STOCKHOLM / ISTANBUL

AIR DROP

AIR DROP

STOCKHOLM

7 JUNE 2012

DOCUMENTATION

Looking for somewhere to land, a one night exhibition with Hera Büyüktaşçıyan and Santiago Mostyn. Slakthusateljéerna, Stockholm, 7 June 2012.

ARTISTS IN THE A I R

RESIDE IN A

D R O P

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AIR DROP

AIR Drop is an exchange programme initiated by Slakthusateljéerna in Stockholm. Our aim with AIR Drop was to explore the potential of an artist-run residency programme and to take an active role in creating our own working conditions. Another important aspect was to sustain and build on already established connections between artists in Stockholm and Istanbul and to create new links between the two cities. Furthermore, we wanted to see how the residencies could be fruitful for artists beyond those invited.

Slakthusateljéerna is a studio association located in Slakthusområdet, the meatpacking district of Stockholm, an area that hasn’t gone through the expected gentrification process yet, but stands on the verge of it. The area has great historical value as it bears witness to the societal organization of former times. In 2010 we were twenty-five artists who got a short-term contract in an empty building from the fif-ties, protected according to the laws regulating cultural heritage sites. While searching for a collaborator for AIR Drop we felt a connection to 5533, an artist-run space for contemporary art in Istanbul, located in the IMÇ (Istanbul Garment Traders Association) centre in Unkapanı just outside the central parts of the city. Just like our building, the IMÇ is a modernist building from the fifties, and just like the neighbour-hood we are located in, the IMÇ faces continual threats of demolition and gentrification. In both places societal changes are very present, something that both 5533 and Slakthusateljéerna and the artists con-nected to the organizations have explored thoroughly. Besides being drawn to these similarities, we were interested in the way 5533 organ-ized their activities focussing on process, sharing and dialogue, so we asked Nancy Atakan and Volkan Aslan of 5533 to be our collaborators.

Stockholm and Istanbul: two cities, each with their own specificities, possibilities, problems and constraints. We invited three artists, Annika Eriksson, Meriç Algün Ringborg and Can Altay with experience from both contexts to be our reference group and to work with the selection process following an open call for proposals. By involving a group of artists who had not worked together previously to take on the task, the AIR Drop network grew. In the four residency periods in total, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan and Onur Ceritoğlu came to Stockholm for five weeks each and Santiago Mostyn, Ellakajsa Nordström and Ylva Trapp went

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INTRODUCTION

to Istanbul. What Slakthusateljéerna could offer, apart from space and time, was an artist community of twenty-five people, all with their own practices and local networks. The 5533 staff provided generous support for the artists at their site, and instead of studio spaces with an artist community present, the neighbours and shopkeepers in the IMÇ became a source of local knowledge.

The artists were not required to make new works during the residency. For us the core of the residency was the encounter with a new location and its various contexts. However, all of the artists did engage in new processes: subtle explorations in and of their temporary surround-ings, which are presented in this publication. The works have previ-ously been shown in the exhibition Looking for Somewhere to Land at Slakthusateljéerna and in the presentation Where We Are Not at 5533. Some of the works have also been exhibited at other institutions and galleries in Sweden and Turkey.

We have put together this publication as a reminder, to ourselves and to others, of the importance and possibilities of artists’ exchanges.

Maria Andersson and Katarina Lundgren Initiators of AIR Drop Stockholm, May 2014

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TIMELINE

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TIMELINE

Nov. 2010 AIR Drop receives funding from the foundation Framtidens Kultur.

Apr. 2011 The planning process begins.

Sep. 2011 Maria Andersson and Katarina Lundgren (Slakthusateljéerna) travel to Istanbul to meet various art initiatives and potential collaborators. They visit 5533and the two organizations decide to work together. Dec. 2011 AIR Drop open call for proposals is announced.

Jan.– Feb. 2012 A reference group consisting of the artists Annika Eriksson, Meriç Algün Ringborg and Can Altay goes through the applica-tions and selects artists to invite.

1 May– 9 June 2012 Hera Büyüktaşçıyan in Stockholm with studio space at Slakthusateljéerna.

1–30 May 2012Santiago Mostyn in Istanbul with studio space at 5533.

