ONCE
UPON

A

TIM
E

INCONCEIVABLE

WITH KINDCOLLABORATION OF

ONCE
UPON

ON THE OCCASION OF
OUR 10 YEAR MILESTONE

A

TIM
E

INCONCEIVABLE

Abbas Akhavan
Hera Büyüktaşçıyan
Banu Cennetoğlu
Ceal FloyerGülşah Mursaloğlu
Zeyno PekünlüPaul Pfeiffer
Amie Siegel
Mario García Torres

EMBAJADA EN TURQUÍA

September 4 - October 10, 2021
Fridays - Sundays, 15:00 - 20:00

WITH KINDCOLLABORATION OF

EMBAJADA EN TURQUÍA

Yeni Kundura Building, Beykoz Kundura
Yalıköy, Süreyya İlmen Cad. 1 Beykoz, Istanbul

ONCE UPON A TIMEINCONCEIVABLE

Active, relational, and hence vulnerable to manipulation and predisposed
to working-outs; perception is ‘not something that happens to us or in us,
but something that we do (...) We enact our perceptual experience.’’1 Fromphenomenology to neuropsychology, how we grasp and relate to the world
around us has been a long lasting subject across many schools of thoughts,
albeit how we process, digest and take in and hold, so to say how we conceive
what we perceive has been under-speculated. From the moment of bodily encounter

ALPER TURAN

with an object to its so-called mental representation and to internalization which
render the experience of perception mundane and turns the subject blind to theobject’s further capacity, this journey of perception and realization is inherently
linked to art’s ontology as well. With the works of conceptual artists, the exhibition
traces down the protocols of perception and problematizes the petrification ofreceived ideas. What art can teach us about how we perceive things? How do
we conceive them? How can we re-perceive and de-conceive them?
Milestone marking Protocinema tenth year (10 human year, 1 and half dog year,
0.043 Plutonian year, and so and so forth), Once Upon A Time Inconceivable also
engages with the question of time and positions temporality at the heart of its
inquiry. Without essentializing the time as an agent dictating new perspectives
on order and ‘nature’ of things, with the works of time-based media, as well as
the ones which are activated, transhaped or reconfigured with and through time,the exhibition comes to grips with the force of elapsed time and probes ourperception of multiple temporalities.
Contrasting to the immensity of the exhibition space with its minimal, almost
invisible presence, Ceal Floyer’s work Viewer (2011-21), a peephole installed at
the glass door of Beykoz Kundura, points how we look at things, what we look atand the limits of our angles of view and visibility. In conventional household usage,
peephole separates private, so-called safe space from the outer worlds that

Protocinema is happy to present Once Upon a Time Inconceivable, a groupare fraught with exposures; with its one-directional viewpoint, it gives privileged

exhibition on the occasion of our ten year milestone, cross-examining the pair

positions to the insiders. In Floyer’s positioning, conversely, the distinction betweenof perception and realization, and their impairments in relation to time andinside and outside becomes vague and equalised, now the perceiver and thespace, bringing together works by Abbas Akhavan, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan,perceived are both exposed to one and another. Being a sculpture which is bothBanu Cennetoğlu, Ceal Floyer, Gülşah Mursaloğlu, Zeyno Pekünlü, Paul

what we look at and something we look through with, Viewer ironically plays

Pfeiffer, Amie Siegel, and Mario Garcia Torres. Coming at a crucial momentwith unfixed positions of art-viewer and art-object. Floyer’s second work in theof crisis and loss that urges us to rethink all establishments and reevaluate

exhibition proposes another mode of viewing. Overgrowth (2004) is a slide projection

personal, local and global relationships, Once Upon a Time Inconceivableof a tiny bonsai tree scaled up to the size of a large wall. The tree’s dimensions areinvites us to reassess curious workings of perception and realization. Throughthe artworks bending perceived temporalities and conceived spatialities, thisexhibition sheds light on the process of discernment.

4

5

1

Noë, Alva. Action in perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT press, 2004, pp. 1-5.

determined solely by the distance that the projector is from the wall which makes

Paul Pfeiffer’s Orpheus Descending (2001), a multi-channel video of 1800 hour,the distance between the wall and projector, rather than the projected image, thedisplays the 75-day-life-cycle of a flock of chickens as they are being incubated;subject of the work. The only still image in the exhibition, Overgrowth offers a paused

they hatch from their eggs and develop from day-old chicks to full-grown adults.

moment of reflection on distance and proximity, and their dispositions’ relativity.

