[spectre] ISEA2011 Istanbul Curatorial Concept

[Lanfranco Aceti]

ISEA2011 Curatorial Concept UNCONTAINABLE

The lines and borders of contemporary national states present the
observer with ideological and cultural frameworks that are no longer
valid. Concepts of identity, cultural identifiers, nation state and
belonging as well as place and time are challenged in both real and
virtual contexts.

In the 21st century the idea of creating cultural products that are
solely a reflection of a localized and isolated space is without any
logical fundament. It means to deny the reality of contemporary
mediated lives as well as the reality of physical routes that, across
the sea of information, reach a diverse audience in the four corners
of the world.

For its exhibition ISEA2011 Istanbul intends to focus on the
relationship between real and virtual as a process en route of the
transformation of the artwork’s multiple cultural contexts that are
ungraspable in their complex interactions.

These are cultural practices “in an increasingly media-saturated world
[…] where such technologies radically bring into question not just the
way in which art galleries and museums operate, but the very notions
of history, heritage, and even time itself upon which they are
predicated.” (Charlie Gere, “New Media Art and the Gallery in the
Digital Age,” p.14.)

ISEA2011 Istanbul will be the locus where these different art signs
and cultural products – expressions of the transformation of
contemporary societies across the globe – will travel to and coexist
for a period of time in a state of continuous production and flux
across the cityscape and its historical, geopolitical and contemporary
layers.

The contradiction of ‘containing’ the uncontainable will bring to
light the processes of contextualization, interpretation and
re-contextualization of ideas and cultural productions, no longer
conceived as static elements but rather as evolutionary products of
transformation of envisaged futures and realities that move across
geopolitical spaces and times.

http://isea2011.sabanciuniv.edu/other-event/uncontainable

Lanfranco Aceti
Artistic Director
ISEA2011 Istanbul