Ahali Conversations with Can Altay

Our guest in this episode is curator, author, and educator Ana Devic. She is best known as a member of the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom (WHW). Formed in 1999, WHW is an exemplary case in the history of curatorial studies.

Ana Devic is also in charge of the international study program for young artists called WHW Akademija based in Zagreb. With Ana, we’ll further our exploration into other modes of engaging with artistic practice and hear about other possibilities, within and through art and politics. Her take on collectivity, as a spark rather than a value in and of itself; her emphasis on encounters and accessibility, and formal and informal modes of learning were really thought-provoking.

EPISODE NOTES AND LINKS

This episode’s conversation is part of the collaborative project ‘Communities of Learning, Bridging the Gap of Isolation’, initiated by WHW and supported by the Culture of Solidarity Fund of the European Cultural Foundation.

Ana Devic is a curator, writer, and teacher Ana Dević and a member of the curatorial collective What, How and from Whom (WHW). https://www.whw.hr/novosti/index.html#

Formed in 1999, the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom (WHW) is an exemplary case in the history of curatorial studies. They were one of the pioneer groups who were influential in saving curatorial practice from going obsolete in a moment in which author curators (often white and male) reluctant to operate in plural forms were dominating the field of contemporary art. It’s members are Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić, Sabina Sabolović and designer and publicist Dejan Kršić. 

Based in Zagreb, WHW Academija is an international study program for young artists. The tuition-free academy takes up to 12 fellows per year intending to work on new forms of self-determination based on modes of critical reflection, curiosity, and encounters among artists, artworks, arts professionals, scholars, and practitioners. This program consists of a series of intensives, experimental exercises, workshops, and seminars, as well as a range of exhibitions, performances, and other forms of discursive programs. http://whw-akademija.whw.hr/about-whw/

IRWIN is a highly influential artist collective, whose paintings, actions and installations played a crucial role in Balkan and Eastern European conceptual art, especially in the definitive era of 90’s and the Post-Yugoslavian context. They were a part of NSK, along with the legendary band Laibach. https://www.irwin-nsk.org/about/

Gezi Park Protests occurred in Turkey in 2013 to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. https://creativetimereports.org/2013/06/14/here-we-are-the-imagination-of-public-space-in-gezi-park/

Christine Tohme is a curator and the founding director of Ashkal Alwan. The Home Workspace Program is a tuition-free annual arts study program targeting emerging artists and cultural practitioners wishing to develop their critical skills and practice in a supportive environment in Beirut. https://ashkalalwan.org/about.php#

Mladen Stilinović (1947-2016) was a conceptual artist and one of the leading figures of the so-called "New Art Practice" in Croatia.

Sanja Iveković is a photographer, performer, sculptor and installation artist.

Tomislav Gotovac (1937-2010) was a film director, actor, performer, multimedia and conceptual artist.

Goran Trbuljak is a cinematographer, photographer and conceptual artist.

Decolonizing Architecture Art Research (DAAR) is an artistic practice situated between architecture, art, pedagogy and politics in the struggle for justice and equality http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/about/

Alessandro Petti is an architect and researcher. He is one of the cofounders of DAAR.

Sandi Hilal is an architect and researcher. She is one of the cofounders of DAAR.

Conducted by Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, The Tree School is a place where people can gather for communal learning and the production of knowledge grounded in lived experience and connected to communities. http://www.decolonizing.ps/site/the-tree-school/

The artist group Etcetera Collective, was founded by Loreto Garín Guzmán and Federico Zukerfeld in 1997. In 2005 they founded Fundación del Movimiento Internacional Errorista (International Errorist Movement Foundation) with other artists and activists which seeks to consolidate error as a life philosophy.

Known for his seminal pedagogical work Deschooling Society, Ivan Dominic Illich (1926 - 2002) was a priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic.

The Alternative Art School (TAAS) is an affordable learning program run by a stellar faculty offering intimate class sizes. TAAS emphasizes group work, community building, and dynamic modes of socializing and art-making. www.thealternativeartschool.net/how-it-works-1

RAW Académie is an experimental residential program for the research and study of artistic and curatorial practice and thought in Dakar. http://www.rawmaterialcompany.org/_RAW_Academy?lang=en

DAI ROAMING ACADEMY, is an itinerant program that fosters a variety of praxes at the intersections of art and theory (both seen as un-disciplines), and invigorates (collective) thinking, researching, performing, curating, writing, voicing, making and publishing. https://dutchartinstitute.eu/program/about

The Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, "New Academy of Fine Arts", also known as NABA, is a privately run university in Milan.

Marco Scotini is a curator, researcher, teacher, and writer.

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is a type of organization represented by rules encoded as a computer program that is transparent, controlled by the organization members, and not influenced by a central government.

Pirate Care is a transnational research project and a network of activists, scholars, and practitioners who stand against the criminalization of solidarity & for a common care infrastructure. https://pirate.care/pages/concept/

Memory of the World/Public Library is a case for the institution of public library and its principle of universal access to knowledge. https://www.memoryoftheworld.org/blog/2015/05/27/repertorium_public_library/

Curated by WHW in 2014, “Really Useful Knowledge” was an exhibition that had taken place at Reina Sofia, Madrid which sought to highlight the collective utilization of public resources, activities, and experiments, either forgotten or under threat of eradication, taking the museum as a pedagogical site devoted to the analysis of artistic forms interconnected with actual or desired social relations. https://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/exhibitions/really-useful-knowledge

Nato Thompson is an author, curator, and self-proclaimed “cultural infrastructure builder”. Nato was also the guest of Ahali Conversations Episode 18: https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-18-nato-thompson

Sound.xyz is a startup aiming to support recording artists to monetize their projects through NFTs. https://www.sound.xyz/

PleasrDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that purchases and collects work that is relevant to the digital and crypto culture. https://pleasr.org/

terra0 is an evolving prototype built on the Ethereum network that aims to provide automated ecosystem resilience frameworks. https://terra0.org/

Black Swan is an experimental digital initiative designed to eat the art world by channeling resources from established institutions to cultural practitioners. https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/kul/zut/dao/dab.html

Tor, short for The Onion Router, is free and open-source software for enabling anonymous communication. https://www.torproject.org

Peter Lamborn Wilson aka Hakim Bey is an anarchist author and poet, primarily known for his concept of Temporary Autonomous Zones, short-lived spaces which elude formal structures of control. https://www.amazon.com/TAZ-Temporary-Autonomous-Ontological-Autonomedia/dp/1570271518

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/hakim-bey-t-a-z-the-temporary-autonomous-zone-ontological-anarchy-poetic-terrorism

Episode recorded on Zoom in December 2021. 

Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.

Amy Franceschini and Lode Vranken represent Futurefarmers, an international group of artists founded in 1995 including anthropologists, farmers, and architects who work together to propose alternatives to the social, political, and environmental organization of space. They are known for long-lived projects such as the flatbread society and the seed journey. 

There are quite a few gems in this conversation, about making spaces that call for communities; how connections to objects matter; and how to think about the tools we make and use. Futurefarmers invite us to rethink innovation, activism, collaboration. For me, the key takeaway was the correlation between crafting, communities, and form. Hearing about the way they use the material aspects of their work as ‘probes’ to help collectively form communities, and the way this formal dimension or ‘aura’ is key to the process was refreshing.

Episode Notes & Links

Amy is an artist and designer whose work with Futurefarmers facilitates encounter, exchange, and tactile forms of inquiry by calling into question the "certainties" of a given time or place where a work is situated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Franceschini

Lode Vranken is an artist, architect, and philosopher. 

For more on Futurefarmers visit https://www.futurefarmers.com/

Antoine Boute is an experimental writer and poet.

Futurefarmers work on a public art program for Bjørvika, Oslo (Norway) named Flatbread Society which examines the interrelationship of food production to realms of knowledge sharing, cultural production, socio-political formations, and everyday life since 2012. http://www.flatbreadsociety.net/

Built at Pollinaria in Abruzzo, Italy, "This is not a Trojan horse" is a large, human-powered, wooden horse designed by Futurefarmers with architect Lode Vranken.  http://www.futurefarmers.com/thisisnotatrojanhorse/about.html

The Canoe Project by Flatbread Society is powered by four human legs and it includes a mobile baking oven within the canoe. Stephen Wright's description of the double ontology is perfectly exemplified in this case as flatbread is a conversation topic that is widely accessible while baking, unlike contemporary art is relatable to anybody regardless of profession or background. http://www.flatbreadsociety.net/actions/39/a-boat-walking-on-land

Flatbread Society Bakehouse was built with local boat builders in the form of a vessel. The "ship" hosts three bread ovens for making a variety of bread types. It seeks to point to the past and to the future, extending metaphors of cultivation and sailing to larger ideas of self-reliance and the foregrounding of organic processes in the development of land use, social relations, and cultural forms. https://www.futurefarmers.com/projects/bakehouse

Stanford University is a private research university located in California which was a key factor in the development of the technology enterprise now known as Silicon Valley. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK158815/

Industrial agriculture is the large-scale, intensive production of crops and animals, often involving chemical fertilizers on crops or the routine, harmful use of antibiotics in animals. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/industrial-agriculture-101

Rudolph Steiner (1861 - 1925) was a philosopher, social reformer, architect, esotericist. Apart from the scholarly work and metaphysical practice, he was interested in biodynamic agriculture, a practice similar to organic farming.

Permaculture is an approach to land management and settlement design that arranges a mutually beneficial relationship for land, resources, people, and the environment and employs multidisciplinary methods that source from the knowhow of agriculture, water harvesting and hydrology, energy, natural building, forestry, waste management, animal systems, aquaculture, appropriate technology, economics, and community development. https://www.permaculturenews.org/what-is-permaculture/

Best known as the frontman of the multinational technology corporation Microsoft, Bill Gates is a business magnate and arguably one of the most influential individuals of the 20th century.

Donna Haraway is a writer, educator, and academic within the field of science and technology studies. She authored countless seminal texts among these, Cyborg Manifesto, as well as the Companion Species Manifesto are must-reads for any and all of us.

Founded by Joan Baez, Struggle Mountain is an international community located in California that evolved out of the sixties' counterculture and, most particularly, nonviolence and the draft resistance movement.

Joan Baez is a singer, songwriter, musician, and activist.

Amy teaches at the EcoSocial Design master program at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Can was there for a lecture. https://www.unibz.it/en/faculties/design-art/master-eco-social-design/

Co-designed by architects Doğan Tekeli, Sami Sisa ve Metin Hepgüler, İMÇ is an exemplary case within the canon of 20th-century architecture in Turkey as an open-air commercial complex located in the historical center of İstanbul. It was occupied by the record companies, especially during the 1980s upon their booming popularity.

Run by artists Nancy Atakan and Volkan Aslan, 5533 is a contemporary art space located in İMÇ.http://imc5533.blogspot.com/

Ahali Conversations is the love child of the Ahali Journal and MÇPS, the recording studio Amy mentions. Realized in 2017, MÇPS was an artwork in which Can turned 5533 into a walk-in record studio where local musicians were able to jump in jams and hang around the İMÇ complex once again long after its prime days passed. http://www.local-legends.org/people/2017/11/18/artist-can-altay-on-music-memory-and-imagined-futures-at-istanbuls-mythical-m-building

Radio Ramona is an internet radio station that deals with strange affairs between bread, astronomy, migration, and gossip about old and forgotten communication gadgets by Future Farmers.

Seed Journey is a seafaring voyage connected to a public art project. It occurred in three legs. Set off at Oslo and concluded in İstanbul a rotating crew of artists, anthropologists, biologists, bakers, activists, sailors, and farmers joined the journey and shared their findings at host institutions along the route from small harbors to large ports from barns to museums (contemporary art, natural history and maritime) to social centers. http://futurefarmers.com/seedjourney/

Twitter is a social media platform that serves for microblogging where users express opinions within 280 characters.

Noah Glass is a technology entrepreneur who launched Twitter in 2006.

Episode recorded on Zoom in July 2021. 

Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.

Founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden, Metahaven’s body of work encompasses filmmaking, writing, objects, and graphics. Their activities offer a kind of cultural practice that doesn’t shy away from producing knowledge and reflections; as much as the production of affect.

We hear Daniel reflecting on their practice, through the notions of interface, agency, distribution, formats, versions, iterations, and many other potentials and obstacles towards making something meaningful and compelling. 

