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via Today’s Zaman
Istanbul’s art circles were fuming on Friday with the shocking news that 150 works of art from the collection of the recently closed santralistanbul Museum of Contemporary Art were set to hit the auction block in an upcoming art sale in Istanbul. News of the upcoming auction came on Thursday evening, causing outrage among artists and art lovers alike in social media in Turkey.
The santralistanbul complex, part of the Istanbul Bilgi University campus, was set up in 2007 in Istanbul’s Eyüp neighborhood. Housed in a 20th century power plant, the complex featured a museum of contemporary art, an energy museum and a cultural and educational center. The government had rented the power plant to Bilgi University on the condition that the building be used as an energy museum and contemporary art museum. However, several units in the complex, including the contemporary arts museum and the Tamirane club, closed their doors in 2012. Rumors that the museum’s collection was to be auctioned off also spread in 2012 but were denied by the school’s management after hearing the reactions of some artists whose work was included in the collection.
The auction, scheduled for Feb. 17 at Sofa Hotel, will feature works by numerous prominent artists including Nejad Devrim, Selim Turan, Fikret Mualla, Mübin Orhon, Hakkı Anlı, Yüksel Arslan, Nil Yalter, Ayşe Erkmen, Seyhan Topuz, Mehmet Güleryüz, Neşe Erdok, Selma Gürbüz and Canan Tolon.
via Özge Ersoy, Lara Fresko, Köken Ergun and others :
In the process of decommissioning santralistanbul, formerly one of Istanbul’s most celebrated new cultural institutions, the Istanbul Bilgi University has betrayed the trust of the art world by putting the works in its collection up for auction. Since its opening in 2007,santralistanbul hosted exhibitions from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, to the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC), and organized ambitious local exhibitions. However, after a rather contentious change of management, the university has recently decided to dissolve the “santralistanbul Museum of Contemporary Art” and put its collection up for auction.
This museum [of contemporary art] was among the commitments Bilgi University made in order to add this piece of land to its campus to house santralistanbul. Doesn’t the fact that the museum currently only exists symbolically [as the santralistanbul Energy Museum, the only part remaining open] cast a shadow over the legitimacy of the campus area allotted to Bilgi University by the government?
The auction house Macka Mezat that has taken over breaking up the collection makes no reference to the origin of the works, and refers to the sale as follows: “The private collection comprises important works by prominent Turkish modern and contemporary artists.”
The question is whether works donated or sold at rock-bottom prices to a museum collection that would represent the heart and soul of histories of art in Turkey should be reverted to the private domain. These works were turned over to what was upheld as a public institution that would not only provide good custodianship but also scholarship in the context of an academic institution. Neither has materialized. This is not a simple case of deaccessioning. It is a direct attack on Turkey’s artistic commons.
We declare that we will push back through forming public opinion until Istanbul Bilgi University finds a way to keep this treasure trove within the public realm.
Please consider signing this petition: #BilgiUniversity must keep its art collection in the public realm
Artist Carlos Celdran convicted for offending religious beliefs (Manila, Philippines)
via South China Morning Post and BBC News
Carlos Celdran. Photo: SCMP
Carlos Celdran was demonstrating in support of new family planning laws during a mass at Manila’s cathedral in 2010. A court found Mr Celdran guilty of “offending religious beliefs” in a ruling made public on Monday. Human Rights Watch (HRW) called the verdict “a setback for free speech”.
“It was worth every moment,” Carlos Celdran, 40, told friends yesterday after Manila Judge Juan Bermejo Jr. sentenced him to over a year in jail for performing acts “notoriously offensive to the feelings of the faithful” in a place devoted to religious worship – a violation of Article 133 of the Revised Penal Code.
During the verdict, Celdran was dressed in the same 19th century garb of national hero Jose Rizal, which he wore when he burst into a ceremony at Manila Cathedral two years ago. He had held up a placard saying “Damaso” – the name of a predatory Spanish priest in one of Rizal’s anti-clerical satirical novels. Celdran had yelled out for the Catholic Church to stop meddling in politics by blocking passage of the Reproductive Health Law.
Among those present at the ceremony were several bishops and Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim, who had Celdran arrested. The lower court gave credence to the testimony of witnesses saying “the positive declaration of the witnesses for the prosecution and the circumstances surrounding the incident are sufficient to satisfy the quantum of evidence needed for a criminal conviction.”
The church which sued Celdran said it would issue a statement today. Convictions for the crime are rare and took place before the birth of the republic in 1946, according to Ibarra Gutierrez, professor of criminal law at the University of the Philippines.
He said a man was convicted before the second world war for holding a burial ceremony inside a Catholic cemetery for a non-Catholic. In a post-war case, which the top court reversed, a man was convicted of engaging a church minister in a debate during a religious ceremony.
