Saturday, June 8, 2013

FLUX Istanbul: at Istanbul Modern Art Museum

Photo by Özden Şahin

Jeffrey Baykal-Rollins and the Silsila Collective will present “Flux” on Sunday, August 4th at 5:00 PM. "Flux" is a site-specifıc group performance created for the Istanbul Modern Art Museum’s waterfront area. Consisting of 20 performers inhabiting the space outside the museum through silent stillness, repetitive walking, and the gestures of traditional daily life in Istanbul, “Flux” embodies a reflection about our collective future.

Photo by Zeynep Özel


The one-hour performance will integrate itself into the museum’s architectural kinetic installation on view, creating an ephemeral hybrid space, an architecture-within-the-architecture, part surreal garden and part secular cloister. Audiences may sit and experience a performative meditation that engages aspects of contemporary life in Istanbul, with its lingering past and its pending future. Baykal-Rollins is interested in artistic collaboration and has also invited artist Ernesto Pujol to assist him in choreographing the piece. Pujol is a New-York based performer, internationally known for his public durational performances. He works in the tradition of German choreographer Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater.
Flux is the third project of the new Silsila Collective’s contemporary programming. Baykal-Rollins founded the collective two years ago, to train and perform with art students, art professionals, and urban citizens of all ages drawn to this experimental new medium and its potential social agency through collective portraiture. Prior to this performance, part of the group performed in Venice on May 23, at the Piazza San Marco, responding to that spectacular site. Images are available through: http://silsilacollective.blogspot.com
Baykal-Rollins, who has been living and working in Istanbul for the past decade, engages in what is currently known "art as social practice,” combining performance with image-making, alternative education, institutional critique, and cultural studies in a reflection about contemporary existence. The artist hopes to continue working in partnership with local, regional and international institutions, growing his Collective as Istanbul becomes a stage for global art.
Silsila’s “Flux” performance will be held in conjunction with the exhibition “Sky Spotting Stop,” a project partnered with the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and MoMA PS1. "Sky Spotting Stop" is a temporary site-specific installation that shades the courtyard of Istanbul Modern while floating gently on the hidden waters of the Bosphorus, organically expanding its host space into the city (http://www.istanbulmodern.org/en/exhibitions/sky-spotting-stop_1114.html).