Episode Notes and Links

Metahaven http://metahaven.net https://mthvn.tumblr.com

Centering on children, adults, and parental relationships, the absence of linguistic reference to reality, and the ineffability of the metaphysical, Metahaven’s latest work titled Chaos Theory (2021) is a multi-voice video essay starred by Georgina Dávid and Valentina Di Mondo. It is a sequel of previous films by Metahaven titled Hometown (2018), Information Skies (2016), and The Sprawl (Propaganda About Propaganda) (2015). Excerpt: https://vimeo.com/494444068 https://mthvn.tumblr.com/post/663742206080909312/valentinadimondotalkstometahaven

Assembling genres (anime, sci-fi, fantasy role-playing games) and moving beyond the representation of linear time, Metahaven’s Information Skies offers a dreamlike speculation that questions the boundaries between sound and images, reality and fiction, factuality and technology, reflection and embodiment.

Citation by Lesia Prokopenko for Vdrome. https://www.vdrome.org/metahaven/

Filmed in Beirut and Kyiv, Hometown depicts a fictional city through the perspective of protagonists Lera and Ghina that reveal their attachment to the Hometown which is so familiar yet not what it was once in the past. https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/192165/metahavenhometown/

Released in segments on YouTube, Sprawl is Metahaven’s first feature film delving into various geopolitical disturbances that occurred in the last decade.

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/152877677 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5432984/

sprawl.space is the online interface for The Sprawl, where the viewer can see the “shards” that make up the full version of the film. The website has been shaped by the interface design of Metahaven and the viewing algorithms of YouTube. https://sprawl.space/about-the-sprawl/

Assembling cinematic sequences shot in the Southeastern Urals and Macedonia, archival footage, and animation, Eurasia (Questions on Happiness) sets forth on a journey towards the Eurasian steppe where it meets the New Silk Road. https://vimeo.com/296095100

Citation from Metahaven’s exhibition at ICA titled Version History in 2018: https://www.ica.art/exhibitions/metahaven-version-history?fbclid=IwAR3tAJ5TQ2xxzVhItTYW7bx6uJcKBYjgdwBnGkXBgI75nmczpt6yDzcbXCw

Expounding the genealogy of viral internet memes and their potential uses within politics as agitprops 2.0 to engineer public opinion, ‘Can Jokes Bring Down Governments’ is a visionary essay on social media warfare by Metahaven. https://strelkamag.com/en/article/memes-design-and-politics

Published by Sternberg Press in 2015, ‘Black Transparency’ reflected on the changes that are introduced to our life with the fast-paced development of communication technologies and their impact on information democracy by tackling matters such as the conscience of the whistleblower, whose personal politics are now instantly geopolitical. https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/black-transparency-the-right-to-know-in-the-age-of-mass-surveillance/

Borrowing its title from the findings of a survey which indicates that an average person in the U.S. spends eight more minutes than the total duration of Stalker (161 minutes) daily, Digital Tarkovsky is a thought-provoking essay investigating the effect of social media platforms on our perception of time. Published by Strelka in 2018. https://strelkamag.com/en/article/digital-tarkovsky-metahaven-excerpt

Filmed in 1979, Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky is a loose adaptation of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s science fiction novel Roadside Picnic (1972).

Netflix is a subscription-based streaming service that offers different catalogs of movies, documentaries, and series internationally.

Mubi is a subscription-based streaming service that offers a curated catalog covering a wide range of moving image genres.

Short for Internet Movie Database, IMDB is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMDb

4:3 by Boiler Room is a multifaceted genre-spanning platform for curated and commissioned underground films exploring themes of performance, identity, youth culture, and anti-establishment. https://boilerroom.tv

State of Concept Athens is a non-profit contemporary art institution founded by curator iLiana Fokianaki. https://stateofconcept.org/general/

Conflict is an anarcho-punk band originally based in London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_(band)

Mike Kelley (1954 – 2012) an influential artist who merged childhood objects with youth culture; personal stories with political histories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Kelley_(artist)

Nato Thompson is a curator and the founder of the Alternative Art School. Before setting up this experimental education project, Nato was the artistic director of Philadelphia Contemporary and a key figure at Creative Time, New York’s influential organization focusing on art in public space.

You will listen to Nato reflecting on that shift, from working within institutions to setting up one’s own. His insights on the inner workings of the art industry are totally thought-provoking. And it’s the first time we are talking about NFT’s at Ahali! This conversation really shows the many blind spots, or things we tend to overlook about the status quo.

EPISODE NOTES & LINKS

Nato Thompson is an author, curator, and self-proclaimed “cultural infrastructure builder”.  www.natothompson.com/about

The Alternative Art School (TAAS) is an affordable learning program run by a stellar faculty offering intimate class sizes. TAAS emphasizes group work, community building, and dynamic modes of socializing and art-making. www.thealternativeartschool.net/how-it-works-1

Philadelphia Contemporary is an independent and free-standing venue that celebrates the abundance of genre-bending, multidisciplinary practices that make up the field of contemporary art. www.philadelphiacontemporary.org

Operating since 1974, Creative Time is an influential public arts organization in New York. creativetime.org/about/

Growing out of a major exhibition that had occurred in Creative Time, Living as Form contains commissioned essays from noted critics and theorists who look at Socially Engaged Art practiced between the years of 1991-2011. mitpress.mit.edu/books/living-form

MASS MoCA is a contemporary art museum located in North Adams, Massachusetts. massmoca.org/about/

Seeing Power: Art and Activism in the 21st Century (2015) www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/214258/seeing-power-by-nato-thompson/9781612190440/

Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/545444/culture-as-weapon-by-nato-thompson/

Part of the TAAS faculty, Paul Chan is an artist, writer, and publisher. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Chan_(artist)

Trevor Paglen is an artist, geographer, and author whose work critically deals with mass surveillance and data collection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Paglen

A fierce political figure of our time that operates within (but not limited to) the field of contemporary art, Tania Bruguera's work pivots around issues of power and control, and several of her works interrogate and re-present events in Cuban history. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tania_Bruguera

Simone Leigh is an artist who reflects on the black female subjectivity through her practice. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Leigh

Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement protesting against incidents of police brutality and all racially motivated violence against black people. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter

Star Trek is a science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek

Janine Antoni is an artist who focuses on process and the transitions between the making and finished product, often portraying feminist ideals. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_Antoni

Miguel López is an artist, researcher, and writer. www.bakonline.org/person/miguel-a-lopez/