While the original live version of the video, installed in the World Trade Center
three months before its destruction, displayed the chickens in real time, this new

Protocinema has a long-lasting flirtation with moving image and screen works;

version, shown in Istanbul 20 years after its first realization, brings all that has

it takes its title from a Werner Herzog quote from his film Cave of Forgotten Dreams

been lost along the way in changing times and spaces. Borrowing its title from(2010) in which he comments on one of the oldest cave drawings discovered showing

Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play and loosely referring to mythological ill-fatedanimals with eight legs instead of four and he speculates: ‘‘Maybe this is man’s

journey to Underworld, and initially installed at the now-gone World Trade

first attempt to represent motion, maybe this is protocinema.’’ Protocinema is anCenter’s bowels where 19 escalators used to carry almost a million people

ambulatory institution which is always in motion and in the pursuit of understanding

everyday, Orpheus Descending was initially conceived for a passer-by audienceand responding to the world in motion. Correspondingly, the exhibition marking its

and to propose a point of conjunction between organic and urban lives, and theirmilestone both incorporates many video works and responds to its venue Beykoz

different paces and temporalities. While this artwork is about different constructions

Kundura, once upon a time a leather and shoe factory which now serves as a setof time, it is also about consciousness of the passing of time, which is synonymous

where movies and TV series are shot.

with death. We witness the lives of the animals for seventy-five days, and the video
ends on the last days they were together, before being sent for slaughtering. Today,

Mario García Torres’ Spoiler Series (n.d.) featuring canvases and posters disclosing

after September 11 that altered the course of our lives internationally, we are being

the endings of well known movies come out of a research, which asserts that

invited to witness and celebrate the lives of the now-gones.

knowing the end of a narrative movie actually enhances the experience of thefilm, suggesting how, when not focused on an unknown outcome, we maintain ourAmie Siegel’s video, Quarry (2015), on the other hand, traces the source of

capacity to read multiple layers of complexities. While his small scale canvases aremarble from the largest underground quarry in the world in Vermont to its high-end

scattered around the exhibition space and waiting to be discovered by the audience,

destination in Manhattan real estate showrooms. The film unearths elaborate layers

the poster versions mimicking promotional movie posters are installed at various

and strategies of recreation and simulation and proposes an alienation journey

movie kiosks elsewhere in Istanbul as well as Kars, Ankara and İzmir. This gestureof the metamorphic rock that was once raw to become a signifier of luxury andposes manifold questions of the artwork’s status as an authentic object versus

exclusivity. We follow the marble from a cold quarry evocating a raw graveyard

mass-produced and received message as well as the artist’s role (!) as a spoiler andto shiny but lifeless sales galleries of high-end developers; marble that is associatedexperience-shifter. Most remarkably, the series put forward how one cannot damage

with classical renaissance sculpture is being deployed in Manhattan condos tonor spoil one’s individual experience of art, be it a narrative movie or a painting.

equate real-estates to works of art. Via long parallel tracking shots using seemingly
objective gaze, Siegel’s meticulous and poetic rendering of extraction of natural

Without a Camera (2021) by Zeyno Pekünlü sources 325 different videos fromresources exposes a complex economy of production and speculation without zooming

an online video-sharing platform shot by people, machines and things, offeringin on the labor but the crucial conjunction of the concepts of labor, value and art.

a remake of the film classic Man with a Movie Camera (1929) by Dziga Vertov.
Pekünlü’s video runs parallel to the original editing of Elizaveta Svilova, but it

Hera Büyüktaşcıyan’s new sculpture contends a different manoeuvre of unearthing

replaces the camera and the cameraman with camera operator and new recording

and recalls the marble in a disparate aesthetic. Skindeep (2021) resonates withtechnologies such as mobile phone cameras, selfie sticks, GoPro’s and built-in

the site of Beykoz Kundura, once a factory that mass produced paper and leather

computer cameras. These technologies render humans now as appendages ofand is currently a film set. Taking the building’s ongoing relation to skin and façade

the devices and questions how our perceptions and realizations have been altered(or façade as a skin and vice versa) which as being surfaces covering but also

via new apparatus. Just like Man with a Movie Camera, Pekünlü does not follow

recollecting things and in any case directs our perception, Büyüktaşçıyan invests

a scenario nor a spoil-able narrative but proposes a collection of momentsin the morphology of surfaces that bears traces of time through material poetics.

showing multitudes of contemporary coexistence of living and nonliving objects.

67Connecting her question on skin to her ongoing research around and inspiration

by the Byzantine heritage and the contemporary local politics around it which arespaces in disparate times and geographies, marking meeting points. Here, what weonce again manifesting through converted buildings, covered mosaics and hidden

see are idled pipes that are constantly being frosted by a cooling engine, standing

histories, Büyüktaşçıyan takes carpet as object of inquiry to activate the space.

like a displaced chandelier, or a misguided satellite, time standing-still. Running

As the authorities strategically deployed carpets in recently re-purposed Hagia

water is now gone and missing; splashes are ghosts. This displaced and disabled

Sophia to cover the Christian imageries and emblematic marble grounds with

fountain is another excavation model that the exhibition brings together alongside

thousands of square meters of carpeting, Skindeep uses the carpets to recall

the works of Amie Siegel, Hera Büyüktaşçıyan and Gülşah Mursaloğlu: Abbas

the memories of the marbles. The relative of skin, shield and cover, the carpets

Akhanan unearths a submerged inner system of a public spectacle. In its territorial

are put into a motion with the help of a structure to eventually create a melting

subtlety, spring (2021) criticizes the suspended publicity, numbed actions, frosted

movie stage, the decor of covering and hiding which is unavoidably haunted byflow whilst this fountain on pause still contains a potential splash.