25 May 20125533 at Slakthusateljéerna, Nancy Atakan, Volkan Aslan, Nazli Gürlek and Filiz Avunduk (5533) visit Stockholm and present 5533 during a public evening at Slakthusateljéerna.

7 June 2012 Looking for Somewhere to Land, a one-night exhibition at Slakthusateljéerna with Hera Büyüktaşçıyan and Santiago Mostyn.

20 Aug.– 24 Sep. 2012 Onur Ceritoğlu in Stockholm with studio space at Slakthu-sateljéerna. 7 Sep.– 7 Oct. 2012Ellakajsa Nordström and Ylva Trapp in Istanbul with studio space at 5533.

6 Oct. 2012Where We Are Not, presentation at 5533 with Onur Ceritoğlu, Ellakajsa Nordström and Ylva Trapp.

Oct. 2014Release of the AIR Drop publication.

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‘and’ is neither this nor that

is always in-between

belongs to neither

marks the border of each

has neither beginning nor end

within ‘and’ experiences develop

events take place

revolutions evolve

like a river, it flows

barely perceivable

picks up speed in the middle

undermines its own banks

An artwork that Nancy Atakan made in 1999, a sculptural text that has followed her for the past fifteen years, will direct us through the Airdrop experience.

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ESSAY

5533 ‘AND’ SLAKTHUSATELJéERNA

Shall I zoom in onto dualities of the project: two initiatives, two places and two artists? Shall I look at this type of ‘and’? Or, shall I focus on the visual arts as a method of producing knowledge? Do these artists think through the visual? Or shall I opt to indirectly interconnect the zoom and the focus? Or perhaps a bit of all of these… ‘Being both here and there’, the artists participating in Air Drop interacted with the environments of two cities, Stockholm and Istan-bul. From their ‘and’ positions, the similarities, differences and the variety of their research became quickly evident. In Sweden, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan collected research material about observed bridg-ing systems built across islands, while in Istanbul Santiago Mostyn made surveillance video recordings. In Istanbul, Ellakajsa Nordström and Ylva Trapp collected ways of measuring time, scales, rhythms and flowing as they roamed the city streets, at the same time as Onur Ceritoğlu initiated a nomadic life for plants he had nurtured in the Stockholm studio. Always working from an ‘in-between’ spot, the Air Drop artists each included some type of play in their art practices and a see-think-know type of approach. Each one created rules for the games they would play to look at the here and the now of the unfamiliar location. No doubt they each came with a methodology they had used before, but redid it, remodelled it for the new instance, the new place. Their methods of inquiry resembled but differed from mainstream, so-called scientific research done in the fields of anthropology, sociology, literary or historiography. While the art ‘shares borders’ and similarities with these fields, the main difference became obvious to me when an anthro-pologist asked me what the artists’ conclusions were from the research they had done. Artists do not look for findings or conclusions, but for new experiences and potentialities. They question, point out, and in do-ing so while ‘belonging to neither, they mark the borders of each’. ‘Without beginning or end’ working from within, the artists ‘thought through the visual’. While I do not trust my memory to say with any absolute conviction what I was thinking when I made this sculptural text, I know that today for me it no longer refers to con-ceptual art or poststructuralist instances of reading and telling. I am not looking at art as a language to talk over or about either art or lived

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experiences. It is not about the ‘and’ as combining flows of informa-tion, experience and thought. It is not about a rerun in a different place of what has been done before or a tool to reference artwork. The work done by artists in these two places is not just another element to add onto a thread to lengthen a list that can continue indefinitely. The ex-change between 5533 and the Slakthusateljéerna Studio Association was not a repetition of another project. It simply aimed to provide space for individual artistic practice and networking. Sharing, experiencing, researching and presenting were emphasized rather than exhibiting. ‘Being neither this nor that’, what the artists did might appear to verge on madness as it opened up and investigated ‘otherness’, as it threw out a surplus and as it came up with something more than what was there in the beginning. Madness became logic leading to inven-tion and innovation. Within a framework of rules created for this spe-cific residency project, the artists were handed a place to work with divergence and disequilibrium for a specific period of time. They were given a room to allow the appearance of something different, unfore-seen, and a scene for learning. This kept the door open for the unpre-dictable see-feel-think process to happen. The artists made transparent something rational in this chaotic and impromptu atmosphere. Within this ‘and’ perhaps revolutions did not evolve, but experiences devel-oped and events took place. The artists were investigating the ‘and’ space with their artwork. They were not just adding to it as I have mentioned above. The artist initiatives were also interested in the conjunction, the connection, the ‘in-between’ that mainly dealt with relationships and networking. We ‘undermined’ our own limits, expanded our borders by going there and coming here. Possibilities for new projects emerged. Long-lasting friendships developed. And what can be more important, even in the international art community? ‘Like a river it flows’ into the future.