Yael Bartana is an artist whose work focuses on political or feminist themes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yael_Bartana

Motivated largely by political, cultural, and social circumstances, Mel Chin is an artist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Chin

Hito Steyerl is an artist, theoretician, and educator. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hito_Steyerl

Marinella Senatore is an artist. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinella_Senatore

Mia Yu is an independent researcher, curator, and educator. portal.cca.edu/events-calendar/curatorial-practice-lecture-mia-yu/

Mario Ybarra Jr. employs his multi-layered artistic practice to e various components of Mexican-American identity. www.otis.edu/faculty/mario-ybarra-jr

Kathrin Böhm is an artist whose practice focuses on the collective re-production of public space; on the economy as a public realm; and every day as a starting point for culture. Check out Ahali Conversations Episode 13 to get inspired by Kathrin's way to build diverse economies within, out of, and around the field of culture. www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-13-kathrinbohm

J.K Gibson-Graham is the pen-name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham. As feminist political economists and economic geographers, they have extensively written about diverse economies, urbanism, alternative communities, and regional economic development.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Gibson-Graham

Smashcut is an online learning platform built for real-time, media-based education. www.smashcut.com/about

Pedagogy of the Oppressed is considered one of the foundational texts of critical pedagogy and proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student, and society by Paolo Freire. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed

Black Mountain College was an experimental college founded in 1933.

John Cage (1912 – 1992) was a composer, music theorist, artist, and philosopher who was a teacher at BMC.

"Merce" Cunningham (1919 – 2009) was a dancer and choreographer who was a teacher at BMC.

Gezi Park Protests occurred in Turkey in 2013 to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezi_Park_protests

The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests, uprisings, and armed rebellions that spread across much of the Arab world in the early 2010s. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring

Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was a protest movement against economic inequality and the influence of money in politics that began in New York City's Wall Street financial district, in 2011. It gave rise to the wider Occupy movement in the United States and other countries. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street

Sotheby's is a multinational corporation headquartered in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewelry, and collectibles. www.sothebys.com/en/

Christie's is an auction house like Sotheby's known for its involvement in high-profile private transactions. www.christies.com/en

SAHA is an association that seeks to support contemporary art from Turkey. www.saha.org.tr

Protocinema is a cross-cultural art organization that commissions and presents works and exhibitions of contemporary art. www.protocinema.org/about

Fırat Engin is an artist based in İstanbul and Ankara. firatengin.com/cv

Vahap Avşar is an artist based in New York and İstanbul. vahapavsar.com/bio/

DC hardcore, sometimes referred to in writing as harDCore, is the hardcore punk scene of Washington, D.C. Emerging in late 1979, it is considered one of the first and most influential punk scenes in the United States. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C._hardcore

Bad Brains are a rock band formed in Washington, D.C. in 1977. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Brains

Minor Threat was a hardcore punk band, formed in 1980 in Washington, D.C. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_Threat

Fugazi is a post-hardcore band that formed in Washington, D.C. in 1986. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugazi

The Nation of Ulysses was a punk rock band from Washington, D.C., formed in spring 1988. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nation_of_Ulysses

Minecraft is an influential sandbox video game with a major impact on popular internet culture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minecraft

Red Dead Redemption is a Western-themed action-adventure game. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Dead_Redemption

Grand Theft Auto (GTA) is a series of action-adventure games. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto

The Sandinista National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Nicaragua. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandinista_National_Liberation_Front

Just google Google. g.co/kgs/2CdUks

Meriç Öner is the current Director of Research and Programs at SALT, a cultural, or rather as Meriç elaborates a research institution in Istanbul. 

I think Meriç’s proposal boils down to imagining the next art institution as a kind of academy, not only as a site of education, but also as a provider of exchange, a social platform where knowledge intermingles with and through the people.

Episode Notes & Links

Meriç Öner is a trained architect and the Director of Research and Programs at SALT since 2017.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/meric-oner-announced-director-turkey-salt-802586

SALT is Turkey’s spearheading cultural institution. With a special focus on art, architecture, and social life, It holds a vast archive of the material and visual culture of Turkey. The institution is active with a variety of cultural programs that include exhibitions. www.saltonline.org

İstanbul Technical University is the world's third-oldest technical university dedicated to engineering sciences. https://www.itu.edu.tr/en

Established in 1996, Bilgi Üniversitesi is a private university located in Istanbul. https://www.bilgi.edu.tr/en/university/about/

Pelin Derviş is an architect, researcher, writer, and editor. Her work focuses mainly on 20th-century architecture and design in Turkey. https://www.pelindervis.com/en/about

The United Nations Development Programme is a United Nations organization tasked with helping countries eliminate poverty and achieve sustainable economic growth and human development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Development_Programme

The International Union of Architects (UIA) was founded in 1948 to unite the architects of the world through a federation of their national organizations. They hold an international congress once every three years. https://www.uia-architectes.org/webApi/en/about

Hans Hollein (30 March 1934 – 24 April 2014) was an Austrian architect and designer and key figure of postmodern architecture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Hollein

Sibel Bozdoǧan is an architect and academic whose research/teaching covers trans-national histories of modern architecture and urbanism across the globe, with a specialization on Turkey, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. https://www.bu.edu/haa/profile/sibel-bozdogan/

Murat Güvenç is a scholar specializing in urban studies and regional planning.

İhsan Bilgin is an architect and academic. https://readingoffice.com/ihsan-bilgin/

The contemporary art institution Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center opened in 2001 and was located on the pedestrian Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul, Turkey. It ended its activities under this name in 2010 upon the foundation of SALT. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_Garanti_Contemporary_Art_Center

Garanti Gallery (GG) was a cultural institution based in Istanbul, Turkey, specializing in design, architecture, and urbanism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garanti_Gallery

Founded in March 1997 by the Ottoman Bank in collaboration with the History Foundation (Turkish: Tarih Vakfi), the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre (OBARC) operated in the former Head Office of the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul, Turkey from 1999 to 2010 till SALT’s foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Bank_Archives_and_Research_Centre

Vasıf Kortun is a curator, teacher, and writer. He was the guest of Ahali’s sixth episode: https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-6-vasif-kortun

Arte Útil seeks to collect case studies to show how initiatives focusing on social practice are not isolated incidents, but part of a larger historical trajectory. https://www.arte-util.org/about/colophon/

Alastair Hudson is the co-director of the Asociación de Arte Útil with Tania Bruguera. https://www.internationaleonline.org/people/alistair_hudson/

Aslıhan Demirtaş is an architect. https://aslihan-demirtas.com/about

Han Tümertekin is an architect http://www.mimarlar.com/en-US/Architect/han-tumertekin/1

Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948–1980 is an exhibition that has taken place at MoMa in 2018. https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3931?locale=en

Thomas Krens is the former director and Senior Advisor for International Affairs of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in New York City. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Krens

We are hosting curator Lucia Pietrouisti; and hearing her take on inhabiting institutions and much much wider ecosystems.