“I find the whole idea of Article 133 archaic,” Gutierrez said. “More than a hundred years ago, we threw off the yoke of Spain, yet we are still dealing with this kind of law – a throwback to the Spanish era where the state and the church was one and the same.”
“Nobody should be jailed for voicing out an opinion or position, especially on a subject that concerns the lives of millions of Filipino women and mothers,” said HRW’s Asia researcher, Carlos Conde.
The sentencing comes fewer than two weeks after controversial new contraception laws came into effect in the Philippines. The legislation, which require health centers to hand out free condoms and birth-control pills, and introduces sex education in schools, was approved by parliament a month ago despite fierce opposition from the Catholic Church.
More than 80% of the population in the Philippines is Catholic, and the Church is closely associated with many politicians, media commentators and businessmen.
Mr Celdran said he planned to appeal and remains free on bail. “I am calm but I am going to fight this till the end,” he added.
photo via @RedTani
ArtLeaking as Politics of Truth / Salon no. 4 @ Akademie der Künste der Welt, Köln-Cologne, Germany
ArtLeaks will convene with old and new friends following Academy of the Arts of the World‘s invitation to organize its Salon no. 4, from 7.30 p.m. on Wednesday, 23.01.2013
Location: musikFabrik/Studio, Im Mediapark 7, 50670 Köln
ArtLeaks is happy to announce its intervention within Akademie der Künste der Welt’s Salon series. Eager to share our accumulated knowledge and facilitate a critical examination of the current conditions of the cultural field, we will be equally interested in questioning, with the help of the audience, the particular context of the city of Cologne with its cultural institutions, scenes and markets.
The evening will be divided in two parts. The first one is dedicated to the platform’s introduction and to a brief presentation of the cases that have been published until now. This also becomes an opportunity to bring up for discussion a series of questions that have defined ArtLeaks’ activity and that we we would like to tackle anew in conjunction with members of the audience: What are the conditions of the possibility of leaking information concerning institutional exploitation, censorship, and corruption in the artworld? What does it mean to speak the truth in the art field and to whom may it be addressed? What analogies and what models can we use in order to describe and operate within the conditions in which cultural workers pursue their activities? We aim to bestow a deeper level of concreteness to these questions by inviting the participating audience to share its own concerns and experiences related to inequality of chances, structural injustice and forced self-censorship within the context of their work.
In the second part of the evening, we will announce and present the forthcoming ArtLeaks Gazette. Focusing on the theme “Breaking the Silence – Towards Justice, Solidarity and Mobilization”, the structure of the publication comprises six major sections: A. Critique of cultural dominance apparatuses; B. Forms of organization and history of struggles; C. The struggle of narrations; D. Glossary of terms; E. Education and its discontents; F. Best practices and useful resources (more here https://art-leaks.org/artleaks-gazette/). ArtLeaks will invite the audience to work within one of two groups, whose thematic – having the six sections of the Gazette as conceptual framework – will be established by vote. We aim, thus, to bring together people with similar interests which are willing to respond, propose, and be involved in future collaborations. This is also an open invitation for those willing to join our platform and become ArtLeakers. The findings of the working group session will be announced towards the end of the evening, when we come together for final conclusions and for concrete talks about future alliances and projects. These results will be uploaded on the ArtLeaks platform, together with visual and scriptural material which documents the evening.
There is a modest entrance fee of 3 € / with concessions of 2 € which helps the Academy cover production costs for this event.
Facilitators of the event: Dmitry Vilensky & Vlad Morariu
Akademie der Künste der Welt’s event page: http://www.academycologne.org/en/news-detail/article/salon-no-4.html
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/443388849050260/
More about Akademie der Künste der Welt: http://www.academycologne.org/en/the-academy-of-the-arts-of-the-world/about-the-academy.html
Many thanks to Akademie der Künste der Welt and its team (Galit Eilat, Aurora Rodonó, Janine Hüsch, Carla Zimmermann, Sigrid Gareis, Kosta Dodoras, Miriam Gertzen) for making this possible!
Open Letter to Anurag Kashyap / 12.12.12 project (Mumbai, India)
via Shilpa Munikempanna /Munikempanna Productions
I am a Mysore based woman film-maker who was chosen by you to be part of the Royal Stag Mega Movies project 12.12.12 organized by Showhouse Entertainment’s Large Short Films. I am writing this open letter because I think public discourse is important given that over the years you have come to occupy such an important space within what you call ‘independent cinema’. Also no one from the company that you endorse, as well as you, thinks it is important to have a dialogue with me about unpaid wages, disrespect and unfair dismissal which has caused me tremendous amount of financial, emotional stress. There is also a much touted save indie cinema doing the rounds and what it fails to add to the discourse (not surprising going by the kind of signatories it claims) is what I want to talk about. Changing the look of how you produce cinema and being backed by big studio capital isn’t really independent. I think it is important to bring this into the public domain as the silences around working practices result in the perpetuation of exploitative systems and weed out filmmakers based on their class, caste, gender, religion and language.
