The 9th International Istanbul Biennial
First observation. ‘Istanbul!’, the 9th Istanbul Biennial, pitched its tent on the shiftiest of shifting sands by claiming special status for Istanbul’s geo-political position at this precise historical moment. Second observation. The exhibition featured a nice line in ‘jokey’ art: ‘faking it’ could have been its motto. What is the connection? The first is a counsel of despair—and if you don’t laugh you cry.
Michael Blum constructed an elaborate, museum style display about Safiye Behar, an Atatürk mistress and Marxist feminist agitator active in Istanbul in the early 1900s, who, as that profile might suggest, did not exist. Khalil Rabah’s fictitious Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind appeared in the same venue, the run-down Deniz Palas Apartments, their faded glory amplifying the art’s ersatz aura. Ahmet Öğüt elsewhere (in a former tobacco warehouse) presented photographic evidence of transforming randomly chosen vehicles parked around Istanbul into simulations of taxis or police cars with coloured pieces of material. Ola Pehrson showed a DVD and many clunky props for his remake of a documentary Hunt for the Unabomber, about the home-grown United States terrorist: the work evinced a DIY quality belying and complementing its subject matter.
Certainly there was less jocular work. Wael Shawky’s elementary but compelling video opposed capital’s velocity to the slower rhythms of the Koran, recited by the artist while prowling the aisles of an Istanbul supermarket. (Perhaps there was dark humour in the obliviousness of passers-by). Johanna Billing presented a movie of Croatian children singing, in English, Magical World (written in 1968 by American singer Sidney Barnes). Their accents were excellent, their understanding seemingly less perfect. Croatia, like Turkey, is knocking on the door of