Spatial Negotiations

Salt Beyoğlu

May 26 – May 27, 2018

2disseminate And Hold 2016 Still Rosa Barba’nın 2016 tarihli <i>Disseminate and Hold</i> [Dağıt ve Zapt Et] video işinden bir kare
Still from the video work Disseminate and Hold (2016) by Rosa Barba
Walk-in Cinema

Spatial Negotiations screening program consists of video works by artists Rosa Barba, Jasmina Cibic, Maj Hasager, Stephen Connolly, and Marie Voignier. Produced between 2009 and 2018, these five works reflect the impacts of late history on urban environment, while examining its manifestation in collective memory.

Introducing the Minhocão, an elevated highway that runs through the center of São Paulo in Brazil, Rosa Barba’s Disseminate and Hold (2016) investigates the role of urban structures and landscapes as political tools as well as utopian reforms. Focusing on the changes occuring on the highway and its surroundings since its construction in the 1970s, the artist investigates the shifting dynamics of the complex relationship between Minhocão and the locals through archival shots and interviews.

Set inside a quintessence of a modernist building, the former Palace of the Federation in Belgrade, Serbia, Jasmina Cibic’s Tear Down and Rebuild (2015) puts forward how art, architecture, and visual language can become fundamental instruments for nation building as part of political rhetorics and power strategies. Representing a nation builder, a pragmatist, a conservationist and an artist/architect, four protagonists debate on the consequences of demolishing a historically charged building with quotes from speeches by Prince Charles, Benito Mussolini, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and the ISIS bloggers along with many more.

We will meet in the blind spot (2015) by Maj Hasager, is shot in and around the Esposizione Universale di Roma (EUR) in Italy, a site built for the 1942 World Exposition, which was never realized due to the Second World War. Initiated under the rule of Mussolini, it was completed in the 1960s and was revived only to become a set location for the Italian filmmakers. Hasager’s work documents how the glorious marble site recently became a meeting place for the local Christian Filipino community and hence faces the country’s fascist past.

Machine Space (2018) borrows its title from a term introduced by geography professor Ronald Horvath in 1974 as a, “territory devoted primarily to the use of machines, shall be so designated when machines have priority over people in the use of territory.” The work by Stephen Connolly investigates Detroit’s economical structure, which once was based on automobile production, being replaced by spatial economy. Analyzing urban space in the biggest city in Michigan, USA as a product and how it is shaped primarily by inhabitation and racial privilege, Connolly draws attention to capitalism’s influence on the city landscape.

Marie Voignier’s Hinterland (2009) examines the Tropical Islands in Krausnick, Germany, a resort welcoming visitors under a dome that was once a Soviet military airship construction base during the Second World War. The work reflects back on the place’s history hidden through the glimmering illusion of the so-called tropics while drawing attention to the economical exploitation of service industry clichés.

The public screenings will take place in the Walk-in Cinema at SALT Beyoğlu over the course of two weekends. All videos are subtitled in Turkish-English.


PROGRAM
May 19-20 & May 26-27

14.00
Rosa Barba, Disseminate and Hold, 2016
Portuguese; Turkish and English subtitled
21 minutes
In collaboration with Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Istanbul

Jasmina Cibic, Tear Down and Rebuild, 2015
English; Turkish subtitled
15 minutes

15.00 Maj Hasager, We will meet in the blind spot, 2015
Italian; Turkish and English subtitled
38 minutes

16.00 Stephen Connolly, Machine Space, 2018
English; Turkish subtitled
24 minutes

17.00 Marie Voignier, Hinterland, 2009
German; Turkish and English subtitled
49 minutes
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