what is covered and/or hidden.
What comes after perception and realization? Action? Banu Cennetoğlu’s
The aesthetic of melting is more an active processual element in Gülşah

installation ‘‘IKNOWVERYWELLBUTNEVERTHELESS’’ (2015-ongoing) embodying

Mursaloğlu’s new work , where she stages an investigation on heat, the actors

the title in Turkish with 24 black letter-shaped mylar balloons interrogates ifof the underworld and their elastic temporalities, by connecting things withknowing what we know necessarily leads to an action. Quoting from the French

different temporalities to create an exhibition-long event. A part of her ongoing

psychoanalyst Octave Mannoni who studied the relationship between psychology

interest in the will of the materials and time’s contingent persistence on matters,

and colonialism with an indisputable bias and reductionism, this text refers to

Merging Fields, Splitting Ends (2021), Mursaloğlu creates a dynamic system thata belief in something that is at odds with one’s own experience, in a word: denial.

expands throughout the exhibition, employing time and heat as central agents.

Drawing from Freud’s theorization of fetish as at one and the same time to believe

She uproots potatoes, and suspends them in the air after transforming themin phantasy and to recognize that it is nothing but a phantasy which no way reduces

into bioplastic sheets and sewing them together, and then let us watch anotherits power on individual, Manoni asserts social systems operates through forms oftransformation with the help of water that heats up in irregular intervals,beliefs akin to fetishist’s disawoval so much so that the misinformation turns into

generating heat and steam that are slowly disintegrating the sheets. From thebelief which snowball as faith and commitment3. Cennetoğlu, as an artist whose

heat the potato needs to grow to producing the ephemeral bioplastic sheets out

practice uses and problematizes the dissemination of information, its legitimacy

of famously long-lasting potatoes, to the hot plates activated by electricity andand illegitimacy and its distortion within the prisms of ideologies, interrogatesboiling of water and its ultimate force on sheets; all the visible and invisible

here the information’s potential and impotency in triggering political action.

entropic workings of heat are components and conditions of this sculptural-

Helium-filled balloon letters are floating in the space, rearranging themselves

installation. Heat, ‘‘the microscopic agitation of molecules’’ , reveals the flows

and possibly creating new meanings, being activated and deactivated with thebetween material states and how things get connected in space, communicating

room temperature and architectural conditions of the space. As we know via

with one another in imperceptible ways.

physical laws that in the course of the exhibition, helium will escape, the balloons

2

will deflate and the expression will deform; nevertheless, maybe they will stayContrasting Mursaloğlu’s investigation on heat as an agent of movement, Abbas

intact, maybe we do not know very well.

Akhavan’s work is a monument of a halt - his new sculpture uses temperature
to stop movement, freezing what was once fluid. Constructed of the innards of‘‘I know very well, but nevertheless...’’ bears the logic also applicable to art’s modepre-existing public fountains and of new extensions that expands the orbit ofof operation, it is the work of the magician whose tricks are not magic but perfect

fountains, the object is frozen viscera of a speculative urban spring. From theillusion. Art (art-making, art-mediating, art-viewing, or art-valuing), is about

middle ages to today, to make a spectacle of prosperity, to celebrate the running

perceiving illusionary gestures, being pre-determined to investigate between

water or to provide drinking water, fountains have been at the center of public

the lines, constant attempt to grasp something beyond what’s already given,

2

Rovelli, Carlo. The order of time. Riverhead books, 2019, p. 21.

8

9

3

Mannoni, Octave. “I know very well, but all the same….” Perversion and the Social Relation: 68-93.

understanding that literal has the transcendental capacity. We act out to perceive
what can easily go unperceived if we do not act it out. Artworks beg the viewers
to find a meaning from the artist ‘‘while at the same time rendering it untenable’’4
Viewers are forced into a turning point, “the moment when they have seen everything
they can, and they sense it’s time to look away.”5 Turning point is when they do
not look away, they pursue the journey in and out, moving with the artwork andeventually when they get back to themselves, to their body, becoming the centerof the artwork. Once Upon A Time Inconceivable is about turning points; it is aninvitation for not looking away.

4

Nodelman, S. The Rothko Chapel paintings: Origins, structure, meaning. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997.

5

Elkins, J. Pictures and tears; a history of people who have cried in front of paintings. New York: Routledge, 2001, p. 11.

10MULTITEMPORALSENSATIONS

shuffle, we have come to recognize that these anniversaries are subtended by long,protracted processes; deep, interlacing currents and countercurrents. Among them,
global warming, species’ extinction, colonialism, capitalism. How do we survive at atime when the past resonates so strongly? Can we listen to these pasts that resonate
so much like the five horsemen of the apocalypse to find new ways of knowing andunderstanding? Can we still imagine a future despite or through the static?

LARA FRESKO MADRA

This exhibition was initially titled Imperceptible and Inconceivable. That is, notonly unavailable to sensory perception but also excluded from imagination. Yet as
blindsided or overwhelmed as our senses seem to be by global crises like global
warming and COVID-19, imagination is not only alive and well but also thriving ina moment of multi-temporal glitch. The expansion of our temporal modes of grasp
has brought with it new perspectives on materiality and sensibility, a reevaluationof what we know and how we know it, and a renewed embrace of fiction as
something that is not quite opposed to fact but necessary for its conjuring.

