Tag: istancool

  • Istancool

    Istancool

    Istancool

    LET’S TALK TURKEY

    by Adrian Dannatt

    More Sharing ServicesShare | Share on email Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on google_plusone

    istancool 6 13 12 1

    Vakko HQ building

    Istancool, also known as the Istanbul International Arts and Culture Festival, is a packed powerhouse of a long weekend that also serves as the perfect introduction to what is arguably the hottest city on the current global art scene.

    Istanbul really does seem to have it all: a sophisticated and much traveled bourgeoisie, a small but very powerful group of collectors, a growing number of highly respected young artists, local museums and independent spaces, its own glossy magazines and unbelievably low rents. All in all, the city is a sort of “Berlin on the Bosporus” with the added advantage of being beautiful.

    Thus, it’s hardly surprising that galleries such as Lehmann Maupin and Paul Kasmin have launched satellite shows in this city, that Sotheby’s established a series of successful auctions of modern Turkish art in 2009, that the place is packed with creative exiles living on the cheap, or indeed that the artist Burhan Dogançay (b. 1929), having made Manhattan his base back in 1964, returned home to open his own one-person museum in 2004.

    And now it was recently announced that the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, and the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art have forged a new partnership to expand the Young Architects Program to Turkey. As Barry Bergdoll of MoMA put it, “The vibrancy of the architecture and design worlds in Turkey demands attention both locally and internationally.”

    Oya Eczacibas, chair of the board of Istanbul Modern, expressed her delight in signing the agreement with MoMA, describing her museum as being “committed to sharing Turkey’s artistic creativity with wide audiences and promoting its cultural identity in the international art world.” This could equally serve as a description of Istancool, if you also added teams of hipsters being jetted in from every corner of that pan-international Planet Chic.

    For Istancool is, as its name might suggest, definitively modish, putting the most fashionable contemporary art together with equally high-end fashion, style, design, photography, film, music and even club culture.

    Istancool also represents another micro-trend, that of the single-owner cultural festival belonging to one individual. Today it is no longer enough to have your own private art space or family gallery, what you really need is to host your own personal biennale. Thus it was that swimming pool and department store-heir James Moores originally launched his own Liverpool Biennale in 1998, Vanessa Branson founded her own Marrakech Biennale and Dasha Zhukova can organize regular cultural meetings in Moscow.

    Likewise Istancool essentially belongs to one very attractive and dynamic couple, Demet Muftuoglu Eseli and her infamously handsome husband Alphan. (At last year’s Istancool a misinformed Courtney Love kept assuring Demet “I’m going to have to f*ck your brother” until she was told of their actual relationship.)

    Demet is creative consultant to Vakko, a huge and highly prosperous fashion company that is twinned with the country’s most successful radio and TV group, Power, and this is presumably where all the funding for this lavish and glamorous cultural fiesta comes from.

    Based around a series of panels, exhibitions and events, Istancool veers between the academic, with a Turkish interviewer actually quoting Jacques Lacan, and the actively hedonistic, as evinced in a night-long riverside party hosted by New York’s Boom Boom Room.

    Previous participants have included everyone from Sophie Calle and Sam Taylor-Wood to Dan Colen and Ryan McGinley, and this third edition had managed to rally an equally impressive roster of visitors to take part in the two-days of PowerPoint discussions.

    Of these the star was probably Robin Rhode, newly represented by Lehmann Maupin, which has made him a major figure in Istanbul, where he had a show opening at the space Istanbul 74, which is also associated with the festival and indeed Vakko.
    This exhibition nicely demonstrated the dexterity of his oeuvre, that admixture of drawing, photography and film that so deftly mixes whimsy with social conscience.

    The other star was Pinar Yolacan, an artist whose CV absolutely encapsulates the new Istanbul scene, for though an ostensibly “Turkish” artist Yolacan studied fashion at St. Martin’s in London before going on to do fine art at Cooper Union in New York, where she still resides. Currently living in Istanbul, thanks to a prestigious teaching post, Yolacan is equally at home in either metropolis, seeing them as complimentary cultural centers, and her large-scale photographic works were as clearly appreciated by the Turkish audience as the weekending foreigners.

