The five-week seminar, through October, led by Merve Ünsal, aims to examine the recognition, transmission, interpretation, and historicisation processes inherent in contemporary art from a pluralist perspective. The seminar will explore different topics to underline the diverse roles artists can undertake within the context of contemporary art, encompassing not only the creation of the artworks, but also practices related to textual production and exhibition. 


Pointing towards various production methods and places of encounter, the seminar will revolve around conceptual clusters, such as “Relationship-Dialogue-Experience”, “Concept-Language-Text”, “Memory-Document-Context” and “Place-Home-Land”. Departing from these concepts, the seminar will first explore the social spaces enabled by participatory art practices. It will then investigate the connections among institutions, artists, and artworks through specific examples that illustrate the changing experience of art in relation to different times and circumstances. Additionally, the seminar will probe into the art practices centred on ideas through the lens of language and text. It will also question the relationship between memory and documents, focusing on knowledge transmission structures in contemporary art and practices that critically engage with them by addressing how documents evolve and continually reshape themselves over time. Reflecting on the possible roles of artworks within large-scale national and international narratives, the seminar will then explore the potential relationships that can be forged between the places of art production and exhibition.

The seminar will be held in Turkish.

Merve Ünsal (The Hague, 1985) has shown her diverse body of work spanning photography, video, radio, sound, performance and site-specific installations in various contexts across the world, most often through artist-driven initiatives in Beirut, Berlin, Cairo, New Delhi, Toronto.

More information on the program can be found here.