The Fall of 2011 feels a lifetime away. And it is exactly the lifetime of Protocinema,Once Upon a Time Inconceivable presents in the storied time of fairy tales towhich opened its first exhibition in Istanbul on September 12 of that year. This

articulate the varied and ever entangled ways in which we have come to actively

opening date coincided with the anniversary of Turkey’s 1980 coup-d’etat andlive and perceive in a multiplicity of past, present, and future tense. Indeed, thistangentially avoided the anniversary of 9/11. Incidentally Dan Graham’s works on

exhibition is not so much a retrospective as it is an introspection. It asks after

display were concerned with public space and social interaction, things that had

where to go from here; how to face the complex resonances of the past without

been deeply impacted by the two events thirty-one and ten years ago respectively.

being drowned by it. It is an anniversary. But not of something that is said andOne part unwittingly and one part unavoidably, Protocinema began its journey

done but of something that is diffusely extant, ever changing, and still hopeful.

between New York and Istanbul by scrambling the present with multiple pasts.

Protocinema has, for the past decade, been a beacon for experimentation withThis exhibition’s opening does not coincide with anything off the top of my head.

its itinerant set-up and its vision that tended to the past, present, and future.

1

It does, however, coincide with the twenty-third anniversary of the founding of thesearch engine, Google: a technological tool that has made history and knowledge

Elizabeth Grosz suggests that time is neither fully present, nor pure abstraction.

so much more accessible, and yet has also overwhelmed us with it.

Looking at it directly is impossible. We are too close to it, too far from it. She writes:“We can think it only in passing moments, through ruptures, nicks, cuts, in instances

Retrospection is one of the more common modes of our perception. And it mayof dislocation.”2 Can artistic practice cut through time and space to engender

have been apt for Protocinema’s tenth anniversary exhibition to look back and takeperception? By the same token, can we imagine thinking of passing moments

stock of the past decade. Yet this past decade has seen us to think in much more

not just in retrospect or through the immediately visible but in ways that redistributediverse temporal modes. Each date nowadays seems to carry with it the burden of

the temporal and sensible axes of our perception? The artistic milieux’s interest inanniversaries. Google celebrates great thinkers and books and events on its landing

history has been critiqued and complemented by non-human-centric temporalities

page; social media and our phones remind us of memories closer to us. Birthdaysof hauntology, geological, and ecological time. Memory has been reconsidered as

and world altering achievements appear alongside attacks, bombs, coups, protests,

a practice in the present tense rather one solely regarding the past. The hegemonic

imprisonments, crises, fires, floods, hurricanes, losses. Their relations in constantacceleration of globalized time has been challenged by discourses and actions

1

It had previously shown the work of Mario Garcia Torres in New York City.

12

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2

Elizabeth A. Grosz, The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004, p. 5.

towards decolonization and degrowth, each relating to how time is imagined,

made of frozen pipes salvaged from dismantled public fountains imagines

grasped, used, and abused. Each temporality and the permutations thereof relate,the underbelly of public visibility by introducing freezer liquid into its systems.

in distinct ways, to the visual and the sensible spheres. How we imagine and engage

Meanwhile Gülşah Mursaloğlu’s Merging Fields, Splitting Ends (2021) sets up

time is changing. Will this shift in sensibility change the ways in which we act?

another system made up of kindred materials from under the surface of the earth:
metal, potato, and water. These elements are activated by heat and time to create

Banu Cennetoğlu’s citation of Octave Mannoni’s infamous “I know very well, but

a twofold increase in entropy. The vapor from water heated inside enameled vessels

nevertheless”, spelled out in Turkish with letters made of Helium-filled balloon,

are directed towards potato plastic –a new generation technology that relies on

in IKNOWVERYWELLBUTNEVERTHELESS (2015-ongoing), embodies and performs

the perishability of the potato rather than its storied durability. Temperature, likethe multiple temporalities along with conflicts of perception and in/activity. The

time, not only creates an irreversible entropic reaction within the system but also

statement points to a state of subliminal or willingly repressed state of awareness,

overflows from the works into the Beykoz Kundura Factory space and seeks our

implicating both the naïve sentimentalists and the witting realists in the face ofattention as much through what is immediately visible within the space as throughsurreal times. As the letters slowly deflate, move lower on the wall, and lose

our sensibility to the micro-climate it creates.

their shape, the first moments when they were blown up, the opening of the show
will have faded from our field of recollection. One disaster strewn after another

Anniversaries are often blown out of proportion. 2021 will see many art institutions

on a global field of vision does not yield a narrative history but rather, as Walter

in Istanbul mark their 10th anniversaries alongside that of Protocinema. This cluster

Benjamin would have it, a pile of debris. Neither the deformation of the lettersof anniversaries say as much about 2011 and the years leading up to it as they donor the piling debris, however, mark a rupture between the past and the present.

about the years since. It is difficult to slice up time, assemble a summary of the most

They mark rather, a complex, non-linear relation.