Lucia was in charge of public programming at the Serpentine Gallery in London when she launched the General Ecology program. This was not only a program of content as usual, but rather included an in-depth look into the institution’s ecological footprint and thus came with a range of challenging questions around environmental responsibilities.

We discuss with Lucia the intricacies of maneuvering such realms with severe conventions and bureaucracies. An example she gives is the military in Venice, where they installed the infamous art opera sun & sea (Marina) for the 2019 Venice Biennale. 

Episode Notes & Links:

Lucia Pietrouisti often devises ways to intersect her research field with art and systems. https://luciapietroiusti.earth/about-me

Curated by Lucia, “Sun and Sea (Marina)” is an opera-performance by Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, and Lina Lapelytė. Commissioned by the Lithuanian Pavilion, it was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation during the 58th Venice Biennale. https://www.sunandsea.lt/en/Venice-Biennale

General Ecology Program is the Serpentine’s long-term and ongoing project researching complexity, more-than-humanism, climate justice, and environmental balance. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/general-ecology

Curated by Lucia alongside Filipa Ramos, “The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish” is a series of gatherings to bring together a wide range of thinkers and practitioners from various disciplinary ambits across art, literature, environment, science, and technology. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/shape-circle-mind-fish/

Filipa Ramos is a curator, writer, and teacher. She is also an intrepid explorer that considers diving as a cinematic experiment and moving-image-based technologies as gateways to oceans. 

Make sure to listen to the Ahali Episode featuring Filipa: https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-12-filiparamos

Fire management is the process of planning, preventing, and fighting fires to protect people, property, and forest resources. It also involves fire to attain forestry, wildlife, and land-use objectives. https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/fire-management

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. They provide scientific assessments on climate change, its implications, and potential future risks, as well as put forward adaptation and mitigation options. https://www.ipcc.ch

Lina Lapelytė is is an artist, composer, musician, and performer currently exploring the phenomena of song to examines the issues of displacement, otherness, and beauty. http://www.linalapelyte.com

The Venetian Arsenal is a complex of former shipyards and armories clustered together in the city of Venice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetian_Arsenal

“Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe” are two short films written by Charles and Ray Eames. It depicts the relative scale of the Universe according to an order of magnitude based on a factor of ten, first expanding out from the Earth until the entire universe is surveyed, then reducing inward until a single atom and its quarks are observed.https://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/powers-of-ten/

Ecocide is mass damage and destruction of ecosystems – severe harm to nature that is widespread or long-term. https://www.stopecocide.earth/what-is-ecocide

The Dakota Access Pipeline or Bakken pipeline is a 1,172-mile-long underground oil pipeline in the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline

“Sensing the Planet” is the launch event of Black Atlantic. It will highlight issues of race and environmental harm while enforcing the role of interdisciplinary artists in imagining new futures built on principles of sustainability and justice. https://www.dartington.org/event/sensing-the-planet/

Black Atlantic is a new decolonial arts partnership, co-established by UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre, Serpentine Galleries, Royal Court Theatre, and Dartington Trust, that aims to strengthen the role of arts and culture in advancing social and climate justice.

https://www.dartington.org/whats-on/info/black-atlantic/

Ben Vickers is a curator, writer, explorer, publisher, technologist, and luddite. He is CTO at the Serpentine Galleries in London, co-founder of Ignota Books, and an initiator of the open-source monastic order unMonastery. https://benvickers.net

The Delphic Oracle known as the Pythia was the high priestess of the temple of Apollo and she was the most authoritative oracle among male-dominated Ancient Greece and the most powerful woman of the classical world. https://podcasts.apple.com/tr/podcast/pythian-school-of-futures/id1541454333?i=1000503897028

Judith Butler’s “Excitable Speech” provides an intelligent analysis of hate speech to propose a speech act theory of verbal injury that is not dependent on the grammar of accountability. https://books.google.com.tr/books/about/Excitable_Speech.html?id=I7D_AC_aKEMC&redir_esc=y

Realized in 2016, “Devaluing Property Real Estate Agency” is an Installation-Performance by Cooking Sections that scrutinizes the peculiar history of Japanese Knotweed (Fallopia japonica) in Britain. http://www.cooking-sections.com/Devaluing-Property-Real-Estate-Agency

Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology.http://www.richardpowers.net

Episode recorded on Zoom on August 11th, 2021. 

Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.

Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, is a curator best known as the artistic director of SAVVY—The Laboratory of Form-Ideas, a self-organized art institution located in Berlin. He has recently been appointed as the new director at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) in Berlin. 

We hear from Bonaventure on the importance of positioning oneself, within collaboration but always in response and with response-ability. He is someone who didn’t wait for legitimization and instead went ahead to create a space, and let things emerge from that space and from the people who end up hanging out there.  

Episode Notes & Links

This episode was recorded during the Mediterranean wildfires that have taken place in Greece, Turkey, Italy, Algeria and Tunisia.

SAVVY, the laboratory of form and ideas is a public cultural institution located in Berlin. https://savvy-contemporary.com

To go further deep into Bonaventure’s thinking, check out this talk organized by the After the Archive? Initiative. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6SbXJlNDSJjYQPN5tWjM93?si=F0kjcbEERPOIJTQdSmVPqQ&dl_branch=1

To get a better sense of his story of becoming, check out this conversation for the NKATA podcast. He also touches on the impact of the life, work and untimely deaths of two giants of contemporary art: Bisi Silva and Okwui Enwezor. https://nkatapodcast.com/2019/04/05/nkata-with-bonaventure-soh-bejeng-ndikung/

At documenta 14 in Athens and in Kassel, the slogan “Wir (alle) sind das Volk” [We (all) are the people] was displayed on banners and posters in German and Greek and the languages understood by most foreign Documenta visitors, as well as the languages of the migrants and refugees who are exposed to xenophobic aggression in Europe. Among the languages are Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish, Farsi (as spoken in Afghanistan), and the language of refugees from Eritrea.

https://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/13591/hans-haacke

Curated by Bonaventure, the 13th edition of the Bamako Encounters - African Biennale of Photography will be on view in Bamako, Mali from November 20, 2021–January 20, 2022.

