Disobedience Archive (The Park)
April 22–June 15, 2014
SALT Beyoğlu
İstiklal Caddesi 136
Beyoğlu 34430
İstanbul
Curated by Marco Scotini and Andris Brinkmanis.
After Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), Nottingham Contemporary, Raven Row (London), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston), Bildmuseet (Umeå), Castello di Rivoli (Turin) and other locations, Disobedience Archive will be presented at SALT Beyoğlu in a specially created architectural setting by Herkes için Mimarlık (Architecture for All) and will survey forms of disobedience from the 1970s Parco Lambro uprising in Italy to the Gezi Resistance in İstanbul.
The curatorial project dates back to 2005, when Marco Scotini planned a traveling exhibition of videos, graphic materials and ephemera whilst in Berlin. From there Disobedience became an ongoing, multi-phase video archive and platform of discussion that deals with the relationship between artistic practices and political action.
Planned as a heterogeneous, evolving archive of video images, the project aims to be a “user’s guide” to four decades of social disobedience seen through history and geography. From the Parco Lambro revolt in Italy in 1977 to the global protests before and after Seattle; from the recent insurrections in the Middle East and Arab world to the Gezi Resistance in İstanbul; from the historic videotapes of Alberto Grifi to videograms of Harun Farocki; from the performances of tactical media activists Critical Art Ensemble to those of the Russian collective Chto Delat?; and from the investigations of Hito Steyerl to those of Eyal Sivan, Mosireen and Videoccupy collectives, the Disobedience Archive has over the years gathered hundreds of documentary elements.
Disobedience Archive at SALT Beyoğlu will be hosted in a sustainable display structure designed by Herkes için Mimarlık, a group that seizes upon a collective way of thinking and promotes participatory design processes. On this occasion they proposed to re-engage the fragments of SALT’s inventory through the articulation of acts of recycling and constant disposal. While avoiding direct commentary on the recent İstanbul experience, their concept stresses the dichotomic nature of individualism and collectivism, the contradictions between dimensions of private and common or commons, and the difference between environments such as home and the urban space.
Disobedience Archive (The Park) at SALT Beyoğlu is a work in progress reflecting on international events as they unfold. Divided into several thematic areas: The Playground, The Park, The Street and The Square, ten of the archive’s sections will be presented in İstanbul: “1977 The Italian Exit,” “Protesting Capitalist Globalization,” “Reclaim the Streets,” “Bioresistence and Society of Control,” “Argentina Fabrica Social,” “Disobedience East,” “Disobedience University,” “Gender Politics,” “The Arab Dissent” and lastly “The Park,” which focuses on İstanbul with original contributions by Cem Dinlenmiş, Videoccupy and Herkes için Mimarlık.
The archive includes materials by 16 Beaver, Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA), Mitra Azar, Nanni Balestrini, Gianfranco Baruchello, Petra Bauer, Franco Berardi Bifo, Pauline Boudry, Brigitta Kuster and Renate Lorenz, Bernadette Corporation, Black Audio Film Collective, Ursula Biemann, Copenhagen Free University, Critical Art Ensemble, Cem Dinlenmiş, Dodo Brothers, Marcelo Expósito, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Rene Gabri and Ayreen Anastas, Grupo de Arte Callejero, Etcétera, Piero Gilardi, Alberto Grifi, Felix Guattari, Herkes için Mimarlık, Ashley Hunt, Sara Ishaq, Kanal B, Khaled Jarrar, John Jordan and Isabelle Fremeaux, Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante, Carla Lonzi, Silvia Maglioni and Graeme Thomson, Enzo Mari, Angela Melitopoulos, Mosireen, Carlos Motta, Toni Negri, Non Governamental Control Commission, Wael Noureddine, Margit Czencki/Park Fiction, R.E.P. Group, Oliver Ressler and Zanny Begg, Roy Samaha, Eyal Sivan, Hito Steyerl, Superflex, The Department of Space and Land Reclamation, Mariette Schiltz and Bert Theis, Ultra-red, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Trampoline House (Morten Goll and Tone O. Nielsen), Dmitry Vilensky and Chto Delat?, Videoccupy and James Wentzy.
