In 2007 the haudenschildGarage collaborated with art critic Matthew Schum who traveled to the Istanbul Biennial to interview artists and curators including Burak Delier, Sergio de la Torre, and Hou Hanru.

My research explores the experience of contemporary art in urban exhibitions and installations. After hearing a talk by the co-curator about his 9th Istanbul Biennial, Vasif Kortun, who teamed with English curator Charles Esche in 2005, it seemed essential to go to the city. There I found not only the surprises that contemporary Turkish art has to offer, but the city itself. No place is like it, and in many respects no art scene deals with contemporary issues like Istanbul artists do. In short, the political complexion of Turkey adds dynamism to the social engagement defining art in the cultural capital.

In the following blog entries I have attempted to highlight what was unique about how artists and curators dealt with the intersection of art and social content in the 10th Istanbul Biennial.

Assuming the biennial to be symptomatic of contemporary art, my original research on the 9th Biennial Istanbul focused on the creative role of curating and a noticeable attention to the creative process from this perspective within the collaborative model of a biennial resides in the following entries.

Support from the haudenschildGarage provided a platform from which to consider these developments firsthand and allowed a way to pose and answer this question: How did the 10th Biennial function as a strategy of encounter, within the more collective curatorial realm and the more focused projects of individual artists? My hope is that the blog functions as a document of this.
–Matthew Schum

About Matthew Schum

Matthew Schum is a graduate student at the University of California San Diego in the program for history, theory, and criticism of Art, department of Visual Arts. He studied in Vancouver at Simon Fraser University prior to moving to California, via New York. As a researcher he has worked for the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, and most recently the Walker Art Center. Schum was born in Minneapolis in 1978.

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