Nancy Atakan, artist and co-founder of 5533 Istanbul, May 2014

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ESSAY

Nancy Atakan and Volkan Aslan presenting 5533 at Slakthusateljéerna, May 2012.

AIR DROP

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Hera Buyuktsçıyan

Istanbul — Stockholm

1 May – 9 June

2012

¸

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THE ISLANDS

‘. . . you have to leave the island in order to see the island, that we can’t see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves you mean, No, that’s not the same thing.’ José Saramago – The Tale of the Unknown Island

It was the 1st of May 2012, early morning . . . On the way to the airport I had been dreaming and trying to imagine what it would be like to ex-perience ‘being an island’ in a city divided primarily into fourteen is-lands that are connected by fifty bridges and 24,000 archipelago pieces. As an islander living in Heybeliada (Halki Island) in Istanbul, I was eager to be detached from everything and to get deeper into the real meaning of becoming a deserted island.

Over the following days in Stockholm I walked quiet often between the main islands that are connected by bridges and docks – between the place I was staying and the studio, which had a view of a newly con-structed stadium. Whilst contemplating the matter of ‘the island’ the following lines from Deleuze directed me in a different direction:

Dreaming of islands – whether with joy or in fear, it doesn’t matter – is dreaming of pulling away, of being already separate, far from any continent, of being lost and alone – or it is dreaming of start-ing from scratch, recreating, beginning anew. Some islands drifted away from the continent, but the island is also that toward which one drifts; other islands originated in the ocean, but the island is also the origin, radical and absolute.

In order to understand the real meaning and the essence of the ‘island’ I had to step back and try to see it from a distance, observe it, and then it would open up its true essence to me. While stepping away, I noticed that all the bridges, ropes, docks that I had been observing had already become my main centre of interest.

All these elements are instruments to tie and connect things physically. They not only connect, but at the same time as they are untied, the connectivity is lost and disappears. Once more distance itself enters

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the scene and creates the urge to gather the two far points together again. As Deleuze mentions, islands are like faraway lands which we dream of, but once we are in them we can’t live with them anymore because we loose sight of them. We try to imagine the other faraway lands while we are on them. So, in a way, our thoughts and perspectives become the ship or the dock that connects the two distant realms.

Our minds, or the so-called mental space of ours, is connected with a long-lost moment within our memory through these mental bridges and docks.

During the period of my residency in Slakthusateljéerna, whilst I was contemplating and working on the issue of the ‘islands’, I was also linking myself with space and its relation with its exterior and interior. With the mini dock sculptures I created, I was often connecting my optic vision, the interior with the exterior, which was the studiospace and the construction site across from it.

Gazing at the new stadium growing each and every day, I had the feel-ing that I had been connecting myself and having a certain dialogue with the landscape I had faced every day as if I had been sitting on my own island gazing to the land across from it.

While working on the interior/exterior connectivity through the mini dock pieces, the question of how mental space operates and how it is connected with physical space arose. The works, which were divided into four different rooms called The Lost Horizon, Ö Observatory, I Land and Distance Bridging had been focusing on these notions of different means of connectivity of physical and mental space, as well as creating links between the local context of the area itself.

