ARTISTS TALKING
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The Seventh Istanbul Biennal
Once again the Istanbul Biennial opened at a time of extraordinary difficulty. In 1999 the event only just survived the city’s devastating earthquake, whilst the recent backdrop was an explosive economic crisis and the imminent war in the (uncomfortably) Near East. But, as Kevin Dent reports, from this unpromising background the biennial emerged as a triumph offering the city something to celebrate and enjoy.
Expectations for the biennial had not been high. There had been doubts particularly about the mystifyingly unwieldy framework concept of Japanese curator Yuko Hasegawa's 'Egofugal' – a development of 'ego-consciousness' apparently – which seemed indecently distant from the daily material struggles of Istanbul's masses. The great surprise of this successful biennial then was that the easy rewards and joys of the works themselves did not need such conceptual explanation. The exhibition was spread over sites of historical importance, with the main section in the outhouses of the Ottoman Topkapi Palace. The works took on a wonderfully vital lightness amidst these weighty buildings, particularly in the Byzantine church of Aga Eirene where Michael Lin's Platform, a large communal stage decorated with delicate Taiwanese floral prints, took central place. A recurring theme in the biennial was that of the return of 'the future', becoming almost a science fiction temple to an uncertain, but still essential, vision of its possibilities. In Jane and Louise Wilson's video Star City a disused Soviet astronaut centre evoked our sense of loss of the future as did Mika Taanila's...
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