[artinfo] Mocking the 11. Istanbul Biennale - subversions

[Sári Stenczer]

by the way, here are some subversive interventions organized by
autonomous art collectives in istanbul against the 11th istanbul
biennale. they mock the title; "begenal" ("taste and buy", a
supermarket slogan) which sounds like "bienal" in turkish because of
the soft "g"), they associate the biennale with the military coup of
1980 (which brought the neoliberal transformation in turkey) --the
poster announces a performance on the 12th of september - on the
anniversary of the coup. and they mock the industrial and finance
capital which sponsors the biennale --the figure they put up on the
faces is the logo of Koc corporation (which means ram in Turkish),
which they mock as "cok" by reversing it, which means "too much". and
then they put it into the title as "cok oluyoruz!" ("we are being too
much!").

in the second poster they mock the main sponsors of the biennale;
"turkcell" (the biggest cell phone network) is spelled as "urkcell"
("scary-cell"), "eczacibasi" (the biggest pharmaceutical corporation
in turkey whose name means "the chief pharmacist" is spelled as
"cezacibasi" ("the chief punisher") etc. and, if you notice, they
insert old socialist symbols into the logos of these corporations and
organizations affiliated with the biennale, which is to draw attention
to the socialist discourse of the curators and their appropriation of
brecht while producing such capitalist spectacle. oh, what was the
name of the curatorial collective? "what the fuck, how come, who
cares", or something?...  :)))
it's quite smart and well done, actually. they also recorded songs to
go with their performances.  there's more in the links below. :))

Diyalog Beğenal
http://www.divshare.com/image/8300239-5b3

11.Begenal
http://www.divshare.com/image/8002257-149

Cok Oluyoruz
http://www.divshare.com/image/8055738-6c0
............
http://www.myspace.com/begenal