1st reading comm 1 mth 10:30-12 and tf 2:30-4

An Ancient City in Turkey Finds New Life in Modern Art
By ROBYN ECKHARDT
Published: August 19, 2010 New York Times link http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/travel/22nextstop.html

ON a searingly hot Saturday in early June, a small crowd of residents and tourists stood inside the entryway of the 14th-century Zinciriye Medresesi, a mosque and former medrese, or center of Islamic study, in Mardin, an ancient town in southeastern Turkey. Hanging in a row on a wall beneath the narrow room’s vaulted ceiling were front pages from recent issues of Turkish, French and British newspapers. Each was missing a headline, and visitors took turns inscribing their own on strips of paper stacked beneath the display.

“Obama, We Don’t Need You,” scrawled a teenage boy, commenting on recent friction between the Turkish and United States governments over Israel’s handling of the Gaza aid flotilla. “Antalya Doctors Arrive in Mardin!” wrote a smartly dressed medical conference attendee.

“Mansetin,” or “Your Headline,” by the Turkish artist and graphic designer Hakan Irmak, was one of a number of works displayed at Zinciriye as part of the first Mardin Bienali this summer. Video, installations, paintings and photographs by 63 Turkish and international artists were exhibited in two medreseler, an abandoned mansion from the early 20th century, and the city’s central square. The bienali’s title, “Abbara Kadabara,” was an allusion both to the arched stone passageways, or abbaralar, that link Mardin’s streets, and the almost magical surprise of cutting-edge art in a city steeped in history.

When asked if he could have foreseen a contemporary art exhibition on the scale of the bienali when he arrived in Mardin from Istanbul a decade ago, Mr. Irmak laughed. “I’ll tell you about the progress here,” he said. “When I arrived no one knew what graphic design was. When I told people I was a graphic designer, they thought I was a traffic planner.” (As in English, the Turkish words for graphic and traffic rhyme.)

The bienali was the latest in a series of efforts aimed at establishing Mardin as southeastern Turkey’s capital of art and culture — a designation that might seen intuitive, given its longevity (excavations in the area indicate human settlements as far back as 4500 B.C.) and location, central in ancient times. Home to religiously and ethnically diverse populations, Mardin became a center of education, music and skilled crafts, a past evident in the intricately worked limestone that has graced the city’s architecture for centuries. Now Mr. Irmak and other local artists, along with publicly and privately sponsored cultural initiatives like the bienali, are breathing new life into the city’s creative pedigree.

Just 31 miles north of the Syrian border, Mardin is a stunning open-air museum of a city, with medreseler, mosques, churches, palaces and mansions scattered on the face of a rocky hillside jutting from tawny plains. The city was once a key location on the eastern Silk Road, resulting in markets and workshops — some carved directly into the hill, most still in use — that zigzag down from the avenue that bisects the city.

The multicultural legacy can still be heard on the street, where Kurdish and Arabic are as commonly spoken as Turkish, and tasted in food and drink: homemade wine sold from Syrian Christian houses; a soft sweet bread reminiscent of challah called iklice; and mirra, a bitter coffee of Arab origin.

But the city has struggled under the region’s reputation for religious and social conservatism and the continuing armed struggle for independence by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K.

“Mardin has been limited by its association with war and violence,” Done Otyam, the curator of the bienali, said a few days after the event’s opening. “We wanted to change that, to let people know about Mardin through art.”

Leading that effort has been Hasan Duruer, who was appointed governor of the province in 2008. Driven by his determination to establish Mardin as a modern artistic city by the 100th anniversary of the Turkish Republic in 2023, Mr. Duruer has pushed for a university — in July ground was broken for Artuklu University, which will offer degrees in the social sciences and the arts. He has also supported cultural events with a contemporary focus, like the bienali.
Last summer Mr. Duruer approached Ms. Otyam, a curator at Ankara’s Cer Modern museum, who has also staged gallery exhibitions in Istanbul, about the possibility of bringing contemporary art to Mardin. She proposed using public spaces throughout the city — “I wanted the people of Mardin to be involved,” she said — and, working with the Southeastern Anatolia Project, a group aimed at economic development in the region, she tested the waters in November with “Mardinguncel” (“Mardin Current”), an exhibition of 15 works, held in Kasimiye Medresesi, one of the bienali locations. Its success lent confidence that a bienali would be well received.
The city has more projects on its list. Still to come are a September fashion festival at Kasimiye Medresesi, to be presided over by the Turkish designer Cemil Ipekci. Later this year, work will begin to convert the medrese into a science museum.

Planned for October is the unveiling of a work by the German artist and filmmaker Clemens von Wedemeyer, created for Mardin as part of My City, a British Council-European Union Bridges Programme that placed five European artists in cities across Turkey last year, while five Turkish artists were sponsored in cities across the European Union.

For Mardin, Mr. von Wedemeyer conceived “Sun Cinema,” a giant outdoor movie screen to be erected on an escarpment just below Kasimiye Medresesi, which sits at Mardin’s western edge. (The work’s name was inspired by sun-worshipping sects who lived in the area before Mardin’s existed as a city.) The back of the screen is a huge, slightly concave mirror that will reflect sunsets behind the plains over which the medrese is perched.

At the unveiling, Mr. von Wedemeyer will show his documentary of life in the city during festivities and rituals like Ramadan and Nevroz, the Kurdish New Year. For two years afterward, his installation will operate as an outdoor cinema.

“People in Mardin are quite open and interested,” said Mr. von Wedemeyer from his studio in Berlin, where he is putting the finishing touches on his film. “So for this project I wanted to produce something that would create discussion.”

Efforts are also under way to capitalize on Mardin’s cultural heritage. Soon after taking office, Mr. Duruer initiated a citywide beautification program aimed at securing Unesco World Heritage designation (Mardin was nominated but turned down in 2002). And this autumn he will move the provincial offices from Kiziltepe, a town at Mardin’s base, to a restored former government building.

“Mardin is a historic city, and we want to protect and preserve that,” Mr. Duruer said. “Combining the historical aspect with the contemporary and modern arts is another way to let people know about Mardin’s cultural and artistic past.”

Amid all these developments, the city continues to move at its own easygoing pace. Days on end can easily be spent picking one’s way up and down Mardin’s stone-paved lanes, exploring markets, dipping into mosques and medreseler and refueling with glasses of tea. Come sunset, the city glows golden, and dozens of kites catch currents from rooftop terraces.

Mardin’s transformation is being taken in stride by the city’s population. In June, Yusuf Elkatmis, 61, who sells shoes and sundries at one of the city’s markets, visited Kasimiye Medresesi. After offering prayers in its mosque and drinking from the fountain in its courtyard, he stopped to admire a large photographic diptych of the British actress Tilda Swinton. Hung from the medrese’s deeply arched stone portico as part the bienali, the photos were culled from a short film by the Turkish artist and designer Hussein Chalayan.

Ms. Otyam, the bienali curator, would be pleased. “It’s not so important for us to see what the critics say about this bienali,” she said. “In Mardin we’re judging success by a different measure. We’re shifting the center of culture in Turkey just a little east. And ordinary people here are knowing and speaking about contemporary art.”