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ONLY BE ISTANBULITE
Only-Be Istanbulite
Maritime Exhibition in Istanbul
Istanbul is a city that manages to charm you, before you know it; its cultural diversity and the particular areas that characterize and define it, make tourists fall in love with the city. Istanbul is not only a place for history, antiques and mosques, Istanbul is also a window to the growing modern and post modern market and stands as one of the most unique cities in Europe and Asia. There is nothing better than getting lost in the streets of Istanbul and end up in unfamiliar areas, neighborhoods or communities that are dispersed and crossed by major avenues, making everyday life mixed with street traffic, some noise, but at the same time, a lot of movement, nightlife and long walks. A key destination for many travelers, Istanbul has always been the perfect bridge between Western and Eastern cultures. And of course, a large bridge business. Within this cosmopolitan context and for boat, ships, sailboats, and all types of shipping lovers, the Eurasia Boat Show returns in this, its sixth edition. This show of watercraft and accessories is the second largest worldwide. Keep in mind the business importance that this fair represent for the whole of Turkey and Istanbul, one should remember that last year more than 330 international producers of sailboats, yachts and boats presented their products at the show. It is estimated that the boats and equipment submitted cost at least 250 million dollars, and that many of these products were purchased during the Eurasia Boat Show. Something very impressive, especially in a world whose economy is collapsing everywhere. Is it that the richest are buying boats...
Topkapi Palace in Istanbul
Topkapi Palace is located between the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn, offering an incredible view of the Bosphorus, the straight that on one hand links the Sea of Marmara with the Black Sea and on the other it separates Asia and Europe. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1985. The palace complex is made up by four main patios and small adjacent buildings. In its time of splendor, it held over 4000 people and it covered a vast area on the shore. The complex extended itself with time. The biggest renovations took place at the beginning of the 16th century, after the earthquake that shook the city and then, again, in the 17th century after a fire. The palace is managed by the Turkish Culture and Tourism Ministry and it´s guarded by officials of the Turkish army. It has hundreds of rooms and chambers where we find the bearers of Ottoman architecture with wide collections of porcelain, costumes, arms, shields, armors, Islamic manuscripts, miniatures, murals and the maximum exponents of Ottoman jewels and treasures. The palace´s structure is pretty complex, with small buildings constructed around the interconnected patios through galleries and walkways. Generally, the buildings are just of one floor. In-between them, there are wonderful sacred trees, gardens and fountains. This way, they transmit a relaxing atmosphere to the palace inhabitants by having the doors and windows looking towards the patios, which also brought fresh air in the hard and hot Istanbul summers. The palace is a vast rectangle, divided in four patios and a harem. The first patio was the most accessible one while...
Shopping at the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul
Being in Istanbul is essential these days; especially to understand the great changes that are happening at all levels in terms of flows and crossings between East and West. The city itself has immense dimensions, however walking from side to side through Istanbul is possible if you spend long hours, exploring its ancient streets, visit its shops, cafes, bars and mosques, and close encounters that are one step east closer than you think. With a highly cosmopolitan population, people from all over the world gather in Istanbul to learn about their ancient culture, the beauty of its buildings and its old quarters filled with shops and antiques. With over 500 years, the Grand Bazaar is the largest in the city and probably the oldest. It is located in the old side of Istanbul and has thousands of stores at your disposal. In this fabulous bazaar you can find carpets, jewelry, jewelry for a really impressive level and fabulous desserts, spices, and infinite number of products for all needs. The prices are relative depending on your interest of course. Vendors in the bazaar, with both eyes open for tourists. However, do not hesitate to haggle when you find a product in the Grand Bazaar, and to bargain prices is part of the custom in Turkey in general. Until you get to a price as you do not buy anything yet. This incredible bazaar is the father of what we now call “mall” at first scale. It´s that simple. However, in the bazaar you can find even the warmth of a market and the movement and curiosity of both, sellers and...
Exhibition of Women Artists in Istanbul
Up until 22 January the Istanbul Modern hosts a unique exhibition, Dreams and Reality –Modern and Contemporary Women Artists from Turkey, which brings together the work of more than a century of Turkish female artists. The exhibition curated by Fatmagül Berktay, Çal?ko?lu Levent, ?nankur Zeynep and Pelvano?lu Burcu includes the work of 74 artists from various disciplines of work, which range from painting to video. The museum wanted to give the exhibition an aura of mystery and romance, as well as a literary flavour, and so they chose the title of the book Dreams and Reality, to bring together this galaxy of top female artists in the Turkish scene. The original novel was written by Ahmet Mithat and Fatma Aliye. The exhibition is also a snapshot of the social changes experienced by Turkey. Through these works you can see the new perspective of modern Turkey and the role that women occupy in it. This exhibition demonstrates that in recent years Turkish women have managed to gain a level of importance in the art world that necessitates an exhibition dedicated only to them. That fact alone demonstrates the extent of the political and social advancement of women in this country. To accompany the exhibition, the museum is hosting a series of symposiums, lectures, forums and meetings to discuss women in art and the political process that accompanies this participation, as well as feminist theories and developments since its emergence in the 1960s, and discussions about gender and the role of women in Turkey. In the work of these 74 artists, you can read part of the history of women in Turkey. You can see their...
