Photos: Gülşin Ketenci
OUR NEWEST PROJECT:
Sarkis' Site and a Piano
written and directed by: Nedim Hazar Bora
cinematography: Bahattin Demir, Gürkan Özgümüş
line producer: Gülşin Ketenci
production: NTV
sponsor: Garanti
duration: 52 minutes
first screening: 13.11.2009, İstanbul Modern
Shot parallel to the opening of his current exhibition in Istanbul Modern, “Sarkis’Site and a Piano” is a documentary film, drawing an up-to-date portrait and reflecting the inner world of Sarkis, the artist who is considered to be one of the worldwide leading figures of the art of installation.
Born in Istanbul, Sarkis introduces himself in the film as such: “my curriculum vitae is my work.” While he prepares for his biggest ever exhibition in Turkey, an exhibition with retrospective facets, the Istanbul Modern team becomes witness to the birth of “largest ever exhibition of a living artist from Turkey" in their halls and actively participate in its construction. Forklifts carry objects to their places, street poster workers hang the giant photographs, works coming from various museums of the world are carefully taken out of their wooden boxes.
Curator Levent Çalıkoğlu is concerned at first: “Sarkis is not artist who we can exhibit chronologically, choosing various works from his various artistic stages. He has over five hundred exhibitions. Which one can you invite, and in which context? This is a difficult exhibition. Sarkis is a difficult artist. He brings many things side by side. Various objects, many things, defined or not defined suddenly become instruments of the exhibition.Arts historian Prof. Uwe Fleckner, an expert on Sarkis' work, certifies this, interpreting the “Site” exhibition as “What you see here is not an exhibition, it's something like an opera.”. “Site”(Siteeh) in Turkish means a habitation area, a quarter of a town. At the same time it is used as an abbrievation for the term “web site”.
During the shooting for this documentary, Sarkis took Nedim Hazar and his team to his flat in Talimhane. Just behind Taksim Square, Talimhane was a quarter which was densely populated by the Armenian and Greek minorities until the 1970's. Sarkis has not only preserved his parents' flat in Çaylak Street, he has transformed it into a “secret” gallery. Çaylak Sokak/Street was the title of his exhibition in the Maçka Arts Gallery in Istanbul in 1986.Sarkis: “My father was a well known butcher in Talimhane. He was financially well off. Nevertheless, he put me into jobs during the summer since I was 7-8 years old, so that I don't muck around. My first job consisted of picking up bent nails from the floor of my uncle's shoemaker store and straightening them up. Because the notion of throwing away did not exist in our family. This became a habit. I mean, some objects in the exhibition have existed for decades on end.”
In order to demonstrate how much he has been influenced by Sinan the Archtitect in his artistic work, Sarkis literally took the film team by the hand to Edirne and showed them the Selimiye Mosque and other works built and designed by the famous Ottoman architect. On a day closed for tourists, he used the team's equipment to record the inner sound of the Haghia Sophia for over 20 minutes. He then split the cassette and presented the loose tape as a monumental sculpture at the entrance with the mirror. This work is now exhibited in Istanbul Modern.
The film also tells the story of an old piano which literally “came to life” on the day Sarkis' mother died in the Armenian Surp Pırgiç Hospital.
We think that you will enjoy this film, which will be screened with English subtitles on the 13th of November 2009, 19:30. Sarkis will be present at this first screening. A few days later, NTV will broadcast a 36 minute version on TV.