The World Social Forum 2011 took place in Senegal February 6th to 11th. Its slogan “Another world is possible” proved especially resonant as anti-government protests shook Egypt during that time. Developed since the first forum in Porto Alegre 2001, the 11th forum in Senegal’s capital Dakar brought together civil society groups from around the world to coordinate world campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies, increase offensive capacity, develop in depth understanding of current struggles by informing each other about social movements from around the world and their issues, and finally develop peer-to-peer alternatives to current models of capitalism.

Photo © Abdullah Vawda/IPS TerraViva

World Social Forum is inherently open, egalitarian, self-organized, and thrives on free speech; as opposed to the secretive, exclusive club World Economic Forum held in Davos the week before. World Social Forum 2011 had 75,000 participants from 132 countries organizing around 1,200 activities. From the small west African grassroots farmers’ associations to the large European NGOs, unions, movements, organizations, intellectuals and artists, together we built a great alliance in Dakar, different from the dominant logic wherein the free-market and money are considered the only measure of worth in Davos.

On the opening day of the forum, caravans of participants rolled into Dakar, bringing groups from from Mali, Togo, Benin, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Dakar to mark the opening of the forum. Activists from Senegal were joined by people from across the world with a mass of multilingual posters and slogans in French, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, English and others.

Over the five days, participants choose from simultaneous plenaries and over hundred workshops. Based in and around the campus of Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), forum discussions and events hosted in auditoriums, classrooms as well as in tents and around ad-hoc gatherings. It was an “open space” for discussion, convergence and alliance-building. There was no formal process for creating and announcing an event, some did posters, some used SMS, emails, and online services. In fact, word of mouth was the best medium for announcements. Although anyone could find a room or tent and propose a meeting, programmed talks and press conferences were held continually; it was impossible to know of all the events which happened. There were also films, art projects, concerts, and dancing.

Translation of documents and signage were limited (mostly French) due to local resources and organizational capacity of the university. For many, it took a day or so to figure out navigation and reading programs. On the other hand, we enjoyed the random serendipity and chance happenings, that I met my great inspiration author and social activist Naomi Klein in of those tents.

Ubiquitous Internet access is a must for such big self-organized meetings. If we had more wi-fi spots in the UCAD campus, event the most random gathering would have better participation.

In the second day, former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade gave a talk at a parallel conference, at the Place du Souvenir, 7 February. Lula, was the centre of attention, he told that “Global Finacial crisis proves that capitalism is broken.” and added “To the G20, it seems as if there is no problem, and we never talk about unemployment.”

Taxation of financial transactions is one of the main topics, mostly led by the French association ATTAC. France’s Socialist party leader Martine Aubry was a speaker with former Senegalese minister Mamadou Faye at the launch of the campaign to end financial secrecy in tax havens by multinationals, which civil society groups say deprive developing countries of billions in revenue. The launch of ‘End tax haven secrecy’, by civil society organizations from three continents: Christian Aid, CCFD-Terre Solidaire, Latindadd, Oxfam and the African Tax Justice Network. At Oxfam’s Robin Hood event petitions are signed on three long banners to be sent to three ambassadors in Senegal: Germany, France and United Kingdom, urging them to make sure their country will adopt taxes on financial transactions and banks as soon as possible.

On the third day, fishermen and participants from the World Social Forum converged on the streets and on the coast by the Frontex office in Dakar, for a demonstration against the EU border agency. They said that “the border patrols off the coast of Senegal are forcing pirogues to turn back on the open sea, which threatens migrants seeking to make the journey to Europe and to local fishermen who take to the coastal waters to earn their living.” In fact, on the east border of Europe, same Frontex issues with Turkey’s Aegean sea border.

Along with the climate, water, and food crisis, the loot of multinational extractivists in Africa was another big focus in the forum. Multinational corporations make deals behind the scenes with the corrupt governments all over in Africa and get exclusive rights on the extraction of natural resources, which in fact belong to the people, not the government. Those mining and metal companies also get the cheapest electricity in the world, while civilians struggle with constant electricity cuts. Big resistance to multinational extractivists in south and west Africa, which is similar to what’s happening in Turkey, the most recent Vermeyoz movement against the privatization of natural resources.

While the chain of revolutions in Magreb were being discussed in one of the forums, Turkey mentioned as the Islamic democracy model for the Magreb nations. But quickly, the rising neoliberalism in Turkey came into focus, that it was clearly naive to think Turkey as an ideal model for Magreb while we are discussing counter strategies for neoliberalism.

