Point to a piece of paper! – And now point to its form, – now to its color, now to its number... – Well, how did you do that?

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Curator's Statement

The title of this project is also its program. The term "interface" etymologically corresponds to the Latin words inter - "between" and faces - "appearance", English face. Interface can be understood as a boundary surface, a phase boundary, as part of a system serving communication. It is an attribute of a transitory change, e.g. between the sources – between sender and recipient, in the unique moment of transformation between not anymore and not yet. An interface is not a storage place, symbolically it could be depicted as a being with no possessions. We hear that the interface is being tapped into - or has already become part of a series of the others. Even if an interface contains points of contact, thus enabling communication, only through the need of those that met it becomes an active link - it guarantees inclusion and exclusion at the same time.

When a project containing so many different interfaces ends up in a city which is an interface between European Thrace and Asian Anatolia - the biggest metropolis worldwide extending between two continents - one is not only thinking of the interface Istanbul, followed by the interlaces Europe-Asia, Europe-Asia-world: but of all potential interfaces listed alphabetically from A to Z.

The concept of the exhibit Interfaces-Istanbul underlines the temporal and transitory possibility for communication. It relates to the connections between the human existence and the multitude of artistic messages in the present.

The will to tell, to share and communicate lies in the fundamental origin of our existence. According to Heidegger, the structures making up the existence are our language, our way of being, the mind, the experience, the time and the finiteness of the existence. The mere existence does not suffice to understand the being. Which artistic messages and strategies arise in times of the tightly networked world, in which the virtual world moves old boundaries of communication - whether caused geographically, naturally, historically; politically or culturally - and at the same time makes possible the control and surveillance of it? When, according to Wittgenstein, language is the world - what do we share with each other today - and how? What do artists tell each other in times in which integration, networking and connection have become the quest and everyday life of many people?

The print medium can be said to be a printed source of information, however, information only unfolds in its timeliness. In art, the differences between information, message and narration become clearer. Walter Benjamin¹ writes: Information's remuneration is lost at the moment in which it was new. It only lives in this moment. It must surrender itself to this moment entirely, must explain itself to it without loosing time. Narration is different; it does not spend itself. It holds its power gathered inside and is able to unfold after a long time.

The exhibition Interfaces-Istanbul focuses on the following topics, which are on different interfaces: analog - digital, geography - history, fiction - dreams - reality, information - message, interface - Istanbul, art -society - culture, artists - market, media - ecology - matrix, politics -private, private - social, sender -recipient, transformation - process.

However, the selected art works were not assigned to a specific interface. We did not want to divide the exhibition to thematically assign the artists' messages, but, through the messages' diversity and multi-layerness provide insights for the visitors. In the exhibition, the current contexts, concepts, tendencies and phenomena of the international graphic arts and the print-graphic medium in the area of visual arts are represented and their borders, frontier crossings, dislimitations (Verfransungen) are left open for the visitors. Adorno² critically spoke of dislimitations (Verfransungen) regarding the obliteration of categories between artistic disciplines, which he determined for the avant-garde: (...) The more a category allows that to enter itself which is not contained in its immanent continuum, the more it participates in the foreign, the tangible, instead of imitating. It virtually becomes an object among objects, something of which we do not know what it is. A secret bears a usually sensitive information within itself, which seems to be rationally inexplicable and which creates a mysterious field of tension in the recipient.

The communication technologies and media became the centerpiece of the development of society. Communication media trigger - not only changes in the people themselves, but they also change our entire environment. We are confronted daily with a multitude of messages, information and pictures. Thus, we become recipients every day and - through our reactions and actions - also senders. One can agree with Zygmunt Bauman - that in a global, tightly networked world, we cannot claim anymore to not have known anything of something. Well, society is easily manipulated. After the decline of humanism, after the Second World War and Hiroshima, there are still people on this planet who cannot lead a democratic discourse. Every day we hear of labour camps, deportation camps, ghettos, hunger, war, slavery, refugees, clearing of a peaceful demonstration, racism, xenophobia.

In times of a tightly networked world in which the art market is strongly affected by capitalistic rules, is the role of contemporary art to make visible what society is happy to overlook? The print medium has been a way for artists to realize and circulate their reactions to the everyday phenomenon, to the political, the private and the social. Graphic print made it possible to make multiple copies from first prints/printing plate thus enabling people for hundreds of years the dissemination of knowledge, information, ideas, artistic messages; letterpress -, map -, newspaper -, poster printing, no matter if it was devised purely for art or for information, collaboration or propaganda. Even if all works of art have always been repeatable or reproducible, from an antic sculpture to a 3d-object and everything artists have ever made, the new technologies yield new possibilities of reproducibility, expand the artistic matrix and also change our world and our sensory perception.

Maybe the connection between change and innovation is clearer in graphic arts than in other artistic media. Michael Serres said: As we may adapt to strange techniques easily, if they lead us back to a known world.

The area graphic and print graphic is a kind of interface between different artistic techniques, disciplines and media. Thereby, it oscillates between the opposing poles analogue and digital media, such as book art, animated cartoon, photography, installation, conceptual art, painting, object art, performance, poster, sculpture, and video art.

Curators: Monika Piorkowska & Zekeriya Saribatur

1. Walter Benjamin, Illuminationen, SuhrkampTaschenbuch 345, Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. ISBN 3-518-36S45-1

2. Theodor W. Adorno, Asthelische Theorie, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 2, Verlag Frankfurt am Main, ISBN 978-3-518-27602-0