In his essay titled “The Globalized Museum? Decanonization as Method: A Reflection in Three Acts”, Bonaventure proposes to utilize decanonization as method for “what might be a global museum of self-reflexivity, whereby the idea will not be to create new or parallel canons, or place them side by side, or universalize the Western canon, but to decanonize the entire notion of the canon.” https://www.moussemagazine.it/magazine/the-globalized-museum-bonaventure-soh-bejeng-ndikung-documenta-14-2017/

Thomas Mann was a writer known for his highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas which are noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mann

Henry Louis Gates is a literary critic, teacher, historian and filmmaker that conceptualized Signifyin', a critical approach to context-bound significance of words, which is accessible only to those who share the cultural values of a given speech community. The expression comes from stories about the Signifying Monkey, a trickster figure said to have originated during slavery in the United. States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates_Jr.

Theaster Gates is a Chicago based artist whose work sources from social practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theaster_Gates

The Nettelbeckplatz is a square in the Berlin district of Wedding. https://second.wiki/wiki/nettelbeckplatz

An originally well known Armenian/Greek Christian neighborhood called Tatavla, Kurtuluş is a district of Istanbul. Meaning "liberation", "salvation", "independence" or "deliverance" in Turkish, Kurtuluş’s non muslim population of the neighborhood is greatly diminished. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurtuluş

Sonsbeek is an international exhibition in Arnhem, Netherlands which largely focuses on public works of contemporary art. https://www.sonsbeek20-24.org

“Chercher midi à quatorze heures" is a quirky way of telling someone that it is making an issue more difficult than it needs to be—turning something simple into something complicated in French.

Director Jef Cornelis made an in-situ documentary about the Sonsbeek that had taken place in 1971 titled “Sonsbeek: buiten de perken” for the Belgian TV Channel VRT. His body of work is influential to imagine what television can be and how it can be used to document and represent art. https://vimeo.com/433640306

Known as the founder of the art movement fluxus, Joseph Beuys was an influential teacher and artist who was influential in the latter half of the 20th century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Beuys

A champion of Africa's oral tradition and traditional knowledge, Amadou Hampâté Bâ was a writer, historian and ethnologist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadou_Hampâté_Bâ

Curatorial Statement of Bamako Biennial quotes Amadou Hampâté Bâ’s statement (Aspects de la civilisation africaine, Éditions Présence Africaine, 1972) presiding over the manifestation, Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono, translates to, “the persons of the person are multiple in the person.”

https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/361013/rencontres-de-bamako-african-biennale-of-photographymaa-ka-maaya-ka-ca-a-yere-kono/

Sun Ra, was a jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific output, and theatrical performances. For much of his career, Ra led "The Arkestra," an ensemble with an ever-changing name and flexible line-up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Ra

Thelonious Monk was a seminal jazz pianist and composer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk

Stephen Wright is a writer and gardener based in France.  He was the first guest of the previous season of Ahali. Listen at https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-1-stephen-wright

Assembled by the king of 6/8, the living legend Brice Wassy

Kelin-Kelin Orchestra is a big band that consists of twelve musicians. 

Called the "queen of Taarab and Unyago music, Fatima binti Baraka also known as Bi Kidude, was a Zanzibari-born Tanzanian Taarab singer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi_Kidude 

Influenced by the musical traditions of the African Great Lakes, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Taarab is a music genre popular in Tanzania and Kenya.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taarab

Natasha Ginwala is a curator working in​​ the field of contemporary art.

Ayesha Hameed is a lecturer, writer and practitioner who produces videos, audio essays and performance lectures.

Matana Roberts is a sound experimentalist, visual artist, jazz saxophonist, clarinetist and composer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matana_Roberts

Formed in 1979 by Pierre-Edouard Décimus and Jacob Desvarieux, Kassav’ is a Zouk band that makes Guadeloupean carnival music recording it in a more fully orchestrated yet modern and polished style. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassav%27

Jacob Desvarieux was a singer, arranger, and music producer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Desvarieux

Jocelyne Béroard is a singer and songwriter. She is one of the lead singers of the Kassav'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyne_Béroard

Zouk is a musical movement pioneered by the French Antillean band Kassav' in the early 1980s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouk

Négritude (from French "Nègre" and "-itude" to denote a condition that can be translated as "Blackness") is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating "Black consciousness" across Africa and its diaspora. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Négritude

One of the founders of the Négritude movement, Aimé Césaire was a Martinican poet, author, and politician. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimé_Césaire

Served as the first president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980, Léopold Sédar Senghor was a poet, politician and cultural theorist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Léopold_Sédar_Senghor 

Episode recorded on Zoom on August 4th, 2021. 

Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.

Jerszy Seymour is a designer who first made a name for his industrial products. His practice soon turned into a much more experimental one that combines materiality, relationships, and setting up situations.

While his work is included in numerous museum collections from MoMA to Centre Pompidou; he continues to make large-scale projects or storylines that follow an ethos of imagined societies towards designing the new world. He has also ventured into creating educational situations. He founded and is still directing The Dirty Art Department, a master’s program focusing on applied arts and design at the Sandberg Institute.

