| SALT | |
|---|---|
| Established | 2011 |
| Founded by | Garanti Bank |
| Location | SALT Beyoğlu Istiklal Cd. No:136 Beyoğlu, Istanbul Turkey SALT Galata Bankalar Cd. No:11 Karaköy, Istanbul Turkey |
| Website | saltonline.org |
SALT is a not-for-profit institution located in Istanbul, Turkey. Opened in April 2011, SALT hosts exhibitions, conferences and public programs; engages in interdisciplinary research projects; and sustains SALT Research, a library and archive of recent art, architecture, design, urbanism, and social and economic histories to make them available for research and public use.[1]
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SALT builds upon the foundations and activities of Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre, and Garanti Gallery, all of which have been dissolved. SALT’s mission is to explore critical and timely issues in visual and material culture, and cultivate innovative programs for research and experimental thinking. Assuming an open attitude and establishing itself as a site of learning and debate, the institution aims to challenge, excite and provoke its visitors by encouraging them to offer critique and response.[2]
SALT’s activities are distributed between two landmark buildings, SALT Beyoğlu and SALT Galata. The architectural renovation of both buildings has been undertaken by Mimarlar Tasarım, the office of Aga Khan Award for Architecture winner Han Tümertekin, with specific interiors commissioned to design and architecture offices from Turkey. SALT Beyoğlu’s commissions include Suyabatmaz-Demirel and Ömer Ünal; while SALT Galata features interior spaces designed by ŞANAL, Superpool, Arif Özden and Tanju Özelgin, Autoban, ZOOM TPU and Ömer Ünal.
The original building of SALT Beyoğlu was constructed between 1850 and 1860. Opening on Istanbul’s pedestrian street Istiklal Caddesi with the name Siniossoglou Apartment, the building initially functioned as retail space on street level, with domestic residences on its upper floors. When, in the 1950s, the Beyoğlu district’s population fell into decline,[3] the building ceased to function residentially, its space instead used for retail, political and artistic activities. Redesign of the building for contemporary use combines conservation of Siniossoglou Apartment’s original architectural elements, reinforcement of its structure, and a reorganization of the internal layout. SALT Beyoğlu hosts 1,130 square meters of exhibition space on three levels, as well as the Forum, Walk-in-Cinema, Café, Shop and Garden.
SALT Galata opens November 22, 2011. Originally designed by Alexandre Vallaury as the 19th century Imperial Ottoman Bank headquarters,[4] SALT Galata houses a specialized, public library and archive; spaces dedicated to research and workshops; an exhibition and conference hall; as well as the Ottoman Bank Museum.
Comprising an extensive library that focuses on the arts, architecture, design, urbanism, and social and economic history, as well as an archive of physical and digital documents, SALT Research is the hub of SALT Galata and fills the building's 650 square meter central atrium. The floor and mezzanine of the atrium previously served as the bank branch and still house the entrances to the original bank safes.
Designed by ŞANAL Architecture Planning, the library’s facilities have been developed to be user-centered; to meet Library 2.0 standards; and to reflect SALT’s desire to encourage research, learning and debate. Taking Alexandre Vallaury’s fusion of diverse architectural styles as a starting point, ŞANAL designed the different elements of SALT Research to respond to the history of modern design in Istanbul. Users of SALT Research may conduct online catalogue searches of the archive and library, watch art videos and other moving image material, and study archival documents on large digital screens.
Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914
November 22, 2011 - March 11, 2012
One of the opening exhibitions at SALT Galata, Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914 presents the story of archaeology in the Near East in a chronological narrative around selected archaeological sites. Exploring archaeological activities in social, cultural and political contexts across a wide geographical area that spans from Greece to Egypt, the exhibition examines local and foreign archaeological initiatives undertaken in the land of the Ottoman Empire over a period of nearly two centuries. Scramble for the Past was conceptualized and prepared by Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik and Edhem Eldem. A commissioned installation by Celine Condorelli functions as a support structure for the exhibition, with graphic design by Aslı Altay. In addition, two specially composed installations by artists Mark Dion and Michael Rakowitz further address some of the issues raised by the conceptual framework of the exhibition and touch on our everyday understanding of and relationship to the field of archaeology.
Modernity Unveiled / Interweaving Histories Modern Essays III
November 22, 2011 - January 22, 2012
Gülsün Karamustafa’s Modernity Unveiled / Interweaving Histories, first exhibited in Vienna in 2010, reflects upon the story of Austria's first woman architect, Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky. Working together with mentor Adolf Loos, and later, at the City Council of Frankfurt, with architect and city planner Ernst May, Schütte-Lihotzky designed public housing, educational facilities and community structures. Karamustafa’s installation pivots upon the grade school designs of Schütte-Lihotzky for the Village Institutes in Anatolia. The Village Institutes were part of governmental programs recognizing that economic and social progress started in rural areas. These programs were also a means of responding to the consequences of the Great Depression. The installation utilizes the scale of the original architectural plans and employs a detachable wooden structure to summon notions of construction and utilitarian modernism. Photographs underscoring the collective mobilization in Turkey during this period are arranged into the structure-like building units.
