DE-REGULATION with the work of Kutlug Ataman
17 March-28 May 2006
MuHKA, Museum for Contemporary Art, Antwerp
Leuvenstraat 32, BE-2000 Antwerp
www.muhka.be
KÜBA
17 March-28 May 2006
Extra City, Center for Contemporary Art
Mexicostraat Kattendijkdok Kaai 20A, BE-2030 Antwerp
www.extracity.org
Identity is not something you possess but something that you wear.
Kutlug Ataman, 2004
Opening MuHKA & Extra City Thu 16 March 9.00 pm
KÜBA party kicks off at Extra City at 11.00 pm
Conversation Irit Rogoff & Kutlug Ataman at MuHKA Auditorium Saturday 18 March 11.00 am followed by a brunch at MuHKAFE
The work of Turkish video artist Kutlug Ataman is at the center of two main exhibitions in Antwerp, DE-REGULATION with the work of Kutlug Ataman at the MuHKA and KÜBA at Extra City.
Film and video installation maker Kutlug Ataman, who studied film in Paris and Los Angeles, was one of the revelations of the last Documenta, was short listed for the Turner Prize in 2004 and with Küba won the prestigious Carnegie prize. Though his video installations seem documentary in nature, Ataman is never in search of a truth. He doesnt interview, but gets hypnotized by people and lets them do the talking. He usually turns his camera on people who have stepped out of normal roles to rewrite and reinvent themselves.
DE-REGULATION at MuHKA
Conceptualizer of the exhibition project Irit Rogoff has been engaged with Atamans videos and films since 1997. In DE-REGULATION she creates an open field where six of Atamans multiple and single screen installations – Never My Soul, Vicious Circle, Twelve, 1 1 = 1, Martin is Asleep, and Women Who Wear Wigs communicate with the visual essay Istanbul Skin of the City by the German artist Stefan Roemer, a TV-room with Turkish television fragments, an archive of Turkish wedding culture, Turkisch film posters and numerous images of Ataturk. From the six video installations, Twelve was recently acquired by the MuHKA.
DE-REGULATION is concerned with the de-regulation of experiences, both the ones of the subjects of Atamans video installations, and the experience of the exhibition viewer. The materials gathered in the exhibition all acknowledge that the surface of Istanbul is rife with contradictions between modernity and traditionalism, between divergent cultural groups, between conflicting desires and that each layer of this skin is in dialogue with the others. Instead of exotic fantasies about Eastern cultures, we begin the perceive Turkey as a hugely dynamic place of movements; migrants pouring both out of it and into it, radical histories reflecting both inwards and outwards, which is both part of the landscape of Europe as well as the very limit lines of Europe.
For more information, check: www.de-regulation.org
KÜBA at Extra City
On 40 old television sets an equal number of people tell their stories about a unique society in the slums of Istanbul. All sorts of people live in Küba: criminals, drug addicts, teenage delinquents, religious extremists and the poorest of the poor rub shoulders with one another there. Nobody is able to tell us where Küba is, precisely, or how it got its name. Some think that it is on the south side of Istanbul, others situate Küba near the airport. What is certain is that sometimes life can be pretty hard in Küba.
Ataman went in search of the origin and actuality of Küba, letting forty residents speak at length. The majority of those interviewed leave a lasting impression with their arresting stories of sometimes tragic, sometimes bitter events. Does Küba provide us with a picture of shared adversity, freedom and collectivity? Or is the language of violence the connecting factor in this imaginary enclave?
With Küba Ataman seeks to fathom the boundaries both geographic and mental of an urban area, and of our search for a self. In the background Küba also goes in search of the relation between a place and individual and social desires or anxieties.
Whether the stories that the residents of Küba tell are autobiographical, or the product of pure fantasy, is something Ataman leaves up to us to decide.
For more information, check www.extracity.org
Küba was commissioned by Artangel and co-produced by Carnegie International 2004 / 2005, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Thyssen Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna and Theater der Welt 2005, Stuttgart.
Combi-ticket (DE-REGULATION KÜBA)
Ticket per exhibition include free second visit!
DE-REGULATION with the work of Kutlug Ataman
17 March28 May 2006
Tue-Sun 10.00 am – 5.00 pm
MuHKA, Museum for Contemporary Art, Antwerp
Leuvenstraat 32, BE-2000 Antwerp
www.muhka.be
KÜBA
17 March28 May 2006
Tue-Sun 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
Thu thru 10.00 pm
Extra City, Center for Contemporary Art
Location project:
Mexicostraat Kattendijkdok Kaai 20A, BE-2030 Antwerp