    Indeed Jefferson Hack, editor of Dazed & Confused, who held a slideshow Q&A with Yolacan, rightly saw the parallels between her works and the increasingly Surreal tendencies of current fashion photography.

    Yolacan was followed by a discussion between photographer Mario Sorrenti and his sometime editor Cecelia Dean, co-founder of Visionaire magazine, where the strong intersection between fashion and contemporary art was again made blatantly clear.

    These talks were held in the incredibly new HQ of Vakko itself, a sort of vacuum-packed Deconstructivist “broken bundle of mirrors” (to pretentiously quote Ezra Pound) designed by REX architects of New York and recent winner of a Wallpaper award.

    Here, the mixing, matching and mingling of all these various “visual regimes,” art, fashion, architecture, design, film, from the billboard advert to the museum atrium, from the computer monitor to the catwalk, from experimental laboratory to high-street store, was made abundantly clear. Thus Visionaire launched its latest edition, the largest magazine ever produced in the world, towering some 7 x 5 ft., an effort that was indistinguishable from a conceptual art installation.

    Curiously enough, the most popular and packed event seemed to be a signing by Carine Roitfeld, the Paris-based former Vogue editor, of a vast book of her work, essentially up-market photocopies of her already published magazine pages, which despite its $150 price tag inspired a frenzy of fans. This event was held at the beautiful Vakko library, which as further proof of the civilized nature of the company has just opened itself to the public, so that anyone can come and visit the HQ and consult their groaning shelves.

    The success of Roitfeld is surely an indication of our culture’s fascination with the relatively new role of the intermediary, the interpreter, in contrast to the originator or producer; her success as a “stylist” as opposed to actual clothes designer or photographer exactly paralleling the triumph of the curator over the artists themselves.

    One of the most celebrated artists in attendance, New York whiz kid Aaron Young, was particularly revealing on the pressures of just such curatorial and market pressures, as when he was asked by his interviewer Chiara Clemente if he would ever give up his signature motorcycle paintings. “I don’t know if they will let me stop,” he admitted. “It’s a little out of my hands at the moment.” It was perhaps the most honest statement of the whole weekend.

    Likewise another much-fêted downtown New Yorker, the eternally youthful Nate Lowman, made no bones about the importance of private collectors to his own esthetic, showing one of his earlier works, My First Check, a painting of a $3,000 money order from the Rubell family.

    Part of the purpose of Istancool is precisely to bring over the latest hottest artists such as Young and Lowman in order to show their work to their Turkish equivalents and, perhaps more importantly, show them Istanbul and all its rich potential.

    Thus this incubator as a sort of “first time” travel agent should not be underestimated, for nearly all the imported talent had never been to Istanbul before and swore they would be coming back, and as soon as possible.

    These visitors included Marco Brambilla, the fabled movie director video artiste who was actually here in Istanbul because a local collector has just committed to hosting a show of his major works, and Kyle DeWoody (daughter of collector Beth) launching the first international version of her Grey Area art and fashion boutique from Broadway in New York.

    The biggest bestseller of this said Grey Area, worn by everyone over the weekend, was blank fake Rolex watches designed by Shelter Serra, nephew of Richard, yet another family-name which along with Clemente and Cassavetes made clear that today’s celebrities are as dynastic as their royal predecessors.

    Istancool bears witness to the breadth of vibrant creative activity that has taken over Istanbul in the last few years. Witness the global art wanderer and connoisseur of beauty Sam Samore, a new resident of the city, camped out at the bargain rate Hotel des Anglais, who provides a sort of ultimate, secret imprimatur of serious art world credibility. As Samore puts it, “Istanbul is absolutely the most important city to be living in at the moment, why would anyone be anywhere else?”

     

    ADRIAN DANNATT is a Paris-based critic and writer.

  • A meeting of minds on the Bosphorus

    A meeting of minds on the Bosphorus

    Istancool brings stars from across the globe together in intimate salon style. It’s the future of festivals, says Harriet Walker

    Monday, 6 June 2011

    istancool

    Attending the Istancool festival is a little like one of those conversations in which each person nominates their dream dinner party guest.

