[-empyre-] The maze of Istanbul.

[Ana Valdés]

Patrick, I have been in Istanbul recently attending a literary conference
and met some young Turkish writers and artists. They were very concerned
with the lack of State funding and the issues of censorship and control.
Famous writers as the Nobelprize Pamuk are often in trial because zealous
civil servants or military find their writing or their Art "anti-turkish" or
"difamatory" or "obscene".
Turkey is still in deny about their role in the Armenian genocide and in
their treatment of the Kurdish.
Ana

On Sun, Sep 18, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Lichty, Patrick <plichty at colum.edu> wrote:

> Great discussion here about the symposium.  I think that my major
> crtiticism abotu ISEA is that in many ways it seems like the local culture
> isn't deeply represented enough.   I realize that I have a bias toward
> Turkish Art, but I feel liek the projects that have dealt with Near and
> Middle Eastern art seems really underattended.  From this, I feel like there
> are times that if you just attend ISEA, you could drop the bubble anywhere
> from New York to Kuala Lampur.  But then, this is also not entirely the case
> with Istanbul.  The shock of a deeply privatized, oligarchic culture and the
> political issues of free speech have evidenced themselves in terms of
> firewalls and the corporate environment of the Sabanci Center.  Not that the
> US does not have its own problems, like blocking Wikileaks, but these
> differences seem to be most visible here in Istanbul.
>
> So far, I have found the conferenxce pretty difficult to attend, from the
> dispersed nature of the venues (I will not get to the communications
> center), and the distraction of the bienalle just create a lack of focus.
>
> What I would hav eliked to see is a concentration of regional work and
> discussion more than it is.  There is good stuff happening, and I'll talk
> abotu that soon
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