SPAGAT!

— 18 December 2010 – 20 February 2011

Design Istanbul Tasarımı

Showing the most significant work of some thirty designers, design studios, and artists, this exhibitions was not just the first comprehensive overview of the emerging and extremely exciting, yet totally overlooked and unknown Istanbul design scene.

With its approximately twenty million inhabitants, Istanbul has of recent become Europe’s biggest and fastest growing metropolis. Whereas it is often still seen as a mere intersection and greyzone in between East and West or Europe and Asia, it has moreover succeeded in developing an identity that is totally its own, and exemplary on many levels. Its position can be compared to a Splits or Spagat, the most difficult and yet most elegant and most beautiful figure in dance. For if anything, Istanbul is a dancing city: loud and boisterous, wild and rough, passionate and ecstatic. This has itself also reflected in the city’s emerging design scene, and the alternatives it has on offer for the ruling design industry and its colonising politics.

Apart from being an exhibition it will also be a discussion and production platform and laboratory, focusing on the latest evolutions in design in general, while touching on issues such as globalisation and the tension between the centre and its periphery. It will also serve as a kick off for a work in progress that, starting in Germany, will spread to other countries, constantly changing its form and format.

“Spagat!” will hold the middle between a feast, an outcry, a tribute and celebration, an essay, an encyclopaedia, and a quick sketch snapshot, and three-minute-song. But first and foremost –and totally in tune with the nature of design- it will simply be an apartment cum office, where the curator, Max Borka, will actually live and work for the duration of the show, in between the exhibits, and act as a host to the visitors. The notion design event will thus be infused with a totally new content, in an exhibition that announces itself as ground-breaking and historical.

Curator: Max Borka, Assistance: Snapshooter Anna Pannekoek

Designers, studios and artists

ABLUKA (Demet Bilici & Beritan Firat Arik) Erdem Akan & maybedesign, Ali Bakova, Autoban (Sefer Çağlar & Seyhan Özdemir), Alper Böler, Ela Cindoruk, Demirden Design/Ilio (Nil Deniz, Şule Koç, Demir Obuz, Mehtap Obuz, Sema Obuz), Can Ali Dündar, Nezaket Ekici, Omer Ozan Erdogan & Creative Bonanza, GAEAforms (Pinar Yar & Tugrul Gövsa), Gürsan Ergil, Aykut Erol, Arzu Firuz & Paul Huber, Bayram Gümüs, Serhan Gürkan, Joelle Hancerli, Human Cities (Can Ali Dündar, Funda Mehter, Boran Ekinci Mimarlik, The No New Enemies Network, Nerdworking, Ypsilon Tasarim, u.a.), Asli Kiyak Ingin & Made in Şişhane, Meric Kara, Defne Koz, Tamer Nakisci & Refik Anadol, Koray Özgen, Koray Özgen & Leyla Taranto, Paratoner (Cüneyt Ara, Erdem Keskin, Murat Özbay, Tanju Özelgin, Ender Yolcu), Aziz Sariyer, Derin Sariyer, Kunter Sekercioglu, Adnan Serbest, Sema Topaloğlu, Can Yalman