14 July–19 August 2007
Opening:
13 July 2007
Artists
Project group Ausstellungsübernahmen
Stéphane Bauer, Farida Heuck, Katharina Hohmann, Katharina (Katja) Jedermann, Simon Marschke, Antje Weitzel
Takeover from Kunstverein Göttingen and Salzburger Kunstverein
The focal point of this photographic project is the modernisation of Turkey since the founding of the republic in 1923 and its representation for example through architecture and officially organised celebrations. During the first half of the 20th Century, Turkey experienced a huge political and social upheaval. This can, on the one hand, be viewed as an model example of the founding of a modern state. On the other hand, it is worth looking into the history of Turkey – which is not just a country intersecting Europe and Asia – also in relation to the current conflicts with international problems.
A historical spectrum is drawn from the fully visionary and utopian ideological basis, which the newly established republic was awarded under Atatürk and the present reality of its social construction. Symbols and rituals are traced photographically in which their implicit potency on the macro level and their small, every day deferments are set in a relation to one another. It is a question of aesthetic production and choreography which have been and will be conceptualized and which will experience a pointedness in the picture language of the photographs. An underlying topic in the work is the idea of how politics and political want realised themselves in aesthetic forms – a question which Katja Eydel has already processed artistically using other connections concerning the former Yugoslavian republic or Berlin after the Fall of the Wall.
(Axel John Wieder)
The project, which is accompanied by a publication including texts by Bernd Nicolai (art historian, Bern University), Ariane Müller (author, Vienna, Berlin), Bülent Tanju (Department of History and Theory of Architecture of the Yıldız Technical University, İstanbul).
The Berlin exhibition is accompanied by an extensive programme of lectures, artist’s talks and films, developed in cooperation with the artist and the Arbeitskreis Kultur of the Berlin-Istanbul-Netzwerk.
Publication
20 x 25 cm, 184 pp., 126 color and 120 b/w ill., softcover
ISBN-10 1-933128-16-x; ISBN-13 978-1-933128-16-0
The project was developed within the framework of the Istanbul scholarship of the Berlin Senate
Press commentary
Tagesspiegel, 19.07.2007 (Jens Mühling)
“Nicht nach dem Fremden, sondern in erster Linie nach dem Ähnlichen habe sie mit ihren Aufnahmen gesucht, sagt Eydel im Gespräch – nach dem türkischen Aufbruch in eine gesellschaftliche Moderne, die sich an die westeuropäische anlehnt. Fündig wurde sie bei Bauwerken, deren Architektur dem modernisierenden Geist des Staatsgründers Kemal Mustafa Atatürk folgt, aber auch bei Kulturinszenierungen, Feiertagsritualen und gesellschaftlichen Institutionen aus der türkischen Gründungsära, die bis heute weitgehend konserviert fortbestehen.”