Curated by What, How & For Whom / WHW
September 12 – November 8, 2009
Talks & Conversations
Red Thread
April – June, 2008
The 11th International Istanbul Biennial, organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts and sponsored by Koc Holding is set for 12 September-8 November 2009, under the curatorship of What, How & for Whom / WHW.
What, How and for Whom/WHW is a curators’ collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia. WHW organizes different exhibition, production and publishing projects, and has since 2003 directed the program of Gallery Nova –a city-owned gallery in Zagreb. WHW members are curators Ivet Curlin, Ana Devic, Natasa Ilic and Sabina Sabolovic.
11th International Istanbul Biennial events start with the first series of talks and conversations under the title “Red Thread,” to be held in April and June 2008. The first talk, “5Ws of What, How and for Whom” by WHW will be held on April 21, 2008 at the ITU Faculty of Architecture.
Lecture “5Ws of What, How and for Whom” refers to questions implicit in the very name of the WHW collective – what, how and for whom: the three basic questions of every economic organization that also concern the planning, conception and realization of exhibitions, as well as the production and distribution of artworks, or artists’ position in the labour market. These questions, which were the title of WHW’s first project dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, in 2000 in Zagreb, are recurrent in all of WHW’s projects.
This talk will be followed by “Open Labyrinth,” a talk by Zdenka Badovinac, Charles Esche, Hou Hanru and Vasıf Kortun in conversation with Stephen Wright. “Open Labyrinth” describes the condition of an art that, conceptually, has lost its self-definition; that finds itself stripped of its spatial demarcation and historical moorings; which, ontologically, is without its self-evident modalities of appearing in the world. What threads can guide curatorship in the age of an open labyrinth? The loss of self-evident exteriority cuts to the quick of artistic agency inasmuch as documents and archives are all too often fetishized instead of being the performative impetus for renewing the ontological status of whatever it is that is documented or archived. Yet the condition of an open labyrinth is also a chance for a renewed approach to curatorship, opening the prospect of divulging – without betraying – practices with impaired coefficients of artistic visibility.
For further information
Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts
Istiklal Caddesi 64 Beyoglu 34435 Istanbul Turkey
ist.biennial@iksv.org
Press Office
Üstüngel Inanç
uinanc@iksv.org
T: +90 (212) 334 07 57
