Istanbul - Global

As Curator,⌖ I initiated a major shift in the organization’s open call program in 2020, its fourth year. Previously, the program revolved around an open call for Istanbul-based artists with a mentorship program culminating in an exhibition. When I joined bang. Prix as Curator, my focus was to shift the program from one that was exhibition-based to practice-oriented — to create space for deeper introspection into one’s practice, as well as wider fields of research and dialogue. Crucially, I redesigned the program to open its call not only to artists but a wider scope of practitioners at the intersection of art, technology and science.

bang. Prix is the non-profit arm of ARTBIZTECH, which was how I got to know and join the latter company in the following year.

Case Study: EDEN⌖ Christiane entered bang. Prix with an aim of furthering her research on future archeology: how and what future generations will discover about the ways we live today. Surveying past and present archeological methods, her work centers on the traces that will be left behind from an era in which a large part of human activities happen on touchscreens and increasingly, touchless gesture interfaces. 

Through the program, I worked with Christiane on researching introspectively (her practice until then, exhibitions that were and could-have-been, unfulfilled projects, ideas) as well as empirically and theoretically. The outcome was EDEN: a smartphone retreat that transposes the search for a perfect mind-body condition into an audio-visual journey to a conjectured net-based paradise as final destination. The accompanying book was originally published in English and has also been translated into Spanish.

EDEN has achieved critical acclaim, having shown in various formats at exhibitions, symposiums and programmes including NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, Kornhausforum Bern, Singapore Art Week, Symposion Lindabrunn and CIVA Festival for New Media. EDEN has formed a key inflection point in Christiane’s practice and career; its themes and approach continue to be the mainspring of numerous projects that follow.

⌖ From the press release:
⌜ EDEN was conceived as a smartphone retreat as a satire of the digitisation of the wellness industry and the peculiar fate of our age: locating spirituality in the smartphone. Not only do workout app users go about their daily routines with religious fervor, meditation apps and podcasts have proliferated in an extension of the sacralised human condition to the mental state as well. Can we memorialize an on-screen version of ourselves that also embodies our consciousness? ⌟



Image credit: Christiane Peschek. Spanish edition of EDEN published by SED Editorial.



⌖ More info & credits: link.
⌖ Press: Museum of Now (EN), SO-FAR (EN), ArtUnlimited (TR), Saltzberger Nachrichten (DE), Les Nouveaux Riches (DE)