Thematic Seminar Cihad Caner

 2024 

Thematic Seminar - "Is it possible to talk about power and violence without showing their depictions?" lead by Cihad Caner

Image credit: Cihad Caner 2019.

The thematic seminar will question mainstream image-making methods and the dialogues they generate, for and around, socio-political subjects. It intends to challenge the linear, one-sided narrative we are fed by popular media. During the seminars, we will be exploring the politics of the image through different historical and contemporary examples. It will follow an approach that offers to be critical to make sense of “how we comprehend information we receive every day”, to find novel methods and tactics when practicing art related to politics, sociology, and philosophy, to be able to gain response-ability towards the hi(story) and our contemporary time.

The thematic seminar aims to create a base of an understanding of alternative forms of expression on socio-political subjects. The base will help students to merge and incorporate their practice into deeper and wider personal reflections. This seminar series will consist of topical reading groups, reading artworks from various artists and artist talks as well as group critiques.

Reading groups and texts

Group 1 Enrico, Anas, Sofie, Zhouzhou, Öncü

• Nermin Sayibasili BORDERS AND 'GHOSTS' (p.296-309)

Group 2 Misha, Feline, Annick, Lilly, Yuan

• Rolando_Vázquez VISTAS OF MODERNITY

Group 3 Hin, Laetitia, Julia, Shuang, Diana

The text contains multiple short chapters

https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/2018/09/06/unlearning-the-origins-of-photography/

https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/2018/09/17/unlearning-images-of-destruction/

https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/2018/10/09/unlearning-imperial-rights-to-take-photographs/

https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/2018/10/24/unlearning-imperial-sovereignties/

Guest

Eric Baudelaire is an artist and filmmaker based in Paris, France. After training as a political scientist, Baudelaire established himself as a visual artist with a research-based practice in several media ranging from photography and the moving image to installation, performance, and letter writing. His work probes a reality shaped by the systems of representation that structure contemporary societies: political, judicial, economic and informational constructs. His feature films are shown in festivals as well as exhibitions, where they are presented within broader installations that include other works, archival documents and extensive public programmes. He has had exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, MMK Frankfurt, Kunsthalle St Gallen, Museo Reina Sofia, Bergen Kunsthall, (formerly known as) Witte de With, Bétonsalon, Fridericianum, Beirut Art Center, Gasworks, Hammer Museum, and showed work in the Whitney Biennale, Sharjah Biennial, Yokohama Triennale, Mediacity Seoul, and Taipei Biennial. He was the recipient of the 2019 Marcel Duchamp prize, and recently published a monography titled Make, Do, With at Paraguay Press.

 2023 

Guests

Katarina Jazbec, a visual artist working in film and photography, was born in 1991, in Slovenia, and has been living in Rotterdam since 2015. She received her BA from the Faculty of Economics in Ljubljana and her MA in Photography from the AKV | St. Joost art academy in Breda (NL). In her film works, Katarina uses interdisciplinary and collaborative artistic strategies, exploring agency of human and non-human critters in the current economic system. Her previous short film You Can’t Automate Me premiered at the International Film Festival in Rotterdam in 2021 and was shown at numerous festivals all around the world. Katarina is currently a resident at the international residency programme at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

Julian Ross is a researcher, curator and writer based in Amsterdam. He is co-programmer of Doc Fortnight 2023 and 2024 at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), co-programmer of the upcoming 69th Flaherty Seminar, and film program advisor at IDFA. Previously, he was programmer at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Locarno Film Festival, and guest programmer at Singapore International Film Festival. His curatorial work has been presented at Tate Modern, Art Institute of Chicago, e-flux Video & Film, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Eye Filmmuseum, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Harvard Film Archive and British Film Institute. He is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society, where he is co-director of the interdisciplinary research centre ReCNTR, and editorial board member of Collaborative Cataloging Japan, a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving the legacy of Japanese experimental moving image.

