20 september 2013

Onze installatie voor Istanbul Art Biennial is besproken in The New York Times, Financial Times, The Huffington Post en de Süddeutsche Zeitung. Een 90 sec. durende videoregistratie van deze lichtinstallatie - getiteld "Intensive Care" - is nu ook online. De precaire situatie van de vrijheid van meningsuiting op het Taksim plein is tastbaar gemaakt - al op 29 maart 2013 - door het ademhalingsritme van een patiënt op de intensive care te gebruiken.

>>> link recensie New York Times 

>>> link recensie Financial Times 

>>> link Huffington Post

 >>> link Istanbul Biennial 


>>> link Intensive Care video

>>> link project

 

Quotes uit reviews:


- The New York Times: "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.''

- Financial 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.''


- The Süddeutsche Zeitung: ''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 Huffington Post: 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.