Our installation for the Istanbul Art Biennial is reviewed by the NY Times, Financial Times, The Huffington Post and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. A 90 seconds video registration of this light installation – titled ‘Intensive Care’ - is now online as well. The precarious situation of freedom of speech on Taksim square was made tangible - already on March 29th 2013 - by using the breathing rhythm of a patient hospitalized on the intensive care.
>>> link Intensive Care video
>>> link project
Quotes from reviews:
"One project that was unthinkable after the Gezi uprising was by Erik and Ronald Rietveld, brothers who form the Dutch collective RAAAF. They initially proposed an installation in which thousands of tiny lights would flicker like fireflies on the facade of the Ataturk Cultural Center, a landmark in the center of Taksim Square. But after the building became festooned with protest banners during the Gezi Park demonstrations, Biennial organizers never got a response from the Turkish Culture Ministry about their request […]. Instead, the brothers’ installation, “Intensive Care,” features a small dark room in which lights play against a tiny scale model of the building.''
- The New York Times
''Also memorable was “Intensive Care” by RAAAF, a Dutch studio that had originally intended to install its work, a light that responds to human presence, in the Atatürk Cultural Centre in Taksim. Deprived of that chance, Rietveld simply scaled down its model and put it in a pitch-black space within Antrepo. After the cacophony of ideas outside, the quiet, poetic provocation of that flashing square stilled the mind and opened the imagination.''
- Financial Times
''Starting at the Atatürk Cultural Center, the Amsterdam artist group RAAAF wanted to cast a softly glowing band of light across the city's main traffic hub, where ground is being cleared for a grand building project, whether shopping mall, mega mosque or baroque opera house. Rarely has there been a better moment for critical contemporary art.''
- The Süddeutsche Zeitung
"Originally, curator Fulya Erdemci felt presenting art outside to a broader public would have highlighted the city's physical and social transformation, which has been often traumatic. But the protests forced the organisers to withdraw inside just a few months before the opening. Many artists had to quickly re-contextualise their work, while others had to scrap theirs altogether and present something new. Dutch brothers Erik and Ronald Rietveld's light installation projected onto the Ataturk Cultural Centre, an iconic concert venue overlooking Gezi Park, became the intimate yet just as powerful Intensive Care. A miniature rendering of the building's façade throbs with light like a life-support machine. The piece asks the question of whether the venue will survive the wrecking ball after conflicting government statements about its fate of the building - a controversial cultural landmark that was draped in banners by outlawed political groups during the protests."
- The Huffington Post