Trading Station

Penultimate day in Istanbul:

Today has been long but productive. Things achieved:

-meeting with the artists of Atilkunst in the tapestry room at Mimar Sinan University. Good to talk about TRADING STATION, discussed ways of trading work, ideas including mailing packages, sending SD cards with recorded audio on them, keeping emailing to a minimum as it can be so draining, setting up our tumblr blog so that members can post ‘unedited’ material to it, about the point where our trading meets – the points where misunderstanding occurs and how this can deepen understanding, about schedules and making an exchange fit in with life and sharing the practices and histories of the other artists in POST.

-visiting the Atilkunst studio. This was a lovely space that the three artists share. Spent some time takling with Gulcin Aksoy about her practice – I plan to meet with the POST artists back home and recount our conversation by talking about her blog, then to record the conversation and post it back to her as part of our trading. I also have a piece of Gulcin’s artwork to bring home and some of Atilkunst’s Excess of Agenda Stickers

-browsing the bazaars. Both as an artist and a tourist. As a tourist I bought 2 wooden spoons, a wooden bread ‘shovel’ to slide bread into the oven, a blockprinted tablecloth with deer on it, saffron, apricots and pepper. As an artist I’ve bought:

A battery powered bubble-blowing gun for Cecilia Kinnear
3 old ‘scenic’ Turkish postcards for Amanda Oliphant
12 old turkish wedding photographs for Susan Meyerhoff Sharples

And I was given a modern turkish wedding magazine by the bookseller where I bought the postcards/photos, and I also managed to ask for a sample wedding invitation from one shop on a street full of shops selling wedding invitations – both of these are for Sue.

-climbed (i.e. took the lift) up Galata Tower, just as the sun was setting, the lights got switched on on the Bosphorus Bridge and the call to evening Prayers seemed to begin

-met Ozlem Uzun, the artist who also worked on Invisible City in Schiedam last September. She and her friend Mufasa took me for turkish dinner and we shared stories of new art works, a paper about The Brothers Grimm that she has had accepted to a conference in Kingston University, Turkish Military Service and Scones.

-Got back to the computer to find out that a film I made in 2010 with Liverpool Biennial has been selected for the Parasol Unit’s ‘Animated Drawing: Screening of works by emerging artists’ on 2 May which runs alongside their exhibition ‘Lines of Thought’ which includes works by artists who have relevance for me such as Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Fred Sandback and Conrad Shawcross. I’d wondered why I was added to their mailing list lately, I’d forgotten I’d applied for this. Will have to try and get to see this show. I think a jaunt down to London is required.

Pretty much a perfect day – might have to finish off with a late night, too close to the deadline, going to have to ask someone in the UK to post it seeing as the deadline is Monday – by post, application writing challenge given the roll of good things that have been achieved today.

Chatham Road (Eventually Everyone had Moved), 3:49. Selected for Parasol Unit’s Animated Drawing Screening, 2 May 2012.

Went to an exciting performance last night called Garip bir Pandik – which translates as ‘being touched where you wouldn’t normally’ -like someone grabbing your bottom. The artists from Atilkunst were part of it and it was held in an off-space on Istiklal – quite surreal, full of music, cross dressing, political comment I think and lots of fun.

Today I’m meeting the artists of Atilkunst properly to talk about trading station and hope to meet the artist Ozlem Uzun who I worked with in Schiedam on Invisible City for dinner this evening.

Ok, 3 posts in one day is maybe excessive, but as the life of this blog is only 7 days, it’s probably fair.

I had the guts and I made the piece of work in the square. As I wrote on twitter after I’d finished:

A jam jar, 3″ paintbrush, 2l water, 90 something paving stones, video camera, public square in Istanbul and 1.5 hours = new artwork.

It was good to be making an intervention in a public space again – with no permissions and no back-up, just me and a task in hand. Quite happy with the result too – I’ll try and get an excerpt of the video documentation up here before I go home – in the meantime here’s a photo..

Here’s a piece of work that I started at the beginning of the week called ‘Spread’ – linked to the idea of using verbs related to movement and realised as a physical object (cut-away mountcard) and a digital object (animation).

The physical object is being sent to Australia as part of Curve Gallery’s ‘Anything to Declare’ exhibition in their new space out there. Hopefully it will arrive in time! POST are working with Curve towards an event/exhibition during the Liverpool Biennial this September as part of TRADING STATION, so this is an exciting opportunity to work with them.

Here is a very rough edit of the video – my unfamiliarity with imovie and macs means that it’s appearing all wrong when I upload to you tube, but you’ll get the gist.

Spread – rough edit

I did a bit of work for myself yesterday (day 4) too, which I’ve just been doing a rough edit on.

I’m drawn to places where people pass through: streets, bridges, passageways and squares. I found a large spacious square in Beşiktaş, which has a bus station, taxi stands and a ferry port skirting it. I’ve been interested in the patterns of paving stones and am thinking of them in the sense of drawings and am also thinking about Richard Serra’s works where he took a list of verbs and created sculptures in response to them.

I’m developing a series of ‘drawings’ that are being made into animations, in response to verbs about movement. So the beginning of the week saw me use ‘Spread’, and Beşiktaş square suggested the term ‘criss-cross’. I’ve taken a load of photographs but also made some walks crossing the square, following the line of the paving stones, whlie counting the number of stones along that course.

Here’s a link to the rough edit of the audio: http://tradingstation.tumblr.com/post/20107929308/…

I’m planning on going back to the square today to record some more traversals in the same way – think it could be edited together nicely so that the layers all cross over each other. I’ve also got an idea to ‘paint’ the flagstones with water to trace the route that I take – would look like a drawing, be temporary, but I need to get a big paintbrush and some guts to go out and get on with it!.