important moments, delimit the reach of influence between years and the events. If
nothing else, this past decade was marked by a rediscovery that perhaps it was not the

Istanbul is the epitome of this kind of multidimensional historical landscapesingular moments that mattered so much as the time and the ways it stretched out,

where spolia –reused architectural parts from old, demolished (or destroyed)

slowed down, accelerated, ebbed, and flowed. Protocinema has been nimble within

structures –are an inherent part of the architectural fabric and when you dig deeper,

these turbulent waters; negotiating time and space with each exhibition, location, andyou might encounter archeological traces from all the way back to 6000 B.C. In suchcollaboration, and its transforming and transformative vision. Once Upon a Timea landscape, what is buried haunts our imagination while much that is present andInconceivable, as Protocinema’s previous endeavors, boasts a wide selection ofvisible only surfaces in our consciousness occasionally. Hera Büyüktaşçıyan’s

sensory, aesthetic, and intellectual provocations that tend to our imagination.

practice has long considered the cartoonish trope of sweeping the dust of history
under the rug. In her new commission for Protocinema, titled Skin Deep (2021),
she explores the way architectural façades and coverings such as marble andcarpet plaster over scaffolding, disguising complex cultural and architectural
provenance. Appearances relate somewhat contingently to what we might
perceive. And time complicates this contingent relation even further.
As a deeper understanding of slow violence – that is the unspectacular yet

FURTHER READING:

profound ways long term, often latent effects of ecological and social violence

Batuman, Elif. “The Big Dig,” The New Yorker. August 31, 2015.

are exerted, experienced, and perceived– is formulated and the once impending

Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999.
Didi-Huberman, Georges. Survival of the Fireflies. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018.

climate catastrophe has jumped from silver screen dystopias to the incessantGrosz, E. A. The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004.

hum of the news, the hopeful trust in the modernist ideology of progress has

Gürbilek, Nurdan. The Orpheus Double Bind. Translated by Victoria Rowe, Holbrook. Hong Kong: Asia Art Archive, 2021.

been waning. The hegemony of the visible in our historical imaginary is in crisis.

Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011.

The hold of official history is being challenged by falling monuments and viruses
too small to be detected by microscope. Abbas Akhavan’s installation, spring (2021),

Lambert, Leopold (eds.). “They Have Clocks, We Have Time” The Funambulist: Politics of Space and Bodies Issue 36, Summer 2021.
Parikka, Jussi. A Slow, Contemporary Violence: Damaged Environments of Technological Culture. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016.

14

15

Rothberg, Michael. Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
Saybaşılı, Nermin. Mıknatıs-Ses: Rezonans ve Sanatın Politikası. Istanbul: Metis, 2020.

Abbas Akhavan, spring (production images) 2021. Sculpture.
© Abbas Akhavan and Protocinema. Courtesy the artist,
Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver and The Third Line, Dubai.

16Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Skin Deep (research image), 2021.
Sculpture, carpet and wood © Hera Büyüktaşçıyan and Protocinema.
Courtesy Green Art Gallery, Dubai

Banu Cennetoğlu, IKNOWVERYWELLBUTNEVERTHELESS, 2015-ongoing.
Installation. 24 helium inflated mylar balloons. Catalog view: Stories of
Almost Everyone, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, 2018, © Banu Cennetoğlu.
Courtesy the artist and Rodeo Gallery, London & Piraeus.

20

Ceal Floyer, Overgrowth, 2004, Medium format slide and medium format slide
projector, Dimensions variable. Installation shot: Monash University Museumof Art, Australia © Ceal Floyer. Courtesy Lisson Gallery; Esther Schipper
Gallery, Berlin, 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Massimo Minini, Berscia.

22

Ceal Floyer, Viewer, 2011/2021, Sculpture. Door viewer, glass,variable dimensions. © Ceal Floyer. Courtesy Lisson Gallery; Esther Schipper
Gallery, Berlin; 303 Gallery, New York; Galleria Massimo Minini, Berscia.

24Gülşah Mursaloğlu, Merging
Fields, Splitting Ends (image
from production process),
2021, Installation. Potato-based
bioplastic, thread, steel, water,
heating plates. Dimensions
variable. © Gülşah Mursaloğlu
and Protocinema.

26

29

Zeyno Pekünlü, Without a Camera (still), 2021. Video, 71’, color: sound.
© Zeyno Pekünlü. Courtesy the artist and Sanatorium Gallery, Istanbul.

Paul Pfeiffer, Orpheus Descending (still),
2001. Video installation, 75 VHS Tapes
Duration: 75 days. Originally commissionedby the Public Art Fund and installed at theWorld Trade Center and the World Financial
Center, New York, April 15 - June 28, 2001.
© Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy Paula Cooper
Gallery, New York.

Amie Siegel, Quarry, 2015. HD video, color:sound (still).
© Amie Siegel. Courtesy the artist and Thomas Dane Gallery.

32

Mario García Torres

Mario García Torres

In Inception... 2010,

A Number of Movie Spoilers Written

In Eşkıya...1996,

on Movie Posters Posted on Movie

In Fight Club...1999,

Theaters Around the City, 2021,

In Head-On!... 2004,

50 x 70 cm and 70-100 cm © MarioIn Matrix... 1999,

García Torres. Courtesy the Jan Mot,In Skyfall... 2012,

Brussels, Galleria Franco Noero,

In Selvi Boylum Al Yazmalım.. 1976,

Torino, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo.