    Kirsten Dunst chats to Michael Stipe and Terry Gilliam over a Bellini on the terrace, while actress Tilda Swinton twirls fashion designer Haider Ackermann around the dance-floor, and photographer Ryan McGinley lends a hand to DJ and magazine mogul Jefferson Hack. Later on, Courtney Love arrives to perform an intimate set, in which she covers Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” and dedicates a new song to Stipe. Who rushes right over to give her a hug.

    Overwhelming? Slightly. Surreal? Certainly. But Istancool, now in its second year, is a festival unlike any other – and that is both its goal and its USP. And it carries it off. Far from being an exclusive celebrity smug-in, this fledgling event is a weekend of carefully curated panel discussions, screenings and audience-led Q&As, all of which are open to the public and free to attend.

    There’s an air of informality which permeates both talent and hangers-on alike, so that the discussions take on a more relaxed feel: the speakers are more likely to respond without being frosty, and audiences do not feel the need to grill them. “It’s like a school trip” says Tilda Swinton, when she takes to the stage to be questioned alongside Turkish actor Serra Yilmaz.

    Events range from set pieces, such as interviews and screenings, to more spontaneous round-tables and amenable chats stage-managed with alacrity by Jefferson Hack, whose magazine AnOther is media partner to the event. These types of conversatione hark back to a salon tradition with which the event very strongly identifies. The discussion of art and the role of the artist is difficult in a culture which immediately classes such dialogue as self-conscious, and pretentiously so. But when those discussing it are old friends, such as McGinley and fellow New York artist Dan Colen, the result is so genuinely warm and engaging that all else evaporates. “I wouldn’t call myself a street artist,” McGinley tells Hack at one point, “but I have sat on a lot of pavements.”

    Istancool also hosted the world premiere of a series of music videos created for REM’s new album, Collapse Into Now, by Sam Taylor-Wood and Sophie Calle. One depicts Taylor-Wood’s husband, actor Aaron Johnson, dancing and cavorting with lamp-posts in East London.

    “It comes from our ritual of ‘morning dancing’,” explains Taylor-Wood, winking at Johnson, who is squirming in the audience. These are the moments that make Istancool different from, say, Hay or Port Eliot – there is always a proximity, everyone is interlinked. There is little difference between those involved and those participating. So much so that Courtney Love turned parts of her Q & A on her audience, interested to find out how her music had inspired them. During Dunst’s talk (she arrived fresh from victory and ignominy at Cannes for her role in Melancholia) there is discussion of little other than her director Lars von Trier’s slip-up, but Dunst answers gamely.

    “He says dumb stuff sometimes,” she admits. “He was trying to make people laugh by telling the story of his life, but it was not the right audience for it.”

    The spontaneity that drives Istancool comes, in large part, from organisers Pablo Ganguli and Demet Muftuoglu. “The aim is to connect minds together for people all over the world”, explains Ganguli, who founded his company Liberatum in 2001, aged just 17, with the intention of staging events around the world. “To give people who don’t normally have it a chance to interact.”

    Hence Istanbul. After a stint as European Capital of Culture last year (which saw Liberatum’s inaugural event there), Ganguli wants the spotlight of the world to remain firmly on the city that, literally, bridges Europe and Asia. And he has plenty more ideas to come.

    “I’m talking to Angelina [Jolie]’s manager at the moment,” he says. “Let’s say I could bring her to give a talk with Sean Penn on the Balkans or Haiti. And I want an opera curated by Lady Gaga. Istancool will be bigger than Venice!”

    via A meeting of minds on the Bosphorus – Features, Art – The Independent.

  • Istancool and Amnesty International hold joint event in Turkey

    Istancool and Amnesty International hold joint event in Turkey

    Istancool 2011, an international festival of art, design, fashion, film, music, literature and architecture, began on May 27.

    Artists and Amnesty International activists hold ballons to release in support of prisoners of conscience during a demonstration in the Istancool Istanbul International Festival of Culture in Istanbul May 29 (Reuters)
    Artists and Amnesty International activists hold ballons to release in support of prisoners of conscience during a demonstration in the Istancool Istanbul International Festival of Culture in Istanbul May 29 (Reuters)

    International art festival “Istancool 2011” and the Amnesty International have held a joint event to draw attention to the freedom of expression.

