Episode 1: Laws, news, slogans
21.06-13.07.2024
Hayy Open Space is hosting the first part of the event series titled “On the Strong Possibility on an Encounter” with the exhibition Episode 1: “Laws, News, Slogans” from June 21 to July 13, 2024. Curated by Borga Kantürk, the exhibition brings together works by Levent Ayata, Özgür Demirci, and Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt. It also includes presentations, talks, and workshops that discuss the concepts and phenomena emphasized in the title through the artists and their works.
The exhibition series aims to explore and develop methods for addressing the questions: “Can the experience of the artwork in relation to the audience and space, an art pedagogy that can be integrated in this context, readings about the artist and their work, and the critique of the exhibition and the works themselves be the model for producing theoretical knowledge? Can this strategy be designed as a series, sustained with different works and artists around a theme and sub-themes in each new part?” The exhibition, with its structure that proposes a discussion on the works, aims to interrupt the fast-paced, unabsorbed exhibition viewing experiences, slow down the audience, make them spend more time in the space, and encourage them to think about the productions. It is conceived as a special space designed to overcome the closed nature of academic art pedagogy, which is devoid of experiences and encounters, confined to classrooms, distant from exhibitions, and focused on references and past-oriented theory and methodology. The possibility of transforming the exhibition space into a useful interface for experiencing pedagogical improvisation, collective learning, and interpretation in the environment where the works are located is being explored.
Episode 1: “Laws, News, Slogans” considers politics as an issue that is experienced, recorded, opposed, and both human and vital. It features a narrative focusing on the artists and their productions through manoeuvres and interventions such as “language, situation, object,” which can both integrate and separate. The exhibition is designed to transition from the ground floor, aimed at an encounter focused on theory, narrative, discussion, and dialogue, to the upper floor, where one can be alone with the works in a dark and relatively isolated space. The ground floor is a meeting, discussion, learning, and recording area, while the upper floor features Levent Ayata’s “Difficulty of Repetition” (2024), Özgür Demirci’s “Everyone and No One” (2020), and Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt’s “On Stage” (2010). As a third layer that can be added to the divided physical space of the exhibition, a publication built as a theoretical area on what remains from these discussions, readings, and interpretations is planned to meet the readers after the exhibition.
On the Possibility of a Powerful Encounter, Part 1: Laws, News, Slogans, can be visited on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 13.30 to 18:00.