I met the impressive Tostan group, grassroots educational development organization, in one of the tents in the forum. They empower African communities to bring about sustainable development and positive social transformation based on respect for human rights. Their aim is to increase community engagement in projects related to health and hygiene, child welfare, human rights and democracy. They apply non-formal education techniques to teach technology (e.g., using a mobile phone menu, solar fireplace cooking, solar cellphone charging) and civil rights to people in the rural regions. As one of the results, villagers started doing demonstrations and demanded new rights from the local government.

Open Source Do-it-yourself Washing Machine Design, by Bricolabs

In Africa, free libre open source software (FLOSS) and do-it-yourself technology is not an alternative, it is the norm. Ubuntu, Drupal, Pure Data, Android are some of the projects/systems adopted rapidly by the tech savy youth. No iphones, macbooks, or app stores here, people develop their own tools based on their needs. People learn the most through creative workshops, like artist Karen Dermineur’s ateliers all over in Africa, and through self-realized or community projects. Do-it-yourself washing machine by Bricolabs was one of the most interesting projects presented in the Open Source for Civil Society session. It is obvious that open source ideas and processes are both a need and inspiration for the civic development in Africa.

I met three artists, who were sharing a stand and collaborating in the forum area. Edi’s life time civil trash decomposition practice, Pascal Nampemanla Traoré’s Plastiqueman statue along with great plastic take on the traditional African masks, and Kyd Campbell’s do-it-yourself recycling vertical garden project. Together the experience is a hybrid of civic tools and artistic statements.

Two nights in a row, we ended up at the club Just4You, enjoyed the local bands from Dakar, Wolof hiphop, and Senegalese drum Mbalax. This club was across the street of a Turkish Islamic school called Yavuz Selim. In fact, Turkish Airlines has direct flight to Dakar, no wonder.

I will give a talk today on the two network maps exhibited at Arter’s “Second Exhibition” in Istanbul. “Network of Foundations and Corporations Through Shared Board Members: Turkey Edition” and “Network of Artists Who Exhibited Together: ARTER “Second Exhibition” Edition”.

With this talk, I will open the data of the two network maps to public, searchable and reusable on www.graphcommons.com, and for the first time talk about the new Graph Commons project.

The VIP Art Fair, opening today, will be an experiment in art and capitalism, another step on the virtualization of the art market. Organizers of the online art fair, James Cohan and Co., convinced the established galleries and other art professionals, with a hope to take the entire art fair experience, and put it online.

Lots written so far. Edward Winkleman, Magda Sawon, Paddy Johnson, Telegraph… Not an alien 3D virtual reality thing, simple slide through high res images with a reference to the works’ size and artists bios. Not an e-commerce site, no place to enter your credit card. Buying by contacting the galleries directly. Live chat with gallery reps and see price ranges for each work. Access to new globalized collectors from Middle East to China. Online haggling with a sheik or an oligarchs via chat function. Video art to benefit from the online venue. Galleries to show more of their best material even they are oversized. No shipping, no lighting, no insurance etc. etc.

What’s new compared to a physical art fair experience? Artworks on display at the booth are replaceable, like a rotating banner ad. Dealers can keep track of all their conversations with collectors. Visitors can “favorite” work or share their collections. You can follow the footsteps of a star curator or a museum director.

IM or Skype rights will run you $100 the first two days, $20 after the 2nd day. Since the entry to the fair is via registration, organizers have the most complete list of e-mails anywhere in the art world, as well as the wealth of data (from personal preferences to buying history) at their disposal from their server logs.

All roles fulfilled, all material experience virtualized. Soon all galleries and art fairs will want such a virtualized organ. Virtualization will lead to multiplication elsewhere. Online socialization and virtualized computation will aid the gallery startup in the cloud. Art market will turn into a massively multiplayer online thing. Biennales turn into continuales. Disruption happens, paradigms shift.

After all, this is romantic. I think about Alexei Shulgin’s Form Art Competition. Olia Lialina’s Will-n-Testament. Heath Bunting’s Documenta X. Ubermorgen’s Amazon Noir. Runme. Openstudio. Meta-Markets. Software artists. Hacktivists. We are now in a post-hypertext world.

My selections from Banu Cennetoğlu’s CATALOG form.

“Lapses”. Lapses/*4. The Book Series of Pavilion of Turkey in the 53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennial. Ed. Basak Senova. Trans. Nusin Odelli & Funda Senova, Fourth Vol. IKSV. Istanbul.

Burak Arıkan, November 1st, 2010

Upon meeting her in Venice, I asked Banu Cennetoğlu, “Aren’t you afraid that your photographs could get copied? What if others create other CATALOGs?” Her reply was, “That’s possible, I’m curious about it myself”. The possibility of derivates of an original artwork or other variations was no problem for Cennetoğlu, she was rather embracing such possibilities and using them as part of her work.

