Firing Up, Fading Out
Reflections on the 13th Istanbul Biennial, the idea of art and publicness, the model of the event, and other related issues.
For an optimal view of our website, please rotate your tablet horizontally.
The Incidental Insurgents: The Part about the Bandits (Chapter 2). 2012
Installation
This search begins with four seemingly disparate coordinates, the early anarchist life of Victor Serge and his contemporary bandits in 1910's Paris; Abu Jilda and Arameet and their bandit gang involved in a rebellion against the British in 1930's Palestine, the artist as the quintessential bandit in Roberto Bolano’s novel The Savage Detectives set in 70's Mexico, and the artists themselves in present day Palestine. Weaving the first part of the story by looking at the resonance between the inspiring, bizarre and sometimes tragic stones of these diverse bandits, the outsider rebel par excellence often rewritten as mere criminals (or naively romanticized as wayward figures) and excluded from the narrative of revolutionary struggle. Ironically these figures, though seemingly incidental, most dearly articulate the incompleteness and inadequacies in existing oppositional movements’ political language and imaginary.
Meant as an investigation into the possibilities for the future rather than the past, and using literary and factual texts as starting points (writings of Victor Serge and Bolano amongst others), a convoluted story situated in multiple times starts to emerge. The artists take the figure of the bandit to explore their own position as artists and the common search for a language of the moment—a radical new imaginary that can begin to open the horizon for other ways of becoming and being in the world. Initiating an obsessive search where the artists try to figure out how, like the bandits before them they find themselves inhabiting a time full of radical potential and disillusionment. Searching for what cannot yet be seen but maybe possible.
(From a wall text in the exhibition)
Venue: Arter
© Photo: Haupt & Binder
Reflections on the 13th Istanbul Biennial, the idea of art and publicness, the model of the event, and other related issues.