EPISODE NOTES & LINKS

Magis is an Italian furniture and design company. They collaborated with Jerszy on several products such as the Flux chair and Bureaurama office furniture series: https://www.magisdesign.com/designer/jerszy-seymour/
The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. Their ideas were influential in instigating the protests that occurred in the summer of 1968 in France. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International
Macao is a new self-organized center for arts in Milan that was founded during a national uprising that has led to the occupation of many public spaces for a more accessible culture through a radical process of reclaiming centers for the township in 2012. https://www.macaomilano.org/spip.php?article166
In 2004 Jerszy embarked upon a series of experimental projects seeking to revitalize the position of design within society. One notable ongoing exploration centers on an imagined society of amateurs and has been realized in evolving iterations beginning in 2008 with the exhibition “The First Supper” at the MAK, Vienna. https://www.viennadesignweek.at/en/archive/2008/mak-design-nite-first-supper/
The "Living Systems" installation was the outcome of a series of experiments with organic plastics developed by Jerszy which was displayed at the Vitra Design Museum. http://collectiononline.design-museum.de/#/en/object/44305?_k=yef2ui
Walden first published in 1854 is a book by Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is a part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, a voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and—to some degree—a manual for self-reliance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden
The Amateur Workshop is an exhibition that facilitates the experimental play associated with the dirtying, hands-on experience of the playground. https://jerszyseymourdesignworkshop.com/project/amateur-diagram/https:// https://criticalissuesintheculturalindustries2.wordpress.com/studio-2/ode-to-the-amateur/
The German word Gesamtkunstwerk literally means "total artwork", which refers to a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesamtkunstwerk
Part of the Sandberg Institute, Dirty Art Department is an alternative pedagogical modem that sources from design and applied art. Founded by Jerszy, it is described as an open space for all possible thought, creation, and action. http://dirtyartdepartment.com/about/
The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture is a collection of essays and lectures by Georges Bataille on anthropology, comparative religion, aesthetics, and philosophy. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9781890951566/the-cradle-of-humanity 
Martin Kippenberger was a German artist and sculptor known for his extremely prolific output in a wide range of styles and media, as well as his provocative public persona. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Kippenberger
Enzo Mari was an Italian modernist artist and furniture designer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzo_Mari
Erik Olin Wright’s How to BE an Anti-capitalist in the 21st Century is a concise and tightly argued manifesto analyzing the varieties of anti-capitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. https://www.versobooks.com/books/3763-how-to-be-an-anticapitalist-in-the-twenty-first-century
Formed in 2014 as a reaction to the increasing financialization of Higher Education in the UK, School of the Damned (SotD) is an arts and educational platform. Re-forming on an annual basis, each cohort has the opportunity to define the agenda and produce work and events individually and collectively. https://schoolofthedamned.wixsite.com/sotd2019/about
Coined by Thomas More, utopia is an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia 

Powered by Macao Milano, Common Coin is a social local currency integrated with a basic income based on social cooperation. https://www.macaomilano.org/IMG/pdf/3_-_commoncoin_basic_income.pdf?1498/0c7e90052d75f199cb712e014f1f8100f3113c3e
The Wandering School is a project by the Dirty Art Department in collaboration with Macao which occurred as a series of events, interacting with the community of Macao and the local and international public for the Design Week and MiArt http://wanderingschool.com
Lucky Larry’s Cosmic Commune proposed a place for people to stay during the Saint Etienne Design Biennale in 2017. Described as a utopian non utopia by Seymour, the experiment aimed to create a space for the public to nap comfortably or take part in the cooking, cleaning, gardening, and distributing propaganda material for the concept. https://www.biennale-design.com/saint-etienne/2017/en/programme/?ev=lucky-larry-s-cosmic-commune-30 https://jerszyseymourdesignworkshop.com/project/lucky-larrys-cosmic-commune-2017/#0
Life on Planet Orsimanirana is a futuristic, immersive DIY radio “pumping funk of molecular consciousness” https://www.radio-orsimanirana.com
RiMaflow is a recovered factory that is run by its workers. Located in Milan, it aims to match the solidarity economy with productive activities and social fabric https://commonfare.net/nl/stories/ri-maflow-recovered-factory?story_locale=en
The Mondragon Corporation is a corporation and federation of worker cooperatives based in the Basque region of Spain. https://www.mondragon-corporation.com/en/about-us/
The Mietshäuser Syndikat provides advice and support to self-organized house projects so that they can be taken off the real estate market. https://www.syndikat.org/en/
Written by Guy Debord in 1967, Society of the Spectacle is a critique of capital, cultural imperialism, and the role of mediation in social relationships. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle
Xenofeminism is a call to action written by Laboria Cuboniks in the form of a manifesto that aims to situate feminism within the purview of techno-politics and deploy it as an emancipatory affordance towards building a new world in the 21st century. www.laboriacuboniks.net
Mary Maggic is an artist whose work spans amateur science, public workshopology, performance, installation, documentary film, and speculative fiction. https://maggic.ooo/About-Maggic
Inventing the Future is a book by Nick Srncek and Alex Williams in which a post-capitalist economy capable of advancing standards, liberating humanity from work, and developing technologies that expand our freedoms is expounded.
In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone.https://www.versobooks.com/books/3156-fully-automated-luxury-communism
Emma Goldman was an anarchist political activist and writer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman
Written in 1890, News from Nowhere is a classic work combining utopian socialism and soft science fiction written by the artist, designer, and socialist pioneer William Morris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_from_Nowhe

Episode recorded on Zoom on April 20th, 2021. 

Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.

Kathrin Böhm is an artist whose practice focuses on the collective re-production of public space; on economy as a public realm; and the everyday as a starting point for culture. Since the mid-nineties, Kathrin has expanded the terms of socially engaged practice by co-producing complex organisational, spatial, visual, and economic forms.

Many of Kathrin’s works stem from long-lasting collaborations. She is a founding member of the international artist group Myvillages, since 2003; the art and architecture collective Public Works, 1999 – 2012; the Centre for Plausible Economies, since 2018. In 2014 Kathrin founded the arts enterprise called Company Drinks. And today we’ll hear from her how working on a 1 to 1 scale matters, for engaging within the public realm. She also walks us through the dimensions of use, how different people and entities “use” such projects in myriad ways.

EPISODE NOTES & LINKS

Kathrin’s recent exhibition is titled “Compost” to refer to the way in which she composts existing works. The exhibition features architectural structures, tape towers, haystacks, a drinks company, posters, books, a pantry, trade shows, pots with noses alongside a live program of talks, workshops, and 1:1 drop-ins will be held at The Showroom and online. https://www.theshowroom.org/exhibitions/kathrin-bohm-compost

Company Drinks is a community space and social enterprise based in Barking and Dagenham. Their high-quality, artisanal juices and beverages are produced from the crops they collect, glean, forage, or simply go picking in surrounding parks, fields, and farms. https://companydrinks.info/drink/

The Center for Plausible Economies was initiated by Kathrin Böhm and Kuba Szreder to bring together artistic action and critical thinking to reclaim the economy. 

