"Curating Contemporary Art" Seminar Program
Seminar: Curating — Is it an Ethically Constitutive Field, or What If Philosophers Were Curators?
Speaker: Prof. Dr. Hasan Bülent Kahraman
Time: 6:00-7:00 pm
Since the 1980s, the production of the artwork and the intellectual production of philosophy have increasingly converged. While the extent to which artworks influence one another remains open to debate, it is evident that philosophy has profoundly shaped the work of art—an actuality that has come to be articulated as contemporary art. The entanglement of contemporary art with philosophy, even its tendency to approach the condition of philosophical production itself, arises primarily from its relation to ethics. The oppositional, interrogative, transgressive, and critical stance of the artwork corresponds to an ethical position.
Thus, beyond the questioning of art as art, the ethical posture of art emerges as a bidirectional field of interaction. On the other hand, there is the curator’s act of selection, whose choices, categorically, must correspond to an ethical decision. Yet should this correspondence be understood in opere, as immanent to the work itself, or ex opere, as extending beyond the work toward a reality outside
About Prof. Hasan Bülent Kahraman
Prof. Hasan Bülent Kahraman is an academic, free-lance art and cultural critic and curator based in Istanbul. Holding a BA degree in Civil Engineering, and MA degrees in economics and art philosophy, he has a Ph.D. in political science. He studied, lectured and held chairs at Bilkent, Sabancı, Michigan and Princeton University. He is the Ertegun Professor at Princeton University. At Kadir Has University he was the Vice-President and the Dean of Faculty of Communication. He served as the President of Netkent University, the first fully on-line education university in Northern Cyprus and Turkey. He is now the Vice-Rector of Isik University and Head of the Strategic Plan. Working as a free-lance art curator and critic he was the Advisory Board member of Istanbul Biennale for 12 years. He is now sitting at the Executive Board of Sabanci Museum, Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair and works as the Chief Curator at Akbank Arts Center. He directed and was the Chief-Curator of Gallery KHAS. Kahraman was the Artistic Director of the Europalia-Turkey Festival, in Belgium for the full year of 2015. He is the Chief Curator of Abdullah Gul Presidential Library, Kayseri. The first Presidential and Political History Museum in Turkey. Kahraman has written extensively on art theory, culture theory, social theory and literary theory. Contributing to dailies for years he curated shows for Louis Bourgeois, Marcel Broodthaers, Magdelena Abakanowicz, Johan Tahon, Susie McMurray, Mureen Connor, Eda Soylu, Sıtkı Kösemen, Darion Mouradian, Genco Gülan and other numerous artists, both in solo and group shows. He published, edited and contributed to magazines and journals. He has contributed to the progress of contemporary art and literature in Turkey in the last 35 years. Kahraman has conducted various TV programs. He has more than 25 books and innumerous articles both in Turkish and English.
* This seminar is organized in collaboration between Akbank Sanat and Open Dialogue Istanbul
* To learn conditions of participation in a single seminar, we would kindly ask you to send an e-mail to apply@curatingcontemporaryart.org address noting the required seminar details. Single seminar participation fee is 850 TL for adults, 650 TL for students (VAT included).
* The program will take place on the online platform Zoom.