A.I.R extension#12 (PIST)

This artist walk was organized parallel to PiST///'s Artist Information project. PiST/// is an alternative project space focusing on artists, writers, critics and curators with an experimental attitude. PiST/// is an independent project in Istanbul that is run by Didem Özbek and Osman Bozkurt. Walk03 started with a brief lecture at PiST/// that elaborated on what inspired Vermeir&Heiremans to make the work A.I.R extension #10 (Pavilion), which was presented during the 10th Istanbul Biennial.
Walk03 guided the public to the extraordinary Marine Pavilion in Florya. Le Corbusier’s notebook ‘Voyage d’Orient’ (1910-1911) was in the artist’s pocket.

Excerpt:
In this sense the ‘pavilion’ at AKM functions as an annex of our home and as a reference to pavilions in the art context and at world fairs where a country is represented in a condensed form. We consider our domestic space as an ‘exhibition’ space, albeit a representation of it. This was how we came about to consider using visuals of the Ataturk Marine Pavilion in Florya (a modernist summer residence of Atatürk, built by Seyfi Arkan in 1935), which functioned at the time as a space to exhibit Turkey’s progressive modernity, taking Le Corbusier’s architectural forms as inspiration. Le Corbusier, while being inspired during his stay in Istanbul in 1911 by certain elements of the Ottoman past to create his radically different housing models in the West, became himself a major inspiration for Turkish architects in the early 30ies (who wanted to get rid of their Ottoman heritage) and was idealized as a reformer and revolutionary. Both spaces (the Brussels loft and the Florya pavilion) are juxtaposed in the video-installation, and become mirroring clusters of meaning, in which the open floor-plan, the so-called lack of hierarchy and the use of transparency are essential…

2007
PiST///Walk03, a lecture-performance and artist walk to Florya Marine Pavilion, Istanbul