 2022 

Guest Artists

Pınar Öğrenci

Artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci lives in Berlin. She is the founder of MARSistanbul, an art initiative launched in 2010. Öğrenci has a background in architecture, which informs her poetic and experiential video-based works and installations that accumulate traces of material culture related to forced displacement and disappearance across geographies.Her works are decolonial and feminist readings from the intersections of social, political, and architectural research, human stories, everyday practices, music and literature. They follow agents of migration such as war, state violence, assimilation, collective movements, natural disasters, industrial and urban development projects. Previously, her works have been exhibited widely at museums and art institutions including at Times Art Center, SAVVY Contemporary, and Kunstraum Bethanien Kreuzberg, all in Berlin; Art Encounters Biennial, Timișoara; Gwangju Biennial; Athens Biennial; Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm; Survival Kit, Riga; Kunst Haus Wien-Museum Hundertwasser; the Istanbul off-site project for Sharjah Biennial 13; MAXXI Museum, Rome; SALT and Depo, both in Istanbul. Her first solo exhibition abroad was realized at Kunst Haus Wien in 2017. Öğrenci’s first documentary film Gurbet is a home now was selected for the National Documentary Film Competition by the 40th Istanbul Film Festival and won the Special Jury Prize at the DOCUMENTARIST Istanbul Film Festival in 2021. She currently teaches on the Master of Arts program Spatial Strategies at the Weißensee Academy of Art in Berlin.

Wendelien van Oldenborgh develops works, whereby the cinematic format is used as a methodology for production and as the basic language for various forms of presentation, collaborating with participants in different scenarios, to co-produce the script. With these works, which look at the structures that form and hinder us, she participated in various large biennials, and in smaller dedicated shows. Recent solo presentations include: tono lengua boca at Fabra i Coats, Barcelona 2020 and CA2M Madrid 2019-20; Cinema Olanda, at the Dutch Pavilion in the 57th Venice Biennial 2017. Van Oldenborgh has exhibited widely including various international Biennials, most recently at the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019, bauhaus imaginista, HKW Berlin/Zentrum Paul Klee Bern 2019 SALT Istanbul 2020 and In the Presence of Absence, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 2020. Van Oldenborgh is a member of the (Dutch) Society for Arts and a recipient of the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art (2014). A monographic publication, Amateur, was published by Sternberg Press, Berlin; If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam and The Showroom, London in 2016.

 2021 

The thematic seminar will question mainstream image-making methods and the dialogues they generate, for and around, socio-political subjects. It intends to challenge the linear, one-sided narrative we are fed by popular media. During the seminars, we will be exploring the politics of the image through different historical and contemporary examples. It will follow an approach that offers to be critical to make sense of “how we comprehend information we receive every day”, to find novel methods and tactics when practicing art related to politics, sociology, and philosophy, to be able to gain response-ability towards the hi(story) and our contemporary time.

Based between Rotterdam and Istanbul, Cihad Caner (b. 1990) works primarily with photography, video, CGI, and sculpture. His work examines quotidian objects and their positioning within the image culture; the portrayal of the “other” in various media; and global urgencies shaped by wars, immigration, and resistance. Caner’s recent work has been exhibited at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki; the Hong Kong Arts Center; the Art Museum of the Nanjing University of the Arts; the National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik; Galerie BOHAI, Hannover; Kasseler Kunstverein; Corridor Project Space, Amsterdam; Blitz Malta, Valletta. Caner has been an artist-in-residence at the ARCUS Project in Moriya (Japan), and received the Mondriaan Fonds Jong Talent grant in 2018. He holds a Master’s in Media Design and Communication from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.
www.cihadcaner.com

01.11.21

11-18

10.11.21

11-18

16.11.21

09:30-17:00

Wie Kan Zijn Noodlot Dwingen 2020

Guest Artists 16.11.21

Cana Bilir-Meier

Cana Bilir-Meier lives and works in Munich (DE) and Vienna (AT). She studied digital media/art and film and art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and at Sabancı University in Istanbul (TR). She works as a filmmaker and artist and in art and culture education projects. Her filmic, performative, and text-based works move at the interfaces between archival work, text production, historical research, and contemporary media reflexivity or archaeology.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970, Bangkok) grew up in Khon Kaen, a city in the north east of Thailand. He has a degree in Architecture from Khon Kaen University and a Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has been making films and videos since the early 90s. He is one of the few filmmakers in Thailand who have worked outside the strict Thai studio system. In his films, he experiments with certain elements found in the dramatic plot structure of Thai television and radio programs, comics and old films. He finds his inspiration in small towns around the country. In his work, he often uses non-professional actors and improvised dialogue in exploring the shifting boundaries between documentary and fiction.