I entered the division reserved for Cennetoğlu in the Pavilion of Turkey and sat in front of one of the CATALOGs laid out on the table. Digital copying may not be a problem, but physically carrying them away certainly is, the CATALOGs were attached to the table! I started to leaf through the CATALOG and ticked off the ones I liked on the form in front of me. I would then download these one by one from the website; I might even publish a Banu Cennetoğlu catalog based on my own liking.[1]

CATALOG is a mail order catalog simulation consisting of 451 assembled photographs taken by Cennetoğlu between 1994 and 2009. The photographs from different times and different places have been taken out of their original contexts and put into 15 subjectively formed categories, forming paths with a variety of signs and denotations that record or recount reality in a multipartite manner.

At first, the consecutively sorted full-page photographs seem to be gathered randomly, not leaving any room for the viewer. As our brain is stimulated and carried into memories, the randomness at times starts forming meaningful patterns. In this sense, the CATALOG experience is not so different from the edits of Godard’s counter-cinema movies, or amateur slide shows of holiday photographs. However, the positioning of the work and the way in which it is situated with the form in front of the viewer makes one pause, we make selections on the form and go back to the pages, therefore constantly cutting into the recondite patterns.

People standing by a highway, official meeting rooms vacant of people, photographs about photographs, sociopolitical uncertainties, moments of seemingly ordinary situations laid bare, scenes of non-primetime places and instances, photographs aiming to capture surplus times and places were the photographs I mostly marked on the CATALOG form. The consecutively arranged photos of what occurred after traumatic events in places such as post-war Georgia, Turkey, New York questions whether there exists a relation, a chained significance between these events. In one of our conversations, Cennetoğlu called this sorting “the convening of images documenting the depression of the recorder and images depressing the world on the same plane”.[2]

By allowing parts of the CATALOG to be digitally downloaded from the website, Cennetoğlu opens the work for re-distribution. An artist’s work at a significant exhibition is to be distributed for free, and two months later –when the exhibition closes-, the work is to be withdrawn. It’s not within common norms for an artist to relinquish control over what becomes of downloaded photos, choose not to know who has possession of the photos and to what amount. On the one hand, Cennetoglu’s attitude is against the ecosystem of the traditional art market, where every art biennial is inevitabely a precursor to following art fairs. On the other hand, her critique is an absolute norm compared to our everyday digital habits, where we are so accustomed to digital copying, free distribution of digitized goods, insignificance of originals, and having continuous new versions of products. Such gaps between the “art world” and the “digital world” was best captured when Heath Bunting copied and republished the website of 10th Documenta in 1997.[3]

Cennetoğlu’s approach stands different from artists such as Hans Haacke who, even after 30 years, have kept up the conditions of Seth Siegelaub’s artist contract where there’s a requirement to consult with the artist regarding how an art work is to be shown even after its sales.[4] It is not an attitude of state supervised economy model like in Siegelaub’s contract, nor is it a complete free market economy or an anti-capital stand; Cennetoğlu’s effort is to render the relationship between her art and capital indifferent.

The stand taken by temporarily allowing the free distribution of the CATALOG -as if to mockingly say “don’t miss this opportunity”- turns into, not an anti-capital, but out-of-capital act. A restricted experiment on royalty, ownership, versions, uncontrollability. A reach to an indifferent moment, where Cennetoğlu completes an era of her thought.

[1] My computer was stolen in September 2009, so I lost all downloaded photographs from the CATALOG website. Later, the website was shut down.

[2] Düğümküme Meetings 4: Versions of Reality. May 18, 2010. Istanbul. http://dugumkume.org/dk04

[3] Organizers of Documenta X announced that they will close the website after the event. As a reaction, Heath Bunting copied the website and republished it on this address: http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/dx/english/frm_home.htm

[4] The artist’s contract written by Seth Siegelaub in 1971. http://geheimrat.com/thecontract.html

TENSION SERIES No 4, 2010 (click on the image to enlarge)

CHANCE Conference
18th of December 2010, Aix-en-Provence, France

“The network does not exist, it has to be created” *

The network inherently does not exist, one has to capture this complex event. What happens after you capture it? Network itself turns into a commodity? A power tool? A creative medium that is different than representation? I will discuss such questions in relation to my recent work: Meta-Markets (2007), MyPocket (2008), and recent network mapping projects (2008-2010).

* Quote from Jussi Parikka in “Summary from some Networkpolitics 2010-conference themes“. March 2010.

