Exhibition: House of Wisdom Nottingham (27 September - 28 October 2018)

ARTISTS: Mohamed Abdelkarim, Burak Arıkan, Mahmoud Bakhshi, Yael Bartana, Mehtap Baydu, Kürşat Bayhan, Ruth Beale, Ekin Bernay, Burçak Bingöl, Nicky Broekhuysen, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Cansu Çakar, Ramesch Daha, Işıl Eğrikavuk, Didem Erk, Foundland Collective, Deniz Gül, Beril Gür, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, İstanbul Queer Art Collective (Tuna Erdem and Seda Ergül), Ali Kazma, Yazan Khalili, Göksu Kunak, Mona Kriegler, Fehras Publishing Practices, Elham Rokni, Natascha Sadr Haghighian & Ashkan Sepahvand, Sümer Sayın, Erinç Seymen, Bahia Shehab, Walid Siti, Ali Taptık, Erdem Taşdelen, Özge Topçu, Viron Erol Vert, Ali Yass, Eşref Yıldırım, Ala Younis

Curated by Collective Çukurcuma (Naz Cuguoğlu and Mine Kaplangı)

Public Programme Curator: Cüneyt Çakırlar

PREVIEW: Thursday 27 September, 5 pm – 7 pm
RSVP boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk

DATES: Friday 28 September – Saturday 27 October
TIMES: Monday – Friday, 10 am – 5 pm, Saturday, 11 am – 3 pm

VENUES: Bonington Gallery Vitrines and Atrium at Nottingham Trent University's School of Art & Design, Bromley House Library, Five Leaves Bookshop and Primary.

“To admit authorities, however heavily furred and gowned, into our libraries and let them tell us how to read, what to read, what value to place upon what we read, is to destroy the spirit of freedom which is the breath of those sanctuaries. Everywhere else we may be bound by laws and conventions-there we have none.” 
Virginia Woolf, How Should One Read a Book, 1925

Throughout history, libraries have been perceived as places where information on life and space are organised, read, and interpreted. Their political significance, however, has at times been underestimated. As in the example of the original House of Wisdom*, libraries are also known as centers of research, learning, and sharing. This concentration and exchange of knowledge makes them important symbols of political power and the formation of cultural identity. Based on the power of libraries, and Foucault’s notion of the archive as ‘the general system of the formation and transformation of statements’, the curators followed their archival urge and decided to build their own archive-library. To shed light on the increasing levels of censorship on information, knowledge and the current sociopolitical situation in and around Turkey, they invited artists and researchers to take part in the project. The House of Wisdom, ever-evolving library-exhibition aims to rethink the political nature of books, whose mere existence is under threat, and ultimately asks the question: ‘What could be the outcome of collectively rethinking the notion of the archive and knowledge production through art, particularly when issues such as censorship and suppression of information are involved?’


House of Wisdom is an open space, a gathering place. Visitors are invited to enter and discover the library-exhibition to read, discuss, collaborate, scheme, and exchange knowledge and ideas. And with its fourth location, the exhibition is expanding throughout the city of Nottingham. Inviting visitors to walk and discover the city with the exhibition map, House of Wisdom will utilise the Vitrines of Bonington Gallery and the Atrium of the Nottingham Trent University’s School of Art and Design. Artworks and books will also be placed in other venues like local bookshops (The Five Leaves Bookshop) an old primary school that has been transformed into an art space (Primary) and a historical library (Bromley House Library). By expanding the exhibition space from one room to various spaces around the city, House of Wisdom is hoping the build an invisible relation between being a visitor and being a wanderer. And this year the exhibition’s public program is curated by Dr. Cüneyt Çakırlar from Nottingham Trent University, who organised a series of events including performances, workshops, reading groups, talks and screenings.

More details about the exhibition's public programme will be announced shortly.

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*House of Wisdom (Bayt-al Hikma) was a library founded in the beginning of the 8th century in Baghdad, where thousands of books in various languages from different regions, on philosophy, art, science, and history were housed. Researchers from different regions came together to make research, and work on techniques of translation, writing, and discussion.

