Artistic Research]]> Banu Cennetoglu]]> Middle East]]> Europe]]> Public Art]]> Architecture]]> Urbanism]]> Antonia Carver]]> Middle East]]> Europe]]> Spaces of the Curatorial]]> Fiction]]> Performance]]> Silke Schmickl]]> Southeast Asia]]> Asia]]> Middle East]]> Africa]]> Architecture]]>
Research Focus

Azra Akšamija’s projects explore the potency of art and architecture to facilitate the process of transformative conflict mediation though cultural pedagogy, and in so doing, provide a framework for analysing and intervening in contested socio-political realities. Her recent work focuses on the representation of Islam in the West, architectural forms of nationalism in the Balkans since the 1990s, and the role of cultural institutions and heritage in constructing common good in divided societies. Akšamija investigates the role of cultural and religious identity in conflicts, especially in the recent history of the Yugoslavian war and its aftermath.
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Azra Akšamija]]> Azra Aksamija]]> Middle East]]> Europe]]>
Knowledge Production]]> Technology]]> Orit Gat]]> Middle East]]> Europe]]> Migration]]> Pelin Tan]]> Europe]]> Middle East]]> Cultural Production]]>
6 Apr 2014, Sun 2:00pm - 3:30pm

The tear down
refers to that period of change after the exhibition has finished – the moment of de-installation and erasure. Thinking through the exhibition as an architectural ruin where residue remains and resonance cannot evaporate, the artworks in this selection try to make sense of traces in an on-going reflection on the old and the new.

With works by Cyprien Gaillard, Mona Vatamany & Florin Tudor, Malak Helmy, Deigo Tonus, Marie Shannon

Cyprien Gaillard, Desniansky Raion (2007) is a three-part meditation on the failed utopias of the past and present with reference to the Eastern Bloc. The first section of the video navigates from a monumental triumphal arch in Belgrade, Serbia to a battle between two hooligan gangs in the suburbs of Saint Petersburg. The second part captures the façade of a high-rise block in Paris with lights projected on.

This grandiose staging, usually saved for historical buildings, ends abruptly with the building collapsing. The last section wanders through Desniansky Raion, a district in the suburbs of Kiev where the circular arrangement of communist blocks recalls the megalithic monument of Stonehenge, England. Desniansky Raion unwinds to an electro-lyrical composition by artist and musician Koudlam.

In the filmed performance of Vacaresti (2006) by Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor, “Florin Tudor traces, with string and small wooden sticks, the outline of the church from the Vacaresti Monastery in Bucharest, Romania demolished by the communist regime in 1986. Retracing the shape of the lost building functions as symbolic recuperation and gains resonance in relation to current plans to build a commercial mall on the same site, situating the work between an unclear ‘then’ and a problematic ‘now’, pointing at loss and at the entropy that architecture ‘constructs’ while it seeks to embody power, be it political or economic.” (Mihnea Mircan)

Malak Helmy, Keyword searches for dust (2009) is a narrative of dust in its mutable forms investigates and it, itself, gets caught in a symptom. A condition. A form sheds its properties and characteristics, becoming contagious: an avalanche razes a populated residential plateau; spontaneous combustions erupt in both a people’s assembly archive and a national theatre, in the countryside a home-bound train catches fire.

Diego Tonus, Hour of the wolf (2010) is a film disclosing the backstage of The Collectors, a project curated by Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset for the Danish and Nordic Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale of Art, 2009. The video shows the exhibition’s dismantling and demolition, the fictional dimension of the set design as well as the collapse of illusion between the staged objects, suggesting a different vision of them.

Marie Shannon, What I am looking at (2011), takes its title from Julian Dashper’s work, What I am reading at the moment (1993)- a library chair with a pile of every issue of Art Forum to 1993. The video uses rolling text with simultaneous voiceover to describe the contents of an artist’s studio and the work that needs to be done to make sense and create order once the artist is no longer there. The text describes categories and lists of objects: the precious, the mundane and the baffling.


A public programme of The Disappearance.