    Istanbul’s Tophane-i Amire Culture and Art Center was the venue for a panel discussion, “Voices of Hope – Readings”.

    Marco Mueller, art curator of the Venice Film Festival, and French author Sophie Calle read out letters sent by Chinese and Cambodian prisoners whose freedoms of thought and expression were restricted.

    Mine Hanyali of the Amnesty International said at the event, “people around the world are sentenced to prison just for expressing their thoughts peacefully. People around the world are subject to torture and maltreatment just because they toast for freedom. We demand their release. As humans rights activists, we demand that authors, poets, journalists and blog writers should not be punished for expressing their thoughts.”

    Later, participants let yellow balloons out to the air symbolizing release of prisoners of thought.

    “Istancool 2011,” an international festival of art, design, fashion, film, music, literature and architecture, began on May 27. The second edition of the three-day event brought together some the world’s most talented writers, designers, editors, actors, poets, filmmakers, dancers and musicians including Tilda Swinton, Venice Film Festival director Marco Mueller, Courtney Love, Sophie Calle, Riccardo Tisci, Ryan McGinley, Haider Ackermann, Dan Colen, Michael Stipe, Sam Taylor-Wood and Kirsten Dunst.

    AA

     

  • The Pera Museum lecture, Istancool for Istanbul

    The Pera Museum lecture, Istancool for Istanbul

    The Pera Museum lecture, Istancool for Istanbul

    The morning ended with questions from Courtney Love who had flowers in her hair and looked suitably rock and roll.
    The morning ended with questions from Courtney Love who had flowers in her hair and looked suitably rock and roll.

    Turkey is a mysterious hammam where you see no walls. It is difficult to fathom the other side. I am in the British Airways room at the airport and am thinking about what I learned. It may take a few days to sink in. I like to learn something new everyday. I did have some things confirmed yesterday by Michael Stipe whose music I like. He tries new things out. I loved his idea of getting people he admired to make films of his words and music. As Michael said so clearly, film is the most powerful medium in the 21st century so he used it to make 12 films by directors he admired. Gorilla style he has nearly finished the project. The whole idea was that it should fit on You Tube. It’s certainly inspiring. He believes that most artists have more than one talent, so I am a happy girl, that others believe they can do more than one thing.

    Sam Taylor Wood, looked radiant and more at ease than ever as she showed her lively portrayal of his music. She said it was morning dancing that gave her the idea, and her boyfriend is particularly good at it. He has that appeal of the urban boy jumping over bikes, break dancing, wiping his nose on his hand, spitting, a tea shirt on his back and jeans, still managing to look very very attractive.

    Sam was so much fun as she talked, for the third time I saw what she is all about. The piece we were told was called Berlin, I may be wrong, in any case it was filmed in the East End of London, and she just shot it with no permissions, as she felt, using people going about their normal business and her man larking about.

    Sophie Calle’s was completely different, heaven knows what it was called? Anyway she put together all her video footage from her iphone and it consisted of a horse peeing, a bee and a ballet dancer in an underground car park. She had not used the medium before, and she was not interested in doing so. She also did not know Michael, but it had a lively feel to it. Everybody asked about the horse of course. I am more interested in the ballet dancer, actually I am interested in the Bee, who walked backwards so well, flossing his wings, looking busy.

    Another two films followed, one which was top secret, yet not, of Brando footage, kissing, putting on his hat, just looking, my goodness he was a looker. The other was made from his sisters architectural computer programme which was very boring and Michael and his sister jazzed it up.

    via The Pera Museum lecture, Istancool for Istanbul | RATS’ TALES BY AMANDA ELIASCH.

    Courtney Love singing Bad Romance @ Givenchy party, Paris from icanteachyouhowtodoit on Vimeo.

  • Kirsten Dunst embarrassed by nazi remark

    Kirsten Dunst embarrassed by nazi remark

    Actress Kirsten Dunst has said she was embarrassed by Danish filmmaker Lars Von Trier’s Hitler and Nazi remarks at the recent Cannes Film Festival.

    kirstendunst

    ‘Yeah, it was a very emotional week. What happened with Lars, you know, now I know him in a very intimate way and It was very inappropriate what he said. You cannot joke about things like that and so I was very embarrassed for him but he is my friend and I care for him and we worked very intimately together and I could never have done the work I did without someone, a director, like him,’ she said.