**House of Wisdom is a mobile and ever-evolving library/exhibition curated by Collective Çukurcuma. It was previously shown at Dzialdov (Berlin, 2017), IKSV Building (Public program of the 15th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2017) and Framer Framed (Amsterdam, 2017).

House of Wisdom Nottingham is produced and organised by Queer Art Projects and made possible by Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants with the support of Nottingham Trent University, Bonington Gallery, Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, Bromley House Library, Primary and Five Leaves Bookshop.
http://www.boningtongallery.co.uk/exhibitions/bonington-vitrines-8-house-of-wisdom

Image credit: ALI TAPTIK, "Atlas" from the "Meridians" series, 2011 [on display in House of Wisdom]
Image credit: MONA KRIEGLER, Pain and Memory, digital still, 2012 – 13 [on display in HoW]

House of Wisdom: Cross-Cultural Mobility and Post-Gallery Curatorial Practice

House of Wisdom: Cross-cultural Mobility and Post-gallery Curatorial Practice
Panel Discussion, Friday 29 June, 6pm-8pm, Primary Nottingham (link for details)

Reflections on archive, censorship, cultural dissidence and geopolitics in contemporary arts, followed by a Q&A. [Video Documentation]

House of Wisdom is an on-going research and a mobile, ever-evolving library/exhibition curated by Collective Çukurcuma (Naz Cuguoğlu & Mine Kaplangı) in 2017. Inspired by the library of the same name founded in Baghdad at the beginning of the 8th century, the House of Wisdom exhibition is investigating the political relevance of books and libraries. By creating an open space and a gathering place in different cities around the world, House of Wisdom has invited its visitors to enter the library-exhibition to read, discuss, collaborate, scheme, and exchange knowledge and ideas. The library/exhibition was first held in Dzialdov, Berlin, in May 2017, then travelled to Istanbul as part of the 15th Istanbul Biennial’s public programme and to Framer Framed, Amsterdam, in November 2017. The show will travel to Nottingham this Autumn, hosted by Bonington Gallery.

Event Organiser, Chair and Respondent: Dr Cüneyt Çakırlar (Nottingham Trent University)

Speakers“Curating House of Wisdom”, Mine Kaplangı (Collective Çukurcuma, Istanbul)
“The Unknown Story of an Infamous Library”, Işıl Eğrikavuk (Berlin)
“Just in Bookcase”, Tuna Erdem & Seda Ergül (Istanbul Queer Art Collective, London)

In her talk on “Curating House of Wisdom”, Mine Kaplangı will speak about the exhibition’s next route to Bonington Gallery, Nottingham, and how the current research and production process is shaping in collaboration with Nottingham Contemporary and UNESCO City of Literature.

In her talk “The Unknown Story of an Infamous Library”, the artist Işıl Eğrikavuk will speak about her contribution to House of Wisdom, namely Infamous Library, which is a project she realised in several stages between the years 2006 and 2014. Unfolding in performative, narrative and mock-documentary platforms, Eğrikavuk’s work deals with fiction, history, politics and humour. Eğrikavuk is the winner of Turkey’s first contemporary art prize, Full Art Prize in 2012. She has participated in numerous international exhibitions, residencies, and her work has been published in both local and international journals. She currently lives in Berlin and is a faculty member at Universität der Künste (UdK), Department of Media.

The founding members of Istanbul Queer Art Collective Tuna Erdem & Seda Ergül will talk about their work “Just in Bookcase”, which was created especially for the House of Wisdom exhibition. “Just in Bookcase” is about the im/mobility of books/libraries, immigrants/refugees, the dead weight of books and the fleeting stories of living libraries, accumulation/collection, dismantling/dispersion and travelling/fleeing with emotional/excess baggage. In 2017, Erdem and Ergül moved to London and founded Queer Art Projects Ltd. to produce art events including performances, conferences, exhibitions, talks and parties. They currently host Turkish Delight, a monthly queer performance night at The Glory, London.

