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Dear Comrades,
2018 celebrates SEVEN years of Protocinema’s responsive, site-aware exhibitions and public programs, and this year we presented new works in Lima, Tblisi, Istanbul and New York.
Some highlights include commissioning Rossella Biscotti’s forensic five-channel video installation The City (2018), exhibited in a subterranean space in Istanbul. The City visits Çatalhöyük, a 9,000-year-old Neolithic archeological site, recognized as the earliest urban development, to reflect on the society that is being dug up, and the society that is doing the digging. Towards the end of this immersion, in a subtle sci-fi narrative twist in response to actual political fissures, we are suggested to be part of the past, watching a future excavation of the present. Another high point was going to Lima, Peru, with Hasan Özgür Top, to show The Atelier (2018), a generous collaboration at Proyecto Amil, with support of SAHA, Istanbul. Top’s work investigates the processes and effects of nationalism and its increasingly complex relationship with capitalism, and had particular resonance in Lima in relationship to recent activity there related to Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori. In the spring we went to a former winery in Georgia to present Angelica Mesiti’s Relay League (2017) a three-channel installation with Kunsthalle Tbilisi, which was commissioned by our dear friends at Artspace, Sydney. Mesiti’s installation engages with the language of Morse code as an extinct form of communication – presenting it during a resurgence of art and culture in post-Soviet Georgia, where communication is particularly coded, took on an additional layer of significance of voice and agency.
We closed the year in New York by premiering selected video works at Swiss Institute’s beautiful new East Village space. It was compelling to share and talk about new videos on natural catastrophes, fear-inducing policies, perversions, displacement and the sensation of feeling stuck in both space and time. The screening featured films by artists from Istanbul, Athens and Beirut: Andreas Angelidakis and Angelo Plessas, Ali Kazma, Lara Ögel, Rania Stephan, and Hasan Özgür Top.
We are grateful for the opportunity to work with so many groundbreaking artists-- visionaries who are shaping contemporary culture. Deep gratitude to our supporters, partners as well as to our Board of Trustees: Defne Ayas, Dillon Cohen, David Howe, Ari Melşulam, Jason Heard and Sheldon La Pierre, and our International Commissioning Committee: Sascha Bauer, Haro Cümbüşyan, Afroditi Panagiotakou, SPOT Contemporary Art Projects, Juan Carlos Verme.
Protocinema is not-for-profit, 501c(3) art organization realizing critical dialogue for artists and audiences across regions. Since its’ founding in 2011, Protocinema has consistently operated across borders and boundaries, connecting artists, curators, and writers through new commissions, site-aware exhibitions and educational public programs with a focus on cross-cultural collaboration.
Your donation, of any size, will contribute to helping realize our goals for 2019 and beyond or become a producer by making monthly donations of $75. To become a Protocinema Producer, be an essential part of realizing art works, and named on our site & material,and receive updates/behind the scenes of the projects in-progress.
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Thank you.
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With Gratitude and Enthusiasm,
Mari Spirito
Executive Director, Curator
PROTOCINEMA Peaceful New Year / Mutlu Huzurlu 2019
image: clockwise from top left: Hasan Özgür Top,The Atelier, 2018, commissioned by Protocinema at Proyecto Amil, Lima with support of SAHA, Istanbul; Angelica Mesiti, Relay League, 2017, installation at Protocinema, Istanbul; Kunsthalle Tbilisi, commissioned by Artspace, Sydney with support by Commissioning Partner the Keir Foundation and the Australia Council for the Arts, courtesy: Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne; and Galerie Allen, Paris;Rossella Biscotti, The City, 2018, still, commissioned and presented by Protocinema, Istanbul, with support from Mondriaan Fund and NEARCH project, supported by the European Commission, courtesy: Wilfried Lentz Gallery, Rotterdam and mor charpentier, Paris; Ali Kazma Safe, 2016, still courtesy of Galeri Nev, Istanbul.