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Ö Observatory, detail of installation, 2012

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Distance Bridging, detail of installation, 2012

I Land, video installation, 2012

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Ö Observatory, detail of installation, 2012

Ö Observatory, detail of installation, 2012

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The Lost Horizon, sound installation, 2012

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Iceberg, ready-made object, wood, glass, 2012

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Santiago Mostyn

Stockholm — Istanbul

1– 30 May 2012

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ISTANBUL DOUBLE FREqUENCY

Istanbul Double Frequency considers the cultural act of ‘looking’ at a foreign place from two perspectives: that of the tourist photographer seeing an exotic place for the first time, and that of the place itself looking back at the photographic act. Directed by local residents, and recorded via surveillance cameras, the photographer is caught in layers of cultural beholding, the space between the personal and the unknown becoming a unique narrative landscape.

Residents and shop owners in the large, working-class neighbourhood of Fatih were first asked to describe places that were special to them, for personal reasons or for the sheer beauty of the locations. These sites were then sought out and photographed throughout the city, at specified times of the day, as instructed by the interviewees.

In The Poetics of Space, Bachelard writes that, ‘at the level of the poetic image, the duality of subject and object is iridescent, shim-mering, unceasingly active in its inversions’. Fittingly, these walking tours soon revealed a political infrastructure to counter that of tourism, namely the constant presence of surveillance cameras throughout the city, archiving the photographer’s actions among the millions of peo-ple. As a way to redress these layers of looking, access was gained to the surveillance camera feeds that matched several shoot locations, and further photographic outings were recorded from this state’s-eye view.

This project highlights two lines of inquiry within my practice that I hope to continue exploring: the question of horizontal nostalgia (the dystopia revealed by Svetlana Boym’s ‘diasporic intimacy’) and the continuing import of deep, photographic looking within the realm of contemporary art. It is furthermore an appeal for storytelling, that an-cient form that suffers most within our advancing societies, to once again become a foil for the creation of wider cultural realities.

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Onur Cerito glu

Istanbul — Stockholm

20 Aug.–24 Sep. 2012

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HOMEPLANTS

Homeplants are not plants for decoration. They are plants that carry their own story and character. Is having a plant at home a way of taming nature? Or do they exist through us? During my residency in Stockholm I saw many apartment advertisements with plants in corners of rooms and on tables. I wondered if one would be able to look after them without leaving any personal traces. While staying temporarily in an apartment in Telefonplan, I had to look after some plants for the first time in my life. I started to propagate leaf cuttings. Somebody told me that if one takes the cutting without the gardener’s knowledge then success is certain. In a week or two I had my own plants in the studio at Slakthusateljéerna. Some of them were stolen leaf cuttings, others were donated. Before leaving Stockholm, we put out an advertisement asking for a temporary home for the plants. I made a box out of scrap wood to accompany them. I saw the box with the plants as a social sculpture and thought of Beuys. The plants are now in a temporary home in Stockholm. I am planning to visit them in the future, when I get back.

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AIR DROP

‘If one takes the cutting without the garden-er’s knowledge then success is certain.’

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ARTISTS

Become a host of this plant-sculpture-deco-ration. Look after it for a minimum of three weeks and then pass it on to another host.

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These plants are from leaf cuttings; some of them were donated to the artist and some of them he grew himself during his residency period at Slakthusateljéerna. When the resi-dency came to an end these plants needed new homes. As temporary guests the plants continued a nomadic life in Stockholm and its surroundings. As new hosts look after them, new cuttings can also be added. The journey of the plants started at Slakthu-sateljéerna before being passed on from host to host.

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An apartment advertisement from a Swedish newspaper and instructions for how to make a leaf cutting.

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Ellakajsa Nordström & Ylva Trapp

Stockholm— Istanbul

7 Sep.– 7 Oct. 2012

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TO INVESTIGATE A LOCATION BY REPEATING A PATTERN

OF WALKING AND LOOKING

Istanbul was completely new to us when we arrived in September. It was hot, crowded, beautiful, chaotic and a bit overwhelming. We de-cided to create our own assignments as a way of getting to know the city. Restricted actions as a way to meet new locations. We called the series of works Scripts for a City. To investigate a location by repeat-ing a pattern of walking and looking was one of the works. The other works that were carried out were: To record sounds by using pen and paper, To study rhythm by imitating body language, To measure dis-tances by trying to see each other from as far away as possible, To experience time passing by repeating a selected movement.

www.scriptsforacity.blogspot.com

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YLvA

Walk right behind the pillar, move the notebook from right to left hand, hold it on the long side, the gaze waist-height, just below the red fire post, notice the orange and blue stickers, read the words above, scratch my forehead with right hand, look to the ground, notice the small stones in the floor, massage my nose between my eyes, scratch around my eyes, shut eyes briefly and open, lift the gaze to see the floor further away.

