framework?

xurban: It is hard to answer this question because of the fact that there are the “Orients” within the “Occidents” of different types, and vice versa. There is a quasi-homogeneous layer of culture industry over the entire vast trans-national territory, while the circumstantial traits of each locale are specific. The archaeological layers of political-circumstantial evidence tend to melt into one another as one travels eastwards. Unlike the Western heritage, the unrecorded histories of this fusion and reversal (i.e. oppression/resistance) require the methods of field archaeology: in-situ observation and excavation. Iraq is a case in point, as the most recent example. Instead of the structural differences of art production, we concentrate on the observable side of this layering: how layers fuse with each other and the possibilities for a kind of observation that in turn includes the members of the collectivity, whether they live in the East or the West. Furthermore, the tools of this search can be universal in the sense that the collective has the privilege of being able to operate in both geographical locations. The discourse of hegemonic world domination is franchised through the practices of the governing bodies in the locales mentioned. In contrast, we try to explore alternatives to militarization and containment of territories. The ethical stance that we take informs us that the observation/sampling of these alternatives is more important than a reactionary position.

Aras Ozgun: Can you tell us about your recent work?

xurban: For the project we realized for the 8th Istanbul Biennial, we set up a mission (the acquisition and transfer of a fuel tank from Southeastern Anatolia) and the means for it (a journey overland from Istanbul to the region and back, documentation using various media, including photography, video, sound recordings etc.). The work itself is the exhibition of a currently defunct object once used for the transnational transport of oil, as well as the process/journal of its acquisition.
Within the recent past, almost all of the lorries transporting goods between Turkey and Iraq were equipped with special steel tanks (custom-built to fit underneath the trucks) used for an off-the-books transportation of diesel fuel back into Turkey. Outlawed and useless, these tanks now lie sprawled along the highways as the remnants of a once prosperous barter economy of sorts. Our aim is to carry out an archaeological field survey of these vessels (i.e. like the amphorae used several thousand years ago in Anatolia) and bring a chosen one back as an object of high plasticity, and indeed, veneration.
We believe that this odyssey from Istanbul to the Southeast and back will reveal a panoramic view of the country, the people and the landscape. The prize is a special object, once mobile and now grounded, in turn containing another prized substance. The cross-border, transnational journey of the container and the substance it once contained will end at the exhibition space, its final destination. We propose that this space be a highly sanitized, pure white one with extreme illumination, totally alienating the chosen object, the camera-based documentation of the process of acquisition, and the spatial conditions of their existence.
A major issue for xurban has been the flow of information over various networks, while the physical transfer of its members was not a necessary condition. Meanwhile, we were aware of the fact that, all along the globalized systems of transfers, goods of high value (i.e. oil) had an overwhelmingly high priority, whereas people are restricted in their international mobility as the subjects of ‘containment’. Thus, we have decided to appropriate an object that itself has traveled long distances across the borders in times of customs, control and containment. This contrasts with the tradition of trade in the ‘fertile crescent’ for several millennia. The historical versus the contemporary significance of this process is of high value to us.
“the containment contained” is planned as an ambitious xurban project. The ‘Southeast’ has been officially categorized as a high-alert zone for decades, and, in this sense, it represents its own risks, and a semblance of a distance as far as we are concerned. The journey itself is therefore a reflection on geography, on the impoverished state of existence of its people, but nevertheless illuminated with the empathy that we all experience when looking on from this part of the globe, particularly in these troubled times.

Aras Ozgun: What can you say about the intellectual resources of your artistic practice? What kind of concepts, themes, problems shape your work? How do you locate and define your work in the contemporary art scene (both in Turkey and the "art world" in general)?

xurban: xurban members are stalkers of the urban landscape. This “flanerie in reverse” always leads us to look for what is desolate, neglected, ruined and derelict in the metropolis as the sign of the times. This distaste for the ‘bourgeois’ is nothing new, but the childish fascination with the catastrophic gives us all a hope of redemption which we share with the underdog of the city. Furthermore, we noticed that this sensibility prevails in and covers the different geographical zones of East and West wherever we happen to be in the company of the oppressed, especially within the present distribution of international capital and power. As we have documented on our website (www.xurban.net), many of the themes that concern us in photographic terms are related to the archaeological excavation of the city as a zone of catastrophe. Furthermore, we trace the signs of extended catastrophe in a pictorial landscape that once referred to pristine nature. The recording of archaeological surveys and processes is usually made possible by gathering and collating photographic images. We tend to superimpose simultaneous situations in different locales (NY-Istanbul) or to juxtapose the contemporary and the archaeological layering of ruins over millenia. This helps us to suggest the recurrence of possible alternatives to existent oppressive regimes: only outside of the state and the corporate world is it is possible to reveal the truly civil foundations of existence.

 

 

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