November 22, 2011 - January 22, 2012
The Foto Galatasaray project is based on the re-visualization of the complete professional archive of Maryam Şahinyan (Sivas, 1911 – Istanbul, 1996), who worked as a photographer at her studio in Galatasaray, Beyoğlu from 1935-1985. The archive is a unique inventory of the demographic transformations occurring on the socio-cultural map of Istanbul after the declaration of the Republic and the historical period it witnessed; it is also a chronological record of a female Istanbulite studio photographer’s professional career. Consisting entirely of black-and-white and glass negatives, the physical archive of Foto Galatasaray is a rare surviving example of the classical photography studios of Istanbul’s recent past. After Şahinyan left the studio in 1985, the archive was transferred to a storehouse belonging to Yetvart Tomasyan, owner of Aras Publishing. Twenty-five years later, approximately 200,000 negatives in the archive were, over the course of two years, sorted, cleaned, digitized, digitally restored, categorized and protected by a team under the direction of artist/researcher Tayfun Serttaş.
September 13 – December 31, 2011
The second comprehensive exhibition at SALT Beyoğlu, Becoming Istanbul explores contemporary Istanbul through an interactive database of over 400 media. An up-to-date collection of artists’ videos, photography series, documentaries, news reports, cartoons and architectural projects, the database is organized according to 80 concepts that instrumentalize typical discourses relating to the city and suggest new points of view. Its media include the visual productions of artists and researchers who have problematized actors and phenomena typically disregarded in urban discourse, as well as the declarations of decision makers involved in Istanbul’s current transformations.[5]
September 13 - December 31, 2011
The Making Of Beyoğlu is a series of workshops examining specific case studies in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district. In collaboration with Rotterdam-based Bureau Venhuizen, the project seeks to deconstruct proposed changes to Beyoğlu in an open dialogue with participants of different backgrounds.
November 1 - December 31, 2011
In 2010, Hrair Sarkissian spent two months in Istanbul documenting the history sections of various semi-private and public libraries and archives in the city, from the Archaeological Museum and Topkapı Palace Libraries to the Atatürk Library in Taksim, the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Ministry General Directorate of State, and the Ottoman Bank Archives and Research Centre. Sarkissian’s own history is closely tied to these books and files, as his grandparents were forced to flee from Eastern Anatolia to Syria in 1915. The official historical narrative around this period in the Ottoman Empire, as presented since its collapse and transformation into the Republic of Turkey, is a subject of increasing debate within Turkey.
The second exhibition in the Modern Essays series, Sarkissian’s photographs of rows of shelving caught in time and racks of files that appear rarely opened – of dark and oppressive spaces shot with only the light available – express the complexity of information these archives contain, and their role in denying or confirming the artist’s inherited history and existence within the present.
Across the Slope Modern Essays I
June 16 - October 1, 2011
Originally shown in 2008 at Centre d'Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona, Ahmet Öğüt's installation consisted of a modified Fiat 131 [[Mirafiori] balanced across a slope. The Fiat 131 Mirafiori was the dream car of the 1970s middle class in Turkey. In addition to domestic production, the 131 was manufactured in Turkey’s Tofaş factory as Murat 131, in Spain as Seat 131 and in Soviet Russia as Lada. While Mirafiori’s design and engine were imported to these foreign markets, its assembly was local. The classic middle class car of its era, today Mirafiori remains a symbol of modernization, and an early example of a developing culture around custom-made cars. Öğüt’s version of the 131, like the American automobiles of the 1950s, is elongated beyond the needs of luxury.
April 9 - August 7, 2011
SALT Beyoğlu’s opening exhibitions included a comprehensive selection of works by Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin – an artist, thinker, teacher, writer and curator who died in 2007. The exhibition "I am not a studio artist" also featured newly commissioned works responding to Alptekin’s life and the themes and issues that informed his practice. These artistic interventions were undertaken by Can Altay, Gülsün Karamustafa, Gabriel Lester, Camila Rocha and Nedko Solakov. SALT has acquired Alptekin’s personal library, and opens an extensive archive of images, notebooks, objects and other ephemera to the public November 22, 2011 at SALT Galata.
Laboratory ars viva 2010/11
April 9 - June 1, 2011
Laboratory ars viva 2010/11 featured the winners of Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft’s annual ars viva prize for promising young artists based in Germany. 2010 winners Nina Canell, Klara Hobza, Markus Zimmermann and Andreas Zybach explored the theme “laboratory” through new works. ars viva 2010/11 was first hosted by Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, and after SALT Beyoğlu completed its tour at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.