By the second pillar, take the book with right hand and place under left arm, put hands in pockets.

Right before pillar three, look up across the yard and read the Kilic sign and the text underneath, Ellakajsa says ‘Mmmm’, gaze follows the building upwards and back over the sky and back towards the crack in the ceiling next to pillar three, bump into Ellakajsa with right arm, giggle, look to the floor and ahead, walk with light steps, close to the line of yellow stones.

ELLAKAJSA

Right before the first pillar, look at the white sign on the wall, adjust my right sleeve, walk on the right side of the pillar, look at the ‘musik manager’ sign, as I turn look at the Kilic sign then allow the gaze to go left and scan the sky towards the right hand corner, before the sky ends.

By the second pillar hold the notebook in both hands. Look straight down at the notebook then straight, let the gaze hit the far end of the path and the facade outside. Slowly follow the pattern on the left hand side, the line of yellow stones until it reaches a point of 45 degrees.

When passing the third pillar say, ‘Mmmm’.

Between the third and the fourth pillar Ylva bumps into my left side and giggles, look up at her face and then back to the floor. Keep the gaze at a 45-degree angle on the floor in front of me.

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Towards pillar five, look to the Yerle sign, to the right, at the railing and into the reflection in the glass up to the reflection of the bin then let the gaze follow the same way back and pass the sign and look out to the traffic.

Turn close to pillar six, scratch my lower back with right hand, move my gaze from traffic to the railing on my left side, walk up onto the bridge, look over the railing to the yard below, put my right hand at my forehead to block out the sunshine, look at the dead plant on the ground floor, turn my gaze forward, put right hand in pocket, look at the floor, follow the cracks in between the stones.

Between the fourth and the fifth pillar, scratch the right side of the nose with the right hand, then swap over and scratch the left side of the nose. Keep eyes on the floor. Scratch the left shoulder while moving the gaze to the dark stains at the bottom of the sixth pillar.

Stop scratching when Ylva starts scratching. Keep the gaze on the stains almost until I pass the pillar, then let the arms down to the sides, notebook in left hand, look straight ahead at the window on the facade of the building opposite. Let the gaze be the last thing that leaves before enter-ing the bridge. Walk four steps while looking at my own reflec-tion in the window ahead of me, then look sideways to my right, pause slightly at the YAPIM and DAGTIM sign, carry on scan-ning horizontally until the gaze reaches the outside. Let the gaze wonder downwards and allow it to rest while looking at the build-ing seen through the floor below. Then move gaze back ahead of me, and right before the end of the bridge look at the two Huseyn posters, first at the right one and then at the left one. By the end of the bridge Ylva catches up to me.

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Look up and see the Hüseyin sign, turn left off the bridge, sniffle, rub nose with right hand’s index finger, yawn a little bit, lift gaze to the shop far ahead, look at the reflection of us, how the trousers move, walk on a straight line close to the yellow stones, in line with the first fan on right side move the gaze to the left over the yard to the top floor, look at the signs Müzik and Olympia, in line with fan, two look into the fan, giggle, the gaze towards the ceiling via cords and metal bars ahead.

Turn left off the bridge while adjusting the right sleeve of my jumper, look at the two posters in the same manner as before. Fix the gaze on the Azim Müzik sign until I’m very close to it, then look straight ahead at our reflec-tion in the window of the instru-ment shop at the end of the path.

At the metal marking on the floor, adjust my sleeves again, first the right one then the left, notebook still in left hand. Then look at the pattern next to the TT textile sign, first at the logo, then scan-ning the text from left to right, ending up on the second logo and finally glancing at the first one once more. Turn gaze to-wards the top of the spiral stair-case. Follow the spiral down-wards, all the way to the words printed in black, keep my eyes there for a while until Ylva gig-gles, then look at the instrument shop window ahead.

