PODIUMS: LEADERLESS
A series of online conversations at "Leaderless," a solo exhibition of Isaac Chong Wai at Bilsart
19, 20, 26 and 27 Jan 2021
Supported by Tarabya Cultural Academy and Zilberman
"Podiums: Leaderless" is a conversation program organized in the framework of "Leaderless," a solo exhibition of Isaac Chong Wai at Bilsart from 6 Jan to 1 Feb in 2021, with the support of Tarabya Cultural Academy and Zilberman. The program includes speakers Evrim Altuğ, Isaac Chong Wai, Pia Entenmann, Ceren Ergenç, Banu Karaca, Zeyno Pekünlü, the Consul General of Germany Johannes Regenbrecht, Abhijan Toto and Gündüz Vassaf.
The program is free of charge. For RSVP please send your name and the date(s) of the program(s) that you intend to join to zilberman@zilbermangallery.com. This program will be online and conducted in English.
19 Jan 2021, 4:30–6pm (Istanbul time)
"We Are Leaderless"
Conversation by Isaac Chong Wai (Artist) and Abhijan Toto (Curator)
20 Jan 2021, 4–5:30pm (Istanbul time)
"Leaderless Continuity in the Past and the Future"
Conversation by Ceren Ergenç (Political Scientist) and Zeyno Pekünlü (Artist)
Moderated by Evrim Altuğ (Director at Zilberman and Art Critic)
26 Jan 2021, 4–5:30pm (Istanbul time)
"The State and Leaderlessness"
Conversation by Banu Karaca (EUME Fellow of the VolkswagenFoundation, Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin) and Johannes Regenbrecht (The Consul General of Germany)
Moderated by Pia Entenmann (Curator at Tarabya Cultural Academy and Goethe-Institut Istanbul)
27 Jan 2021, 4–5:30pm (Istanbul time)
"The Death and Birth of Leaderlessness"
Conversation by Evrim Altuğ (Director at Zilberman and Art Critic) and Gündüz Vassaf (Author and Psychologist)
Free admission; online registration required.
BIOGRAPHIES:
Evrim Altuğ is the director of Zilberman and an art critic. With 22 years of experience, Altuğ has contributed dozens of catalogue texts and prepared hundreds of articles and interviews for different media such as the Turkish daily newspapers: Radikal, Sabah and Birgunand Cumhuriyet. Altuğ has been actively presenting arts journalism on Acik Radyo (Open Radio) and Cable Channel 9 of Istanbul and writing for Art Unlimited, Hürriyet Kitap, Sanat, Rh+, Açık Radyoand and Gazete Duvar.
Isaac Chong Wai is a Berlin-based artist from Hong Kong. Influenced by the personal and the global events, he engages themes of collectivism and individualism, geopolitics, migration, historical trauma, identity politics and public sphere. He was awarded the Fellowship at Tarabya Cultural Academy by the German Embassy and Goethe-Institut in Istanbul in 2020 and 2021. Processing societal shifts, global tensions and collective wounds into multifaceted works, he endeavors to transform the powerlessness—the unanswered demands, the suppression from authority and the denial of individual freedom—into resistance, rebellion and criticism of social systems.
Pia Entenmann has been working for the Goethe-Institut since 2011. Since 2017, she is the the artistic director of Tarabya Cultural Academy. From 2011 to 2014, Entenmann worked as cultural program coordinator at the Goethe-Institut in Brussels and Paris with a focus on film and literature before taking up the position as personal advisor the President of the Goethe-Institut Klaus-Dieter Lehmann in its headquarters in Munich between 2014 and 2017. During her studies of Romanic language and literature and history at the University of Stuttgart and the Paul Valery University in Montpellier, she was a freelance cultural journalist for various newspapers in Germany.
Ceren Ergenç is an associate professor at the department of China Studies at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in Suzhou. She previously held positions as assistant professor and visiting researcher at Middle East Technical University, Peking University, Renmin University and Fudan University. She holds a PhD from Boston University in political science with a particular focus on area studies. Her research interests include state-society relations in contemporary China and East Asia, urban politics, public participation, political efficacy as well as comparative methodologies in area studies and debates on global history. Her research includes both qualitative and quantitative fieldwork methodologies.
Banu Karaca is an anthropologist working at the intersection of political anthropology, art and aesthetics, nationalism and cultural policy, museums and commemorative practices. Her book The National Frame: State Violence and Aesthetic Practice in Turkey and Germany (Fordham University Press, 2021) examines the entrenchment of art in state violence. Some of her recent publications interrogate the politics of intercultural exchange programs in the EU, freedom of expression in the arts, the visualization of gendered memories of war and political violence, and visual literacy.
Zeyno Pekünlü is an artist. She obtained her M.A. from University of Barcelona, her Ph.D. from Mimar Sinan University. She is based in Istanbul and currently running the Work and Research Program of the Istanbul Biennial (ÇAP) for young artists and researchers. She is part of the editorial board of e-journal Red Thread and member of IRI (Institute of Radical Imagination). Scanning a range of issues, from the construction of maleness and femaleness as gender roles to questioning knowledge and it’s distribution, her works aims to decipher “power” that encompasses the intimate and the social simultaneously.
Johannes Regenbrecht joined the Federal Foreign Office (FFO) in 1987. His first posting was in 1989, when he was appointed First Secretary in the Economic Department of the Embassy in Mexico City. In 2007, Mr. Regenbrecht became Head of the department "Central Asia and Southern Caucasus" at the FFO. From 2010–2014 he was Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy in Seoul, before he served as Ukraine Special Representative/Ambassador and Head of the Ukraine Task Force at the Headquarters in Berlin from 2014–2016. In 2017 he became Deputy Head of Mission at the embassy in Beijing. Since September 2020 Johannes Regenbrecht is Consul General at the German Consulate General in Istanbul.
Abhijan Toto is a Bangkok-based independent curator and writer, interested in ecosophy, interdisciplinary research, labour and finance. In 2018, he co-founded the Forest Curriculum with Pujita Guha, a multi-platform project for research and mutual co-learning around the naturecultures of the forested belts of South and Southeast Asia. He is the Artistic Director of A House In Many Parts, a multi-disciplinary festival in Bangkok, supported by the Goethe-Institut and French Embassy, and has previously worked with the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh; Bellas Artes Projects, Manila and Bataan, the Philippines; Council, Paris; and Asia Art Archive.
Gündüz Vassaf, writer and psychologist, was educated in the United States and Turkey. He has been on the Board of Directors of the International Council of Psychologists, was Regional Coordinator for Europe and the Middle East for the American Psychological Association Division of Community Psychology. Vassaf's books, both novels and book length essays, published in Turksih and translated into several languages, focus on the psychology of everyday life, with an overarching theme of the question for individual freedom.