In Süt Kardeşler...1976,
In Y Tu Mamá También... 2001
from Spoiler series. N.d. 9 Silkscreen
ink and acrylic paint on linen, 40 x 30 cm.
© Mario García Torres. Courtesy the
Jan Mot, Brussels, Galleria Franco
Noero, Torino, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo.

34

Amie Siegel

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan

Banu Cennetoğlu

Paul Pfeiffer(and other venues across Istanbul)

Abbas Akhavan

Ceal Floyer

Ceal Floyer

Gülsah Mursaloğlu

Mario García Torres(and cinema kiosks across Turkey)

ENTRANCE

Zeyno Pekünlü
Mario García Torres

EXHIBITION PLANNO SMALL ITCH

immediate space for me to come to my own realizations. In hindsight, I see that I
was taking back my art experience from the confines of capitalism and conformity,
in my own way. I did this for me; anyone who wants to join is welcome anytime.
This was no small itch. “Like a splinter in your mind driving you mad.” At that time,the idea of remote-office, a decentralized art organization, decidedly free of brickand mortar, permaculture approach to spaces and resources, was inconceivable.
For example, to use what is already there, “waste not, want not” content rich and

MARI SPIRITO

lean materially. Only ten years ago, any micro-business needed a physical space
to be legitimate and a website for reach. Today, you need a website to be legitimate
and social media for reach, and there is a growing global proliferation of independent
initiatives (art & otherwise) that operate this way. From this crush of insistentcollapse a “take back the night” approach to all aspects of our lives has come up.
Even dying and death are being wrestled from corporate systems of extractionand exploitation. To put “our money where our mouth is” we took our alreadyLet’s imagine a future moment where we look back to today’s world: how would

decidedly modest way of working, doing the most we can with minimal resources,

we narrate the human condition now? For example, Once Upon A Time there was a

one step further.

moment in history of unthinkable destruction, loss and grieving. The darkest depths
of human corruption and violation were revealed alongside a stillness that embodied

We felt excited about doing what we can by adapting even more sustainableboth terror and deep reflection.

exhibition-making models that reduce exploitation (of natural resources, laborand knowledge) and consumption (almost no shipping, flying or material waste).

Once Upon A Time, I made a phone call to one of my sisters who had recently

For example, artist Abbas Akhavan has been working in Istanbul for many years

moved to San Francisco from Boston. Her friend answered and told me that she

and lives in Montreal. He was happy to take on the challenge to work with us to

had been abducted by the Unification Church, aka Moonies, a destructive mind

create a new artwork from afar that is made by our team, under his close instruction.

control group. She has been lost to us in so many unimaginable ways since then.

Doing so, he is incorporating the current conditions and concerns into his material

In the years that followed, I reluctantly learned about behavior modification, thought

and process; it is another evolutionary step, collaborative instruction art. Abbas

reform, cults and the realm of the “mind as the final battleground”. In fact, mind

has worked with many different fabricators here, from bronze casting to tailors,

control is surprisingly easy; it is a cocktail of depravations including: information,

and was also happy to reduce his flights in light of the eco-crisis. Collaborating

sleep, privacy, nutrition, mixed with forced confessions and old-school coercive

with two innovative young architects, Eda Hisarlıoğlu and Awab Al Saati, we came

conformity. Eating starch and sugar together, for example, makes an individual

up with the exhibition design, walls, signage and seating which will all be recycled.

more compliant. I am mentioning this here because while perception and realization

The walls in Once Upon a Time Inconceivable are made of cardboard boxes, which

may be wide topics for an exhibition, that all art could potentially fit into, thisform towering grids and especially in this warehouse give the feeling of temporality.

personal experience underlining the power and fragility of our minds constitutes theThis whole show appears as if it could be packed in all these boxes and be gone thefountainhead of this exhibition. As in our contemporary culture, in which totalitariannext day. Maybe it makes it slightly more exquisite because we know it is here justtactics have become the norm, the stakes are even higher on how perceptions arefor now, just like life itself. Maybe this feeling that everything is fleeting is how weformed and what behavior/actions arrive as a result. Supporting freedom of mind

feel all the time. This process is unfolding before our eyes and requires time andand creating alternatives to undue influence are at the core of what we do.

space. One recurring question is “What happens when we value the process, theperson and the artwork equally?” Running beside that is “Do we have the capacity

Once Upon A Time, I had a longing for a plurality, to add on/converge with a multitude

to change our own thinking, actions, to break cycles of violence, once and for good?”of voices, worldviews, with the tools that were available to me: art and conversation.

The book on “how to” make and run your own art organization, working locallyI felt a barrier between me and my art experiences I had back then and imagined an

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within a global network, is being written now, by all of us.

