“TransLocal Cooperation” digital exhibition within “Connect for Creativity” international project

Organized as part of the Connect for Creativity project led by the British Council, in collaboration with ATÖLYE and Abdullah Gül University in Turkey, BIOS in Greece and Nova Iskra in Serbia, TransLocal Copperation exhibition will go digital as of 6 July partnership with the oldest art and technology centre in London, the Furtherfield Gallery. The exhibition can be visited between 6-30 July via the Connect for Creativity website. It features artworks born of cooperation and knowledge exchange between artists from Turkey, Greece, Serbia and the UK seeking translocal solidarity in a hyper-connected world.

As our world has become hyper-connected, it has enabled us to simultaneously occupy or travel through numerous physical and virtual locations. This social and cultural aspect of globalization is often described in terms of ‘translocality’, where the events, conditions and attachments of one location can rapidly influence and connect with another. Inspired by this definition, the exhibition and the works within it consider how we might organize across distances and differences with and for our “translocal” communities.

The exhibition features a selection of artworks from those created by artists from Turkey, Greece, Serbia and the UK  during art and technology residences at the creative hubs ATÖLYE in Turkey, BIOS in Greece, and Nova Iskra in Serbia. The artworks created by Emmy Bacharach, Georgios Makkas, Ioana Man, Tamara Kametani, Theo Prodromidis and Yağmur Uyanık employ a variety of media and technologies, from VR and 3D printing to probiotic fermentation and ethnographic documentation. Having been redesigned for digital platform by the curators Ruth Catlow and Charlotte Frost, the exhibition creates an interactive visitor experience.

Ioana Man’s ‘Probiotic Rituals’, which is a combination of an AR interface, a website and a series of rituals, have been revisited in the face of Covid-19 and its impact on the artist’s original work. At a time when each of us are engaged in new daily rituals of cleanliness and separation, Ioana Man invites us to come together over new rituals of microbial discovery.

Yağmur Uyanık’s 3D printed sandstone sculpture ‘Selfmaking: Layers of Becoming With’ will have five original editions. Randomly selected applicants throughout the online exhibition will receive one of these editions. When the sculpture arrives at its new home, the images will be taken and shared by its new owner using the hashtag #layersofbecomingwith and will be featured at the digital exhibition.

Theo Prodromidis’s digital print newspaper ‘An Open Newspaper (You can’t evict a movement)’ has been transformed into a downloadable and shareable format. Georgios Makkas’s multi-channel video ‘Four Stops to Kurtuluş’ will be presented as a video that can be easily viewed. Emmy Bacharach’s VR experience ‘Stream of Consciousness / The Caves of Hasankeyf’ draws attention to the local and translocal significance of Hasankeyf, an ancient city in South-Eastern Turkey. Using photogrammetry and visual material collected from the site, the work covers a glimpse into the unique environment of the caves soon to be flooded.

‘Set in Stone’ by Tamara Kametani forms a poetic meditation on the effect of materials on often immaterial-seeming aspects of translocal cultures. While debates rage about legitimate uses and abuses of both privacy and freedom of speech online, this work presents phrases about the life of data etched by hand onto Athenian marble, to provoke a historic reflection on or even memorialisation of the consequences of actions on and offline. The artworks can be visited between 6-30 July 2020 via connectforcreativity.eu website.