Second Exhibition
28 November 2010-27 February 2011

ARTER – sanat için alan | space for art
İstiklal Caddesi 211, Beyoğlu
Istanbul, Turkey

Curator: Emre Baykal
Artists: .-_-., Halil Altındere, Burak Arıkan, Volkan Aslan, Vahap Avşar, Banu Cennetoğlu – Yasemin Özcan Kaya, Ayşe Erkmen, Hafriyat (Murat Akagündüz, Antonio Cosentino, extramücadele, İnci Furni, Mustafa Pancar), Ali Kazma, Aydan Murtezaoğlu – Bülent Şangar, Ahmet Öğüt, İz Öztat, Cengiz Tekin, Canan Tolon

Two day workshop focusing on the design and understanding of complex networks through mapping and visual analysis. Starting from simple exercises participants gradually build complex compositions. Emphasis on network topology in the city, urban dynamics, and information design. Participants learn the most through observing, sketching, and participating in the discussions.

PART I: Graph Theory and Basic Network Properties
Nov 6th, Saturday
13:30-17:30

PART II: Centralization & Clustering
Nov 7th, Sunday
13:30-17:30

For more info please see the previous Network Mapping and Analysis Workshops.

Please apply with a short intend note to atolye@amberplatform.org
Deadline October 4th, 2010.

Network Mapping and Analysis Workshop
4th Upgrade!International Conference, São Paulo, http://softborders.art.br/eng
October 20th, 2010
UNESP sala/room: 517

One day workshop focusing on the design and understanding of complex networks through mapping and visual analysis. Starting from basic hands on mapping exercises participants gradually build complex compositions. Emphasis on network topology, centralization, and clustering. Participants learn the most through observing, sketching, and participating in the discussions.

See more at the past network mapping workshops.

Antakya Biennial Artist Network, 2010.
digital print, 220cmx110cm (View large)

The work processes the outcome of the survey on recent group exhibitions of the Antakya Biennial artists (listed below). This data reveals the entire list of the artists who were presented together in the group exhibitions throughout 2009 and 2010. The map presents relational situations of the 2,263 artists through their personal, conceptual and historical connections.

A77, ADALET AKBAŞ, MUHAMMAD ALİ, GÜNAY ALKAN, BURAK ARIKAN, UFUK ATİLLA, VARTAN AVAKIAN, PIERRE BISMUTH, HAKAN BİTMEZ, NISRINE BOUKHARI, LUCHEZAR BOYADJIEV, RANA ÇUHADAROĞLU, DERMAN DAĞLI, BURAK DELİER, HÜLYA DOLAŞ, HÜLYA DÖNMEZ, NATALYA DYU, IŞIL EĞRİKAVUK, VOLKAN ERAY, MEHMET FAHRAC, CYPRIEN GAILLARD, EMEL SIKAR GENÇ, EMRAH GÖKDEMIR, NADİ GÜLER & M. HASAN DEMİRCİ, ÖZLEM GÜNYOL & MUSTAFA KUNT, SANJA IVEKOVIC, NEZİHE KARAKAYA, SIMON KENTGENS, İLKER KOCADAĞ, FEVZİYE KOKU,  DANIELA KOSTOVA, CÜNEYT KURT, GHASSAN MAASRI, RENZO MARTENS, IVAN MOUDOV, VESSELINA NIKOLAEVA,  BORA PETKOVA , FERHAT ÖZGÜR, LARISSA SANSOUR, BASTIAAN SCHEVERS, AYGÜL SEZER, MARY HYUNHEE SONG, EMEL SÖKMEN, FATİH TAN, KEZBAN TATLI, SEVGİ TATLI, GÜNEŞ TERKOL, VAROL TOPAC, ISSA TOUM, GÖNÜL TÜRKER, TUGAY UĞURLU, MACİDE YALÇINKAYA & ZEHRA GÜZEL, FADI YAZIGI, MEDİHA YENİOCAK, EDİZ YENMİŞ, ELA YILMAZ, SEVCAN YILMAZ, NALAN YIRTMAÇ

Antakya Bienali Sanatçı Ağı, 2010
detail view

Contracted and Expanded (Tension Series, No. 3) 2007-2010
3 archival ink prints

Contracted and Expanded will be shown in the 2nd International Antakya Biennial 2010. http://www.antakyabienali.org

Contracted and Expanded is the 3rd piece of the Tension Series. It is a software that combines drawing with generative processes to explore the expansion and contraction in the behavior of a network.

Tension Series (2007-2010) is a set of simulations and installations exploring the dynamics of complex networks. How one can develop awareness about the “personality of a network”? Intuitive explorations in this series include the parallel passing of time, the relational movement of elements, the aggregation of interactivities, the reminisces of growth, the ambiguity of centralization and clustering, the intensification and de-intensification of complexity.