Once Upon A Time, there was a specific place. Protocinema is known for our

Once Upon A Time, I had another phone call, this time from one of my brothers,site-aware commissions, responsive to locale.There is a logic behind what may

about our lost sister, a few years ago. I was looking into the garden of the French

seem like madness. Children need a solid home, community and unconditional

Palace in the company of debating seagulls. I cannot recall exactly what he said yet

love for their development and well-being. Inseparably, there is an equal need

I can feel that sensation in my body as I write this today. That moment was whento go out into the world, learn and engage. To be both grounded and mobile are

I had the realization that my sister may never be well in this lifetime. For thirty years,

basic human rights and beautiful parts of life. I would even say that this is as

I had done everything I could for her. I always thought that one day she would lift her

essential as breathing itself, internal and external, to inhale and exhale, bothhead and everything would be different. I may have known intellectually that she

are equally indispensable. The exact opposite of forced migration and travel bans,

had crossed the line of no return, yet I had not really realized what was right in front

two sides of the same coin, as the adage goes. That said, not only have I beenof me. What is the space between realization and acceptance of what is known?

drawn to make Protocinema both based in Istanbul and New York, yet to also

Of course, the past eighteen months have given all of us much suffering, taken many

radiate out of these places programmatically. For example, our annual screening

precious lives and have also allowed the time to each have our own game-changing

tour, this year’s titled Permanent Spring, Delayed Bloom, curated by Asli Seven,realizations. Re-thinking and realizations are such prevalent outcomes of lockdown

goes out to twelve cities. Similarly, we also made a group show, A Few In Manythat mainstream media was full of articles on this phenomena. The Economist

Places, (in 2020 and again in 2021, this time co-curated with Abhijan Toto) thatpublished “My covid epiphany: a year of doing nothing changed everything” ontook place across six cities. We are focused on our locale, site and place, as our

May 12 and the New York Times had many stories, such as “Welcome to the YOLO

solid home and exhale to spread out to additional places for our mobility andEconomy”, You Only Live Once, which lead so many people to quit their jobs to go

further engagement.

party that it made a significant fiscal impact and companies are hard pressed tofind people willing to work, in April 21, this year.

In Once Upon A Time Inconceivable, we have two artists who have made work inthis mode: both grounded and radiating. Paul Pfeiffer’s Orpheus Descending (2001),

What can one little itinerant art organization do? What can each of us do? What can

is footage played in real-time the full life span of a flock of chickens, which, may

be done when we do it together? In Olivia Laing’s words:

feel excruciatingly slow, yet that is the way it is. We experience this video the same
way that we experience our own lives. For example, we have to wait about ten (long)

There are so many things that perhaps art can’t do. It can’t bring the dead backdays for the baby chicks to even hatch out of their eggs. This also counters art as a

to life; it can’t mend arguments between friends, or cure AIDS or halt the pace of

narrative edutainment, instead of being a lived experience, his video is more along

climate change. All the same, it does have some extraordinary functions, some odd

the lines of experimental film and life itself. This story is being told in our exhibition,negotiating ability between people, including people who never met and yet who

yet it does not stop there. Paul asked us to site five additional screens, running theinfiltrate and enrich each other’s lives. It does have the capacity to create intimacy;same real-time videos of his chickens (in memorial, they have been dead for twenty

it does have a way of healing wounds, and better yet of making it apparent that not

years) in sites around Istanbul: Moda, Beyoğlu, Kurtuluş, Beykoz town center, andall wounds need healing and not all scars are ugly.1

so on. In this way, the lives of passerby run parallel to the lives of the chickens.
This happens slowly over time in many places in the city at the same time. Another

How do realizations, these eureka moments, take us to places we never imagined, toartwork in this show that also does this, radiating out, is Mario García Torres’do things we never knew existed, in ways beyond conception? This is one milestone

Spoiler Series (n.d.), which will take two forms. One is that of small silk-screened

among many, I do not know what will happen down the road, I just know that we will

painted canvases hanging in this warehouse cum exhibition space. As the Spoiler

go there together; it will be something we cannot see from here, something

Series are all spoilers of well-known films, the second form of this artwork is thatcompletely inconceivable.

of posters, installed in movie poster kiosks all over Istanbul. It is almost as if his
canvases transformed themselves to be able to walk around the city on their own.
This sowing of an artwork into a multitude of additional physical places, adapting
to its context, mirrors how Protocinema activates as an organization and also
expands the breadth of this specific show.

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1

Olivia Laing, The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Picador, 2017, page 280.

ONCE UPON A TIME INCONCEIVABLE
On the occasion of our 10 year milestone

Board of Trustees
Defne Ayas, Dillon Cohen, David Howe, Jane Lombard, Ari Meşulam,
Jason Heard and Sheldon La Pierre, Ayşe Umur

Abbas Akhavan
Hera Büyüktaşçıyan
Banu Cennetoğlu
Ceal FloyerGülşah Mursaloğlu
Zeyno PekünlüPaul Pfeiffer
Amie Siegel
Mario García TorresInternational Commissioning Committee
Haro Cümbüşyan and Bilge Öğüt, Andrew Francis, Yasemin Vargı,
The Artisan İstanbul, Adnan Yerebakan
Protocinema is a Believer Institution of The Alternative Art Schoolwith support from Banu and Hakan Çarmıklı
Advisory Committee
Stephane Ackermann, Augusto Arbizo, Yona Backer, Elizabeth Baribeau,Ömür Bozkurt, Tamara Corm, Adib Dada, Koray Duman, Anne Ellegood, Reem
Fadda, Kate Fowle, Lia Gangitano, James Lingwood, Rose Lord, November
Paynter, Tuce Peksayar, Renaud Proch, Yasmil Raymond, Helen Warwick