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Anca Rujoiu]]> Vera Mey]]> Europe]]> Middle East]]> Oceania]]>
Transcultural Suits: A lecture presented by Visiting Researcher and artist Azra Akšamija at the International Forum on Contemporary Islamic Art, Design and Architecture (CIADA): Where/How does the North meet the East?

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Architecture]]> Identity]]> 8 Oct 2015, Thu 11:50am - 12:30pm
Auditorium (Level 2), School of Art, Design & Media, Nanyang Technological University, 81 Nanyang Drive

Over the past two decades, the field of Islamic art and architecture has been affected by the political developments and cultural destruction in the Islamic World, the rise of the new art world in the Gulf region, and finally, an increased recognition of interdisciplinary and transcultural approaches in the broader fields of art and architecture. Azra Akšamija who has a background in both fields will address how these factors pose new challenges and opportunities regarding the continuous use of the label “Islamic” dedicated to the study of very diverse aspects of art and architecture of highly heterogeneous and hybrid world cultures. She will outline an alternative perspective in her own work, which she calls “Transcultural Practice”, addressing the pressing concerns over the global societal polarisation around Islamic identity.

More information on the conference here: www.ciada2015.com]]>
Azra Akšamija]]> Azra Aksamija]]> Middle East]]>
Exhibition (de)Tour: Townhall or Marketplace, Can Art Find a Public Space on the Internet? Can It Create One? by Orit Gat, Writer-in-Residence, NTU CCA Singapore

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Technology]]> Public Sphere]]> 16 Nov 2016, Wed 07:30 PM - 09:00 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

In 1995, eight per cent of all websites on the internet belonged to artists. Today, as the internet has grown to be the commercial structure we know, what is the room artists carve online? This talk will look at a number of specific artworks, which conflate the urban and digital space as well as on the hidden aspects of the internet’s infrastructure. In light of internet changes since 1995, Orit Gat will examine possibilities art opens up to make the internet a genuine public space of the commons.

This Exhibition (de)Tour is a public programme of Incomplete Urbanism: Attempts of Critical Spatial Practice.

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Orit Gat]]> Asia]]> Europe]]> Africa]]> North America]]> Middle East]]>
The Making of an Institution — Communication and Mediation, Part II –SPATIAL IDENTITY: Lectures by Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad (Iran/United Kingdom), Wilfried Kuehn (Germany), and Laura Miotto (Italy/Singapore)

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Design]]> Curatorial Practice]]> Identity]]> Public Sphere]]> 18 Mar 2017, Sat 10:00 AM - 01:30 PM
The Single Screen, Block 43 Malan Road

Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad’s practice spans from neighbourhood plans and public spaces to recipes, games and objects. His approach to design draws on play theories and strategies of defamiliarisation as contextual research tools that actively engage different publics in design processes.

His presentation will focus on Hello Stranger (2016), a critical game designed with and for staff members at the Victoria & Albert’s Museum of Childhood, London, United Kingdom. Estrangement devices were created to induce “question-making” as a tool to recalibrate the overfamiliar and sense the museum anew in order to critically reflect upon the experiences it offers and the qualities it values.

In this lecture, Wilfried Kuehn will address the concept of “Curatorial Design”, an expression coined by the Kuehn himself. He will explore the role of space and architecture in artistic and curatorial practices through several case studies of exhibition displays and institutional projects he developed, including the exhibition design for Documenta11.

Laura Miotto will address site-specific spatial narratives focusing on her work for the Malay Heritage Centre in Singapore. Located in the historical precinct of Kampong Glam and re-opened to the public in 2012, the Centre undergone three years of interpretative planning that repositioned the institution in the cultural ecosystem of Singapore. Miotto will unpack site-specific strategies to regenerate connections with the many identities associated to this significant place, looking at the intersection between architecture, site, and narratives.

This lecture is part of the public programme of The Making of an Institution.]]>
Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad]]> Wilfried Kuehn]]> Laura Miotto]]> Southeast Asia]]> Middle East]]> Europe]]>