It was absolutely no surprise when I saw that the list of 12 directors included no woman. So apparently out of 600 entries only I, the sole woman, made it to the shortlist and because I decided to speak up and not be quiet about how my film was going to tortured and beaten into becoming the kind of objects that you seem to grant your blessings to, 12.12.12 is now officially an all male production.
I bring your notice to this because the tone of the company with regard to objections I raised has been patronizing, condescending and dismissive. Well-meaning friends and critics will tell me that’s how it works, that’s the industry, the industry that works on free labor, meant for those who have the money to afford the time to chase dreams. It’s not meant for women like me who have no big daddies or brothers or husbands supporting them. It isn’t meant for women like me who choose to work in a language other than Hindi and it definitely isn’t meant for women like me who don’t know how to waddle along consenting to practices that make people like you and the companies you endorse just richer on the back of such exploitative practices.
You sent me an email stipulating that I would not be in touch with any of the other 11 directors (an effective way I must say to curb dissent and this is called “being collaborative”!) The contract also stipulated that I would be paid once I handed over the film contrary to what the rules on the contest page initially stated wherein I was supposed to have been given the money before I made the film. This I was informed after having worked a full month on the project. I did sign it and I take full responsibility for that sign because you were the carrot dangled to me, the one ruling the roost in the film festival circuit and of course the Indian public funding circuit, what seemed like the only way to make one’s film. And since you must have been paid handsomely to be the carrot, I only ask that you own up to the full responsibility of it and be accountable to the carrot-desires you create.
After insisting that I get paid at least half I went ahead, after funds were released, and borrowed money to complete it. I hand over the film and fulfill my contractual obligations and then am bullied into changing and re-shooting it for a mistake made by Asmit Pathare (Project director not the 12th “discovery” – check the shortlist!) and Abhijit Das (the godfather of short films in the making). So I naturally said no. You must understand how difficult it is for a director to hurt their stories? It’s kind of like being okay with Abhijit Das (Creative head of Large Short Films) adding on a scene where Manoj Bajpai [Indian film actor] spouts Feminist Marxist dialogues in Gangs of Wasseypur [Indian crime film written, produced and directed by Anurag Kashyap] and without telling you! Wouldn’t really fit with the ethos of the film, would it? Your company even told me that since I do not have the resources I cannot be involved in the re-shooting. At such a juncture I asked you not to use my film if I was not being reimbursed and no, you go ahead and use it. The matchbox still from my film is still up on the company’s website.
In a country with absolutely zilch funding for independent films you exploit the hopes of thousands of aspirants. You reiterate a certain way of working which accommodates only a certain type of filmmaker. This in my world is called cheating, it’s called immoral and it’s called unfair. In your world all this is grey, this hijacking that you do of a space that has seen so much struggle and such amazing cinema, this hijacking of language – calling it collaborative when it’s more dictatorial, this hijacking of image, of new film waves, of new ways of working. One of the most exciting things about globalized capitalism’s current avatar (as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri will tell you) is that even though it creates systems like you it also provides for ruptures like me.
Before you come back with a reply to this I ask you to re‐look at emails that you sent me and words you relayed to me through the company about my film-making. Everything that I have said is backed by evidence (I know too well how important that is) I know this open dissent will cost me. I’m not naive not to understand as to how you rule visibilities around distribution and production but I will walk away knowing that I have spoken and that this is just the beginning not the end of the road for me. For those of you reading this I understand that within the larger framework of what we call injustice in this country this is nothing but when we start to look at continuums everything does matter and support for this would really help not just me but for all those who are engaged in changing the way images speak.
From the 12th director who so mysteriously disappeared
Shilpa Munikempanna
munikempannaproductions@gmail.com
UPDATE / December 11th, 2012
The company Showhouse and Large Short Films and Anurag Kashyap has generously decided to refund the money that I spent making the film after the circulation of this letter. They have also promised to assign my copyrights back to me. I wait for that in writing. I thank them for promptly reimbursing my money. It is generous and honourable of them. I stand by issues I raised about larger systemic problems and thank each and everyone who supported us.
Editor’s note: The email exchange between Shilpa Munikempanna, Anurag Kashyap and aforementioned representatives of Large Short Films and Showhouse can be consulted here. Shilpa’s court petition to be compensated for her work is available here.
ArtLeaks 