J.K Gibson-Graham is the pen-name of Katherine Gibson and the late Julie Graham. As feminist political economists and economic geographers, they have extensively written about diverse economies, urbanism, alternative communities and regional economic development. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Gibson-Graham

Founded on the groundbreaking work of J.K. Gibson-Graham in publications such as The End of Capitalism (as we knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, A Postcapitalist Politics, and Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming our Communities, the Community Economies Institute (CEI) fosters thought and practice to help communities survive well together. http://www.communityeconomies.org/about/community-economies-institute

Learn to Act is a user-friendly manual explaining and demonstrating international communal and intergenerational learning and socio-economic capacity-building programs with the aim to stimulate and facilitate their replication by others.

https://halfletterpress.com/learn-to-act-introducing-the-eco-nomadic-school/

Stephen Wright is a writer and gardener based in France.  He was the first guest of the previous season of Ahali. Listen at https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-1-stephen-wright

“Towards a lexicon of usership" focuses on the politics of usership, as well as other modes of cultural production that do not necessitate artworks, authorship, or spectatorship. You can download a free copy of the lexicon from Arte Utils’ website. 

An alternative to more familiar identifiers (such as .ltd or Inc.), the Interdependence (idt.) stands for a multi-local alliance between community economies initiatives. https://www.communityeconomies.org/news/launch-interdependence-and-idt

Founded by Doina Petrescu and Constantin Petcou, atelier d’architecture autogérée / studio for self-managed architecture (aaa) is a collective platform that conducts explorations, actions, and research concerning urban mutations and cultural, social, and political emerging practices in the contemporary city.

Myvillages was founded by artists Kathrin Böhm, Wapke Feenstra and Antje Schiffers to advocate for a new understanding of the rural as a place of and for cultural production. They initiate and organise projects which range from work in private spaces to museum exhibitions, from personal questions to multidisciplinary research and publications, from foraging to building permanent infrastructures.

The Rural is part of the Whitechapel: Documents of Contemporary Art series, It was edited by Myvillages in 2019. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/rural

Bringing issues about agricultural land use, local traditions, and collective efforts into discussion, Haystacks is a series of talks and meetings about rural links, places, and practices initiated by Katrin Höhm/Myvillages. https://www.andmillionsandmillions.net/haystacks/

Episode recorded on Zoom on February 16th 2021. 

Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.

Filipa Ramos is a writer, curator, and educator, who has been working on the relationships between contemporary art and cinema, and the way environmental and ecological matters of concern are tackled or manifested in and through art.

She is one of the founding curators of Vdrome, a self-proclaimed online cinema. She is also the Curator of Art Basel Film. and a Lecturer in the MRes Art: Moving Image of Central Saint Martins, London and the Master’s Program of the Arts Institute in Basel. She is co-curating the symposia series, or the “interdisciplinary festival” The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Lucia Pietroiusti for the Serpentine Galleries, London. Ramos is currently the Head of Research and Publications for the 13th Shanghai Biennale.

Filipa's writing and research on art, film, and nature have been published in magazines and catalogs worldwide. She authored "Lost and Found" (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2009) https://en.silvanaeditoriale.it/libro/9788836613397 and edited "Animals" (London: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2016). https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/documents-contemporary-art-animals/

She curated "Animalesque", a group exhibition on becoming other at the Bildmuseet Umeå (Summer 2019) http://www.bildmuseet.umu.se/en/exhibition/animalisk/35302

Filipa is also the curator of Art Basel's film sector. https://www.artbasel.com/stories/online-viewing-rooms-filipa-ramos

V-drome is a perennial online program that presents films by visual artists and filmmakers. http://www.vdrome.org

Lucia Pietrouisti is the head of the general ecology department of the Serpentine Galleries where she also curated the interdisciplinary festival titled "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish" along with Filipa. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/general-ecology/

The 13th Shanghai Biennale aims to advocate for processes of planetary re-alliance relying on transspecies collectivity. https://www.powerstationofart.com/whats-on/programs/shanghai-bienniale/home

Beatriz Colomina is an architecture historian, theorist, and curator. Her text titled “Diary of a Disease” is published online as part of the "Sick Architecture",  https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/sick-architecture/364166/diary-of-a-disease/

Inspired by ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ by Donna Haraway, Milanese Fashion House Gucci’s AW 2018 collection titled "Paradoxical Creatures" was designed by Alessandro Michele. https://www.gucci.com/uk/en_gb/st/stories/runway/article/fall-winter-2018-details

Hannah Marriott’s detailed account of the story features how other houses such as Prada and D&G were embracing similar concepts for the 2018 fashion week. https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/feb/27/miquela-cyborg-handbag-drones-milan-fashion-week-weird-vision-future

Director Gus Van Sant and Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele's film "At Home" features a television lecture performed by writer and philosopher Paul B Preciado. https://www.gucci.com/tr/en_gb/st/stories/article/guccifest-episode-1

Published in 1998, “The Power of Display: a history of exhibition installations at the Museum of Modern Art" is a seminal study of installation design as an aesthetic medium and cultural practice by Mary Anne Staniszewski.

"Plant Sex" is a mind-boggling public program that took place at the Serpentine galleries. Co-curated as a prelude to "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Plants" by Filipa, it sought to reflect on the long and deep relationship between botany and eroticism. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/plantsex/

Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus

Acclaimed curator Chus Martinez was our guest at the previous episode. Make sure to dive into her ocean-like mind to make discoveries about nature, the ocean, and the sciences' potential relations with art through her dazzling array of thoughts. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-10-chusmartinez

Octavia Butler was a groundbreaking afro-futurist science-fiction writer. Her short essay, “The Lost Races of Science Fiction" tackled the issue of racial presentation within the field of science fiction was first published in Transmission Magazine's summer issue in 1980. https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/d3ekbm/octavia-butler

"Sex, Botany, and Empire" explores the entwined destinies of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks’ influence served both science and imperialism by Patricia Fara. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/sex-botany-and-empire/9780231134262

“The Company One Keeps: Laptops, Lap Dances, Lapdogs” was published at e-flux journal #93 in 2018 https://www.e-flux.com/journal/93/215746/the-company-one-keeps-laptops-lap-dances-lapdogs/

Episode recorded on Zoom on December 7th, 2020. Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.