When I am in line with the elec-trical box on my right, put right hand in my pocket. As we reach the corner, my left shoulder touches Ylva’s. Make a slight noise when moving hand inside my pocket by feeling the keys and the coins, the eyes are fixed on the banner outside the instru-ment shop. Once the noise stops,

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start scanning the two main rows of instruments, starting with the top row and go down, from left to right. Notice each instrument.

Move gaze to our reflection on the wall right ahead. By now Ylva is freezing her movement.

At the next floor marking, take out the right hand from my pocket and look at the small white sign. By this time Ylva has caught up with me and the loop starts again.

Look at the damp stain in the ceiling close to the pillar, over the white ceiling ahead and into the music shop, look at the poster, the line of guitars up to the pink gui-tar, look at the big Müzik sign to the left, read the 6532 sign, look at the poster below, read Selani Sahia, by the pillar stop in mid-step, right foot in the air, scratch right calf with right hand.

Fall into step, take the book with the right hand and the left hand out of the pocket, hold the book by its shorter side, look towards the next pillar to the left, and the loop starts again.

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BIOGRAPHIES

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BIOGRAPHIES

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan (b. 1984, Istanbul) is an artist based in Istanbul. She uses the notion of the ‘other’ and combines it with the concepts of absence and invisibility to compose such a notion within an imaginary connection through identity, memory, space and time. She has par-ticipated in a number of international exhibitions including The Other (PiST///, 2007), Changeables & Transformables (Istanbul, 2009), Worthy Hearts (Yerevan, 2011), The Afternoon Odyssey (SALT, 2012), Looking for Somewhere to Land (Stockholm, 2012), Reflecting on Re-flection (Galeri Manâ, 2012), Envy, Enmity, Embarrassment (ARTER, 2013), In Situ (PiST///, 2013) and The Land across the Blind (Galeri Manâ, 2014).

Santiago Mostyn

Santiago Mostyn (b. 1981, San Francisco) is an artist and photogra-pher who makes prints, videos and books based on personal interac-tions with subcultural communities throughout the world. Mostyn is a graduate of Yale University and the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, and has exhibited internationally at venues including Mass MoCA, Kunst-Werke Berlin, Art Basel Miami Beach and the Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg.

Onur Ceritoğlu

Onur Ceritoğlu (b. 1983, Istanbul) lives and works in Istanbul. His work deals primarily with domestic architecture and urban transfor-mation. He uses participation and social interaction as a medium in his projects. He holds a BA in architecture from Istanbul Technical University and an MA in Visual Arts and Communication Design from Sabancı University. He is currently doing his PhD at the Istanbul Tech-nical University dealing with the cultural and environmental aspects of furniture design. Selected exhibitions include Yıkçık (Torun, Ankara, 2014); Trummer auf Trummer – KABA HAT (Apartment Project, Ber-lin, 2013); Shared (5533, Istanbul, 2012); Burç Alaiye – KABA HAT

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(Alanya, 2012); Thief (Protocinema, Istanbul, 2011) and Park: Probably (Istanbul, 2010).

Ellakajsa Nordström and Ylva Trapp

Ellakajsa Nordström (b. 1979, Gothenburg) divides her time between Stockholm and Oslo, and Ylva Trapp (b. 1981, Uppsala) is based in Stockholm. In their collaborative work they transform their everyday surroundings by copying, repeating, scrutinizing and dwelling on small details, gestures and behaviour patterns. Ylva holds an MA in Fine Art from Konstfack and a BA in Fine Art from Umeå Art Acad-emy. Ellakajsa Nordström holds a BA from Central Saint Martins and is completing an MA at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Collaborative exhibitions include Skymningslandet (Mockasinvägen, Stockholm, 2013), In Several Aspects (Halka Art Project, Istanbul, 2012), Open studios (IASPIS, Stockholm, 2012) and Hem ljuva hem (Konsthall C, Stockholm, 2011).

Slakthusateljéerna

Slakthusateljéerna is a studio association established in June 2010 in the old meatpacking district just south of Stockholm’s inner city. The studio association is an artist-run non-profit members’ organization, at the moment housing 25 artist studios and a project space. The project space is a place for artistic production and public events, mainly for the members’ own initiatives. Recent activities in the project space include the building of a Cultural Political Monster for the Supermarket Art Fair 2014 and Ett rum med utsikt /A Room with a view’s examinations of the current development and transformation of the local area.