    The ‘melancholia’ director was expelled from the festival, but his end-of-the-world film remained in competition. It eventually lost out to the coveted Palme d’Or award to Terrence Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’. Dunst won the best actress award at the annual film extravaganza in the French Riviera.

    She flew to Turkey’s largest city of Istanbul to attend the opening of Istancool festival.

    ‘It’s amazing to be honoured with awards and you know I have worked for 20 years and I am 29. So for me this was the biggest thing that has happened to me in terms of that,’ Dunst told a panel in Istanbul on Friday (May 27).

    via Sky News: Kirsten Dunst embarrassed by nazi remark.

  • Istancool bringing world culture to Turkey’s biggest city again

    Istancool bringing world culture to Turkey’s biggest city again

    ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

    In its second year, the international festival of culture, Istancool, will once again host cultural figures from Turkey and around the world between May 27 and 29. The festival aims to connect the finest international cultural minds in the fields of art, design, fashion, film, music, literature and architecture with their counterparts in Turkey

    Kirsten Dunst. AFP photo
    Kirsten Dunst. AFP photo

    With giants from the both the Turkish and international creative worlds, the second edition of the prestigious art, design, fashion, film, music, literature and architecture festival Istancool will run this weekend in Istanbul’s cultural heart.

    The festival running from Friday to Sunday is a type of three-day cultural meeting program in the city, Demet Müftüoğlu Eşeli, Istancool’s creative director, told a press conference in Istanbul on Tuesday. Eşeli is collaborating with festival founder and artistic director Pablo Ganguli for the event while the festivities’ main sponsor is Vakko.

    Istancool is a fascinating and unique cultural experience bringing together some of the world’s most talented writers, designers, editors, actors, poets, filmmakers, dancers and musicians in the city. Festival organizers said they were committed to creating a dynamic arts diplomacy program in the world and forging greater cultural relations between Turkey and the international artistic community.

    The event, which is being organized in association with AnOther Magazine, has been made possible by British international cultural diplomacy festival organization Liberatum and Turkish creative agency Istanbul’74, which has previously brought other global events to Istanbul from the world of culture, art, film and fashion.

    Eşeli said Istancool, which will be free, aimed to become an influential event in the fields of art, design, fashion literature, film and music.

    A number of international participants are expected at this year’s edition, including Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton and director Terry Gilliam, the producer of films like “Brazil,” “12 Monkeys” and “Fear and Nothing in Las Vegas” who is famous for his animation work with the groundbreaking British comedy series Monty Python over 40 years ago.

    Also attending are Michael Stipe, the soloist of REM; Kirsten Dunst, who is known for her role in films like “Spider Man,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and Melancholia, for which she won the Best Actress Award at the 64th Cannes Film Festival last weekend; British director, photographer and conceptual artist Sam Taylor-Wood; French fashion brand Givenchy’s creative director Riccardo Tisci; designer Haider Ackermann and musician Courtney Love.

    From Turkey, actress Serra Yılmaz, director Reha Erdem and writer Murathan Mungan will deliver speeches at the event.

    The festival will open Friday at the Vakko Fashion Center while the festival venues will include the Pera Museum and the Tophane-i Amire Cultural and Artistic Center.

    The first edition of Istancool last year was significant and featured Zaha Hadid; Nobel Laureate Sir V.S. Naipaul; Hanif Kureishi; Gore Vidal; Franca Sozzani; Elif Şafak; Terence Koh; Jefferson Hack; Stephen Frears; Taner Ceylan; Daphne Guinness; Lily Cole; Philip Treacy; Bernard-Henri Levy; Leyla Umar and Michael Nyman.

    Last year’s festival, which was hosted in July, also celebrated Istanbul’s status as the 2010 European Capital of Culture.

    For further info, head to www.istancool.com.tr.

    via Istancool bringing world culture to Turkey’s biggest city again – Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review.