My second day at the biennial was a bit of a frustrating affair. We ventured out to attend one of the panels at santralistanbul, which on this very day would also open its doors officially. Santralistanbul is a project of Bilgi University, located at the site of the former Silahtaraga power plant, and comprises a Museum of Contemporary Arts, a Museum of Energy and a cultural and educational centre. Actually, in Turkish “santral” simply means power plant. Spanning over 118.000 km2 (!), it aims to become an important player in the local and international art world. The scale of santral is impressive; too bad there was no signage indicating the Biennial projects or panels, no information brochures or leaflets to be found, and no English-speaking (or for that matter helpful) staff.

We arrived late for the 1st panel discussion Independent Initiatives, and after 10’ of not particularly engaging presentations decided to leave in search of the art projects. Disappointingly enough, there were only 4 projects tucked away in what is supposed to become the future artist-in-residence studios. These were Apartment Project’s (Ceren Oykut, Selda Asal + Neriman Polat) “2+1”, a workshop project by MAP Office and Ömer Ali Kazma on issues of modernity in art and architecture, Mladen Bizumic’ Fiji Biennale Pavilions project wherein the artist invites other artists to conceptualise the Fiji Biennial Pavilion, and documentation of the pending closure of the Isola Art Center and out (Office for Urban Transformation) in Milan. These projects were labeled “Special projects”, and here is where the trouble starts format-wise and conceptually. All these projects are either socially-driven community projects, activist projects or educational projects. Surely there is space for this type of work/intervention/research in a biennial, but then it definitely needs to be presented appropriately. Presenting these initiatives decontextualised, and in documentation form only, is simply not engaging enough, and relegates these highly socially/politically fuelled concerns to the static realm of the dead archive.

Ceren Oykut, a prolific multi-disciplinary artist known for her drawings and involvement with the Turkish experimental music collective Babazula, started collaborating with the Apartment Project in 2004. In the Haliç area of Istanbul they interviewed neighbourhood kids about their dreams. Their drawings were mixed with Ceren’s sketches, and animated in a later stage. In addition, the audio, film and photo recordings of the interviews not only captured the diversity of the childrens’ answers, but also marked their indvidual output as part of a larger whole. The Apartment project team had created a photo collage on the wall, mapping the kids’ responses, as well as a film and booklet. Ceren told me they had originally wanted to present the work in their own studio, which would have made much more sense. This type of work does well when it is turned into an event presentation, but as an exhibit only, it is more often than not doomed to fail. Still, out of the 4 Special Projects, “2+1” made an effort in its presentation and in its limited means, to create an active, and aesthetically thought-through, interface with the audience. The label “Special Projects” is also to be read in a more deprecatory way, as most Special Projects had to fund most of the production themselves, and got little support of the Biennial.

Whilst wandering through the santral grounds, we had discovered that a grand buffet was on its way. Disillusioned with what was on display art-wise, we were excited at the prospect of a free lunch. Great was our disappointment when on the beautifully laid out tables, under all that shiny aluminum foil was meat, meat and meat: minced, sliced, on skewers, broiled. In any shape and form…but not to the taste of 2 vegetarians. This was turning out to be a bad day.

I decided to leave santral for what it was and return later in the evening for the grand opening. On my menu was a lecture by Lebanese artist and theorist Jalal Toufic, at Platform Garanti. Upon arrival I found out that the 6pm lecture got moved to 2pm. Ok…so up the Blackmarket for Useful Knowledge and Non-knowledge, a project by the Mood Salon and the Mobile Academy, where you could book an expert in the field of art for a one-to-one session. Of course it was fully booked. This was becoming a really bad day…

I decided I would give it a last shot and grumpily climbed into a cab to the santral opening. Though the opening concerts were nothing special, the Museum of Contemporary Arts' building impressed, and its opening exhibition “Modern and Beyond”, spanning a historical overview of Turkish contemporary art practice from the 1950’s till today, deserves to be applauded. Wonderfully and clearly presented, with excellent accompanying text labels, this exhibition took you from Turkish abstract painting and expressionism, surrealist painter Yüksel Arslan, the renowned installation art of Sarkis, to the work of contemporaries like Hale Tenger, Esra Ersen, Halil Altindere, Gülsün Karamustafa, and Bulent Sangar a.o. Thumbs up for this exhibition, and it didn’t even have anything to do with the biennial!

Perhaps the highlight of the evening was a chance visit to the Museum of Energy, opposite the Museum of Contemporary Arts. Walking through the dusty control room with all its meters and dials, the turbines, generators and other sexy machinery to the beat of LTJ and DJ Conrad performing at the party, was as estranging as it was wonderful.