House of Wisdom’s Contributing Artists: Mohamed Abdelkarim, Burak Arıkan, Mahmoud Bakhshi, Yael Bartana, Mehtap Baydu, Kürşat Bayhan, Ekin Bernay, Burçak Bingöl, Nicky Broekhuysen, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Cansu Çakar, Ramesch Daha, Işıl Eğrikavuk, Didem Erk, Foundland Collective, Deniz Gül, Beril Gür, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, İstanbul Queer Art Collective (Tuna Erdem and Seda Ergül), Ali Kazma, Yazan Khalili, Göksu Kunak, Mona Kriegler, Fehras Publishing Practices, Elham Rokni, Natascha Sadr Haghighian & Ashkan Sepahvand, Sümer Sayın, Erinç Seymen, Bahia Shehab, Walid Siti, Ali Taptık, Erdem Taşdelen, Özge Topçu, Viron Erol Vert, Ali Yass, Eşref Yıldırım, Ala Younis

Documenting Art and Performance: Embodied Knowledge, Virtuality & the Archive

The Asian Art and Performance Consortium (AAPC) of the Academy of Fine Arts (KuvA) and the Finnish Theatre Academy (TeaK) of the University of the Arts Helsinki jointly hosted a symposium focused on documenting and archiving Asian and trans-cultural performance and fine arts. This is the third and final symposium organized under the Shifting Dialogues - Asian Performance and Fine Arts research project, funded by the Academy of Finland in 2011-2014.

Issues raised at the symposium included embodied, iconographic and electronic transfer of performance traditions in Asia related to live performance and traditional pedagogies. These include the use of moving image, photography, web-based presence and new media, historical and theoretical writings, the construction of archives, museums and libraries.

Cuneyt Cakirlar, in his paper “Mediation of Document: Ethnographic Turns and Art as Methodological Object in Critical Humanities”, examined relations of ethnography, contemporary art practice, globalisation and scalar geopolitics with particular reference to a selection of artists including Kutlug Ataman, Ming Wong, Akram Zaatari, Slavs & Tatars. Concentrating on these artists’ engagement with ethnography, Cuneyt’s paper analyzed a selection of videos and gave an account of different scalar aspects of their artworks as well as the ways in which conceptual art-objects bear the potential of forming transient archives in academia to exemplify critical methodologies of ‘dealing with data’. Rather than addressing scale as a differential concept, this paper aimed to demonstrate the ways in which these artworks produce self-scaling, self-regioning subjects that unsettle the hierarchical constructions of scale and facilitate a critique of the scalar normativity within the global art world’s documentary regionalisms and internationalisms.

Shifting Dialogues II: Sexual Artifice in Asian Art and Performance

The Asian Art and Performance Consortium (AAPC) of the Academy of Fine Arts (Kuva) and the Finnish Theatre Academy Helsinki (Teak) hosted a symposium focusing on manifestations of sex, sexuality and gender in Asian art and performance on 17-19 October. This was the second symposium organized under the ongoing research project, Shifting Dialogues. The project is funded by the Academy of Finland in 2011-2014.

Following the focus on “The Politics of Site, Locality & Context in Performance and Visual Arts” last year, this year’s project targets at issues of sexual embodiment and gender subjectitivy in Asian/Asiatic art-practice with emphasis on performance arts, film, video art, installation, live art, and dialogical work.

In his paper “Troubled Objects of Nationalism and Masculinity”, Cüneyt Çakırlar explored the role of scalar, regional, and global/international discourses in contemporary art criticism. Cüneyt’s paper discussed the practice of a selection of artists producing work from/on/about the Middle East (Erinç Seymen, Taner Ceylan, Akram Zaatari, Slavs and Tatars, etc.). Questioning their critical use of geo-political location, region and scale in their aesthetic framework, Cüneyt talked about performative, transregional methodological/theoretical approaches to globalized art forms, which would contextualize, if not re-enact, the ways in which these artistic subjectivities inhabit the world.