Maria Andersson

Maria Andersson (b. 1978, Stockholm) is an artist based in Stockholm and one of the initiators and coordinators of AIR Drop. Her work deals primarily with aspects of spatial organization. She uses video as her

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main medium and her works are often contextually extended by the space where they are presented. She holds a BA from Central Saint Martins College in London and an MFA from Konstfack in Stock-holm. She has previously exhibited at places such as the Liverpool Biennial; Mains d’Œuvres, Paris; SALT, Istanbul; the Italian Cultural Institute, Stockholm; Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm and at Botkyrka Konsthall, Tumba. Maria is also involved in several self-organized initiatives and collaborative projects.

Katarina Lundgren

Katarina Lundgren (b. 1978, Stockholm) is an artist based in Stock-holm and one of the initiators and coordinators of AIR Drop. Her work revolves around storytelling and myth-making, often with its starting point in some sort of contemporary phenomenon, be it an issue or an occurrence, something unexplored or taken for granted. Her method is research-based and she works mainly with text, video and photogra-phy. She holds an MFA from Valand, Academy of Fine Arts in Goth-enburg and previous exhibition venues include the Stockholm City Museum, Tensta konsthall in Stockholm, the Örebro county museum and Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm.

5533

5533 is a contemporary art space in Istanbul. Founded by the artists Nancy Atakan and Volkan Aslan, 5533 aims to create a platform where artists exchange ideas. Located in the Istanbul Textile Traders Market (İMÇ) in the Unkapanı neighbourhood, the space – formerly a shop – hosts workshops, screenings, exhibitions and performances on a spo-radic basis. Each year 5533 invites a curator to work with the founders on a twelve-month programme emphasizing two premises: collaborat-ing with other artists/curators and operating without long-term plans. Among the curators who have previously worked with 5533 are Marcus Graf, Nazlı Gürlek and Filiz Avunduk. At the moment Özge Ersoy, a curator and writer based in Istanbul, is the programme director at 5533.

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Volkan Aslan

Volkan Aslan lives and works in Istanbul and his recent practice is influenced by the artist’s memories and the malleability of our percep-tion of the passing of time. These memories, half remembered half forgotten, draw him to certain items he comes across daily that remind him of past experiences. His most recent exhibition at Pi Artworks was Unstable Repetition (2011). Other solo shows include Don’t Forget to Remember (2013) at ARTER – Space for Art and volkan (2011) at Macka Art Gallery. His work has been included in several international exhibitions, as well as the 2013 Istanbul Biennial.

Nancy Atakan

Living and working in Istanbul, Nancy Atakan deals with language, intercultural situations, women’s issues and globalization. She is inter-ested in the feelings generated by memories of objects left after gentri-fication. Using personal memories, photographs and narrative to show social situations, her work merges fiction and reality. She has had four solo exhibitions at Pi Artworks (2009–2013) and her work has been included in group shows around the world including Keep On Keeping On, an exhibition on DVD curated by Susann Wintsch (2012); Trading Stations, a parallel project to the Liverpool Biennial (2012); Dream and Reality at the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art (2011) and Istanbul Next Wave at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2009).

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THANKS

Thank you 5533 for an excellent collaboration, and the reference group Annika Eriksson, Meriç Algün Ringborg and Can Altay, and all the artists at Slakthusateljéerna for your invaluable support!

With kind support from Framtidens Kultur and Iaspis.

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Colophon

Editors: Maria Andersson and Katarina LundgrenGraphic concept: We Do Not Work Alone / Andreas Doré, Fredrika Doré, Maria Andersson and Katarina LundgrenProofreading: Bettina Schultz

Printed at Åtta.45 Tryckeri AB, Solna, 2014Paper: Scandia 2000 white 115g /240g

Descriptions and images of artworks courtesy the artists.

ISBN 978-91-637-6754-8

www.air-drop.se

AIR DROP

ISTANBUL

6 OCTOBER 2012

DOCUMENTATION

Where we are not, a one day event with Onur Ceritoğlu, Ellakajsa Nordström and Ylva Trapp. 5533, Istanbul, 6 October 2012.

ISTANBUL / STOCKHOLM

AIR DROP