This conference will demonstrate all the steps necessary for setting up an exhibition. Why and how can you put on an exhibition? Is the purpose of the exhibition to benefit an arts centre, or is it an attempt to find the answer to an important current question? These days, both of these purposes are being put into practice. All centres need to stage exhibitions. Those working to do this have to cooperate with the visiting exhibitors (curators, artists, technicians and their assistants). Does there have to be full co-operation with total agreement? What kind of relationship can they have? What does that mean in the world of the curator? These questions will be addressed in this conference.
Attending this seminar is limited by 20 participants. To learn the conditions for participation in a single seminar: apply@curatingcontemporaryart.org
About Ali Akay
Studied sociology, philosophy and political science at Paris VIII University from 1976 to 1990. Since 1990, he has taught in Istanbul’s Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Sociology. At the same university, he has given doctoral courses in the fine arts department. From the end of the 1980s until the beginning of the 1990s, he translated Deleuze and Guattari. While working on philosophy and sociology, he has put on contemporary art exhibitions and written and published books.
Apart from Mimar Sinan University, Ali Akay has worked at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, I.N.H.A (National Institute of Art History) in France, at Paris VIII University, The Sorbonne University in Paris and at New York Columbia University in the USA. He also gave a series of seminars entitled “Exilocratus” at the Jeu de Paume art gallery in Paris over the course of a year.
He has been a part of the collective which has published İstanbul (Autrement Press), Placing Turkey on the Map of Europe (Boğaziçi University Press), Postmodernisme et après? (Editions Kimé), Model Turkei (Wallstein Verlag), Unleashed (Time and Hudson). He established a magazine called Toplumbilim (Sociology) and brought it out until 2011. From 2011 to the present, he has brought out a magazine called Teorik Bakış (Theoretical Viewpoint). From 2003 to 2005, Ali Akay co-published a contemporary art magazine, Plato.
His latest publications include: Seza Paker Refleksif Akışkanlıklar – Seza Peker: Reflexive Fluidities (Masa Publications), Postmodernizmin ABC'si – An ABC of Postmodernism (Say Publications), Birleşmeyen Sentez –
Heterogeneus Synthesis (Yapı Kredi Publications), Sanat Tarihi: Sıradışı bir Disiplin – Art History: an inhabituel discipline (Yapı Kredi), Sanatın Gramları – Grams of Art (Bağlam Publications), Siyaset Bir Düşünce Alanıdır – The Political Realm of Thought (Dedalus Publications), Armağan, Tekil Düşünce ve M. Foucault’da İktidar ve Direnme Odakları, - The Gift, a Single Thought and The Focus of Power and Resistance in M. Foucault, Sanat Bizi Seviyor – Art Loves Us (Philosophical Writing - Doğu Batı Publications), Pisuarın Bir Dekonstrüksiyonu – Deconstructing the Pissoir (together with E. Zeytinoğlu), Kulakdavulunun Eğrisi, Sanatın ve Sosyolojinin Ruh Hali; Konu-m-lar – The Curve of the Tympanum, the Mood of Sociology and Art; Konu-m-lar (Belge Publications), Félix Guattari,Öznellik Alanları ve Minör Politika – Felix Guattari, Fields of Subjectivity and Minor Politics (Otonom Publications), and Delilik Gemisi – Ship of Madness (Ayrıntı Publications).
In Turkey and abroad, he has curated multiple exhibitions. Ali Akay’s latest exhibitions have been:
Lara Öğel, Public Confidentiality, Açıkekran, 2019;
Elmas Deniz, İntegrations with Nature, Açıkekran, 2019;
Kuandu Bienali co-curator, “Asian is-it global?” Taipei, Taiwan 2018;
Bettina Hutschek, Visite surprise, Açıkekran 2018;
Susan Kleinberg- Equilibrium /Disequilibria, Açıkekran 2018;
Cold Coming Front Balkans, Pera Museum, 2017-2018;
Murmuring, Mestna Galeria LjubljanaLublijana, City Museum 2017;
Crystal Seed, Açıkekran 2017;
A light through the world: Hey,Wait, Krank Gallery, 2017;
Historical Encounters, Krank Gallery, 2016
Ulay, desidentifications, Açıkekran, 2015