His 2009 project, Primitive, consists of a large-scale video installation, an artist’s book, and a feature film, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. The film has won a Palme d’Or prize at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival in 2010, making it the first Southeast Asian film (and the 7th from Asia) to win the most prestigious award in the film world. In 2012, he is invited to participate in Documenta (13), one of the most well-known art exhibitions in Kassel, Germany. Apichatpong also received the Sharjah Biennial Prize at the 2013 Sharjah Biennial 11, UAE. He's also a recipient of the Fukuoka Prize, Japan, 2013. In late 2014, he received the Yanghyun Art Prize, one of the most prestigious prizes in Korea. In 2016, a retrospective of his films was presented at Tate Britain, UK. Recently, he was the Principal Laureate of the 2016 Prince Claus Awards, the Netherlands. His current project includes Fever Room, a projection performance about displaced consciousness.

2020

Thematic Seminar - "Is it possible to talk about power and violence without showing their depictions?" lead by Cihad Caner

On-site 03.11 / Online 11. & 18.11 2020]

The thematic seminar will question mainstream image-making methods and the dialogues they generate, for and around, socio-political subjects. It intends to challenge the linear, one-sided narrative we are fed by popular media. During the seminars, we will be exploring the politics of the image through different historical and contemporary examples. It will follow an approach that offers to be critical to make sense of “how we comprehend information we receive every day”, to find novel methods and tactics when practicing art related to politics, sociology, and philosophy, to be able to gain response-ability towards the hi(story) and our contemporary time.

The thematic seminar aims to create a base of an understanding of alternative forms of expression on socio-political subjects. The base will help students to merge and incorporate their practice into deeper and wider personal reflections. This seminar series will consist of topical reading groups, reading artworks from various artists and artist talks as well as group critiques.

with guests ONLINE: 18 November 2020

Wendelien van Oldenborgh develops works, whereby the cinematic format is used as a methodology for production and as the basic language for various forms of presentation, collaborating with participants in different scenarios, to co-produce the script. With these works, which look at the structures that form and hinder us, she participated in various large biennials, and in smaller dedicated shows. Recent solo presentations include: tono lengua boca at Fabra i Coats, Barcelona 2020 and CA2M Madrid 2019-20; Cinema Olanda, at the Dutch Pavilion in the 57th Venice Biennial 2017. Van Oldenborgh has exhibited widely including various international Biennials, most recently at the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019, bauhaus imaginista, HKW Berlin/Zentrum Paul Klee Bern 2019 SALT Istanbul 2020 and In the Presence of Absence, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam 2020.

Van Oldenborgh is a member of the (Dutch) Society for Arts and a recipient of the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for Art (2014). A monographic publication, Amateur, was published by Sternberg Press, Berlin; If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam and The Showroom, London in 2016.

Banu Cennetoğlu lives and works in Istanbul. Cennetoğlu’s work incorporates methods of mapping, collecting and archiving in order to question and challenge the politics of memory, as well as the distribution and consumption of information.

Solo exhibitions include: K21 Ständehaus, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2019); Sculpture Center, New York (2019); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2018); Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn (2015); Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest (2013); Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2011). Selected group exhibitions to include: Actually, the Dead Are Not Dead, Bergen Assembly 2019; Beautiful world, where are you?, Liverpool Biennale (2018); Documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); The Restless Earth, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2017); 10th Gwangju Biennale (2014); Manifesta 8, Murcia (2010); 53rd Venice Biennale/Pavilion of Turkey (2009); 5th and 3rd Berlin Biennale (2008/2004);1st Athens Biennale (2007) and 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007).

In 2006 she initiated BAS, a project space in Istanbul focusing on collection and production of artists’ books and printed matter. In 2016 she was a guest at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program.

Based between Rotterdam and Istanbul, Cihad Caner (b. 1990) works primarily with photography, video, CGI, and sculpture. His work examines quotidian objects and their positioning within the image culture; the portrayal of the “other” in various media; and global urgencies shaped by wars, immigration, and resistance. Caner’s recent work has been exhibited at the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki; the Hong Kong Arts Center; the Art Museum of the Nanjing University of the Arts; the National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik; Galerie BOHAI, Hannover; Kasseler Kunstverein; Corridor Project Space, Amsterdam; Blitz Malta, Valletta. Caner has been an artist-in-residence at the ARCUS Project in Moriya (Japan), and received the Mondriaan Fonds Jong Talent grant in 2018. He holds a Master’s in Media Design and Communication from the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.
www.cihadcaner.com

Reading list

• Susan Sontag 'Regarding the Pain of Others'
• Hito Steyerl 'Too much World: Is the Internet Dead?'
• Nermin Sayibasili ORDERS AND 'GHOSTS'