September 4 - October 10, 2021
Fridays - Sundays, 15:00 - 20:00
Yeni Kundura Building, Beykoz Kundura
Yalıköy, Süreyya İlmen Cad. 1, Beykoz, İstanbul
Once Upon A Time Inconceivable ProtoZine Contributors
Writers: Lara Fresko, Mari Spirito, Alper Turan
Translator: Feride Eralp
Copy Editor: L. İpek Ulusoy Akgül
Graphic Designer: Ulaş UğurPublisher: Protocinema
Print: Umur Matbaa
Protocinema Team
Mari Spirito, Executive Director, Curator
Alper Turan, Cultural Manager, Curator
Ela Perşembe, Media & Funding Manager
Tansa Mermerci Ekşioğlu, Head of International Patronage
Once Upon A Time Inconceivable Exhibition TeamEda Hisarlioğlu, Production Manager
Awab AlSaati, Exhibition ArchitectUlaş Uğur, Graphic Designer
Production Team
Zeki Güngör & İltek Teknoloji, Mathias Taupitz, Eidotech,
Ergin Taşçı, Burcu Çimen, Esra Yavuz, Enise Uzanır,
Enes Alcı, Konrad Czech, Begüm Yıldırım
Press Inquiries
Protocinema: Alper Turan, alper@protocinema.org+49 17670518587, +90 5068706808;
Mari Spirito, mari@protocinema.org +1917 660 7332
Beykoz Kundura: Uğur Yüksel, ugur@thisiszu.com

EMBAJADA EN TURQUÍA

WITH KINDCOLLABORATION OF

EMBAJADA EN TURQUÍA

Gallery Courtesies
Abbas Akhavan Catriona Jeffreies, Vancouver; Third Line Gallery, Dubai
Hera Büyüktaşçıyan, Green Art Gallery, Dubai
Banu Cennetoğlu, Rodeo Gallery, London - Piraeus
Ceal Floyer, Lisson Gallery, London; 303 Gallery, New York;
Galleria Massimo Minimi, Brescia
Zeyno Pekünlü, Sanatorium, İstanbul
Paul Pfeiffer, Paula Cooper Gallery, NY; Thomas Dane Gallery, London;
Perrotin, Paris; carlier | gebauer, Berlin
Amie Siegel,Thomas Dane Gallery, London
Mario García Torres, Jan Mot, Brussels; Galleria Franco Noero, Torino;
Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo.
Supporters
With Kind Collaboration of Beykoz Kundura,
Protocinema is supported by Serpil and Buse Yıldırım; FfAI - The Foundation
for Arts Initiatives; The Cowles Charitable Trust, New Jersey; 601 Artspace,
New York, The Artisan Hotel, İstanbul, Ek Biç Ye İç, İstanbul; Embassy of
Mexico in Turkey for Mario García Torres; EVA International - Ireland’s
Biennial of Contemporary Art & SAHA, İstanbul for Zeyno Pekünlü.
Protocinema is a legally registered non-profit in the United States also
operating in Turkey. 501(c)(3) EIN Registration number 46-1366509
Copyright 2019 Protocinema, New York, Istanbul, all rights reserved.

Protocinema is a cross-cultural, mission-driven art organization,commissioning and presenting site-aware art in Istanbul, New
York, and elsewhere. We produce context-specific projects of thehighest artistic quality that are accessible to everyone. Protocinema
evokes empathy towards an understanding of difference, acrossregions through exhibitions, educational public programming, andmentorship. Protocinema maintains long-term relationships withartists nurturing sustained growth. Founded by Mari Spirito in 2011,
Protocinema is a registered 501(c)3, free of ‘brick and mortar’, sites
vary to respond both to global concerns and changing conditions
on the ground. protocinema.org
About Beykoz Kundura: As one of the important historical andcultural values of Turkey with its history dating back more than two
hundred years, Beykoz Kundura operates as a professional venue
rental entity and is a meeting point where creative ideas are produced in harmony with today’s dynamics at a glorious spot acrossthe Bosporus, since 2005. Kundura Cinema in 2018 marked thefirst stage in the redevelopment of Kundura as a multi-purpose arts
venue offers an alternative perspective in respect of films. In 2019,
the Boiler Room project also expanded to include Kundura Stage,aiming to be one of the leading venues of Istanbul, showcasing
international theatre, music and dance events. beykozkundura.com

PROTOZINE

Abbas Akhavan
Hera Büyüktaşçıyan
Banu Cennetoğlu
Ceal FloyerGülşah Mursaloğlu
Zeyno PekünlüPaul Pfeiffer
Amie Siegel
Mario García Torres

WITH KINDCOLLABORATION OF