On Monday my friend Basak Senova, a university professor and curator, took us (a small but motley crew of international artists, composers and curators) over to the Asian side of Istanbul. Our mission was to visit KAHEM (the Kadiköy culture and community centre) hosting the Emergency Biennale in Chechnya’s 9th stop, and Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets’ City of Collision project on Jerusalem.

Basak lives on the Asian side, and crosses into the European side daily, so she knew the ropes how to get there. If we had to rely on the information the Biennial had (not) provided us, we would still be scratching our heads how to get to the venue. We took a 20’ ferry, and crossed into Asia. This part of town feels a little less congested, and actually has many beautiful upscale boulevards. After a few inquiries and several tram stops, we finally reached our destination. Without our guide, we would have never found this place! The aim of having projects in KAHEM was for the public to “rediscover such a specific architectural and cultural edifice”. Good luck with that!

The Emergency Biennale in Chechnya, curated by Evelyne Jouanno and Ceren Erdem, was to be found in the basement. Crammed into a little space, this messy and chaotic exhibit actually worked well. Initiated in 2005, the idea is for artworks of international renowned artists to travel clandestinely to Chechnya in suitcases, whilst their doubles simultaneously travel around the world. This suitcase action can be read both ways: on the one hand it forces the curators to think of mobility and the “essential” in the work (in size and in concept). On the other hand it is the perfect (and probably unwilling) embodiment of internationalism in the art world, where art works travel from biennial to biennial, from art fair to art fair, so that their origins and destinations becomes more and more blurred, and that they become contaminated with…well…let’s call it “air miles sensibility”, which often determines their value. All this, while mobility, for all those who happen to have the “wrong” passports (including many artists), is becoming increasingly more difficult.

This being said, I particularly loved the video of the Siberian duo “Blue Noses” (Vyacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov), which was wonderfully satirical and politically incorrect. Combining popular culture, Russian stereotyping, and every other mediatised cliché thinkable, they are known to be the court jesters of the contemporary Russian art scene. What they do is fun, funky and to some totally outrageous. It has been called “hooligan improvisation”, which is actually a rather accurate label. However, the blatant humour aside, there’s much to be read into their pieces about politics, globalization, national identity, media and consumption.

My euphoria lasted too long to be true. “City of Collision”, by Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets, shown a few floors up, totally missed the point in its presentation. In effect the project is a book on the city of Jerusalem and “presents a vivid picture of a city in a permanent state of destruction and reinvention, hostage to political planning, collective fear and physical and mental walls but also strategies of resilience, individual exchange and transgression." What we got were – wedged between Turkish flags and other nationalistic paraphernalia to be found on the floor (!!) - 2 copies of the books we could consult, a few photographs on lightboxes of Palestinians (attempting to cross from somewhere to somewhere else…where, what is not mentioned!), a map of Israel, and a projection of an animated map of Jerusalem (what it was showing exactly was unclear). No further information was given, so the whole project felt futile. Why not just sell the book if the project cannot be presented comprehensively, and in a way that encapsulates its objectives, and years of research? Why reduce Jerusalem’s conflict urbanism to furniture filler on the 2nd floor of a community centre? Read a good account on the project on the Subtopia blog.

I was feeling my anger cropping up again. Luckily Basak decided we were to see no art anymore, and took us to a nice place for drinks and nibbles. At 10pm, we left Asia, and took a domus taxi back to the European side, crossing the famous bridge over the Bosphorus.