Istanbul and the labyrinths of memory
The memory, it is something we do not own, far from being a static power, it moves in the realms of imagination, the things we see, only can kept apart from how we remember or represent them, being this second aspect what constitutes our perception of the world and apparently many of the impressions that our senses collect outside. In the same way that Around the Day in Eighty Worlds, book in which Julio Cortazar comments the disappointment felt by not a few critics at the sets Stravinsky´s ballet Petrushka, when years later she was back to ballet stage thanks to Diaghilev and how worthless the Russian Bakst protests were (which had to be repainted to enhance the tones) that were exactly the same, perfectly preserved, and had not lost any of his blinding objectively chromatic qualities, the Argentine writer related an anecdote that illustrated disturbingly the case on his trip by the Greek lands. A month before leaving, a close friend had told him as was the journey from Athens to Cape Sounion, place where presumably Cortázar wanted to go, maybe not so much to see the temple of Poseidon as the firm stopped right there at the time Lord Byron. When Cortazar did it, leaving the Greek capital, the same itinerary, things seemed to be significantly different than his friend had suggested. This told of a dusty square to which suited arrive very early to avoid running out of room in the bus, a vehicle parked dilapidated await in the middle of the street, near the place occupied by pistachio salesmen, protected from sun in the shade...
Istanbul and the age of the Mediterranean
In an entry related to Rome in this fabulous logbook, we talked about that beautiful scene in Kubrick´s ´Spartacus´ in which the head of the gladiators, after listening to the recitation of a moving song of gnostic echoes regarding the return home (“When the shining sun withdrew from the sky / When the wind blew its last breath on the mountain / When the lark couldn´t be heard no more in the fields / When the foam of the sea slept like a girl / And the pink twilight caressed the world / I returned home) he´s defeated by the desire and sadness of only knowing how to fight, of not being able to sing beautiful songs and making people believe in them, of not knowing how to read or write, of not knowing anything, of feeling ignorant. Of not knowing, for example, why the stars and birds don´t fall from the sky, why the sun abandons the scene when night falls, why the moon changes shape and where the wind comes from. His great love, Varinia. after looking at him unforgettably, responds to this last question talking to him about a cave far away in the north where a young god sleeps whose breath animates and agitates the night winds every time he breathes dreaming about a girl. Maybe there´s never been anything to know, maybe all experiences are strictly incommunicable, maybe all knowledge is exclusively based in the fable. But our need to know is so big that we can´t beat the wanting to legitimise the stories that we invent to calm our mind. The truth, in...
Orhan Pamuk and Istanbul
Given the personal conviction of Orhan Pamuk, based on his first-hand experiences as an Istanbul-born, that the feeling that best serves to describe Istanbul in the last one hundred and fifty years, and notably from the disappearance of the Otoman Empire, is of bitterness, which has a lot of melancholy, or rather an essentially bitter melancholy. And the fact that this statement, in no way exclusive in relation to the unconditional love that Pamuk feels for the city, a true protagonist of some of his most important books, is not easy to digest for a number of his co-citizens, the Turkish writer has confessed to feel some sort of undeniable happiness every time that he reads of listens other say that melancholy is the most identifying attributes of old Byzantium, like it happens for example in the books of French writers who visited it in the 19th century most notably Gérard de Nerval, from who it can be said that he carried his ´black sun of melancholy´ wherever he went. And, on his tail and always following his footsteps, his friend Théophile Gautier, author of a splendid book of articles titled ´Constantinople´. They both contributed to make Pamuk feel vindicated for having wanted to speak so much about the feeling that this city produces to him, where he´s spend his entire life voluntarily. Curiously, Nerval never piled on the agony when he talked about Istanbul in his ´Voyage en Orient´. It´s just that the melancholy was stuck to his skin and his soul and, despite his attempts to distance himself from them, it was impossible to do so. When...
Taksim Square and the confines of the city
In the preface to his strange book of poems the liveliest surprise, the firmness of my character, which offeres different possibilities of reading, none of which you have the feeling that the poem ends or can be understood in its entirety, as a sort a gloss to the book by Georges Perec Species of spaces, the Samoan writer Albert Hanover makes us partakers of the feeling of dread, helplessness and confusion, as well as his rare attraction for the confines of things, the city limits. There, he quickly realized, always a place, actually many places where cities ended. Naturally he was aware that for the same reason, could be said of them as being points where the city began, but the fact is that he always had the feeling that things were not exactly true, that the places where the city ended up rarely coincided with those where they started. Perhaps because of this obsession, he had recorded as a high flame in memory, that it was a space inhabited by the imagination and therefore constantly moving image maker, things like the evening stroll by Leonard Bast in Howards End, who tried to follow the stars and, as described in a book, before he knew it he had come out of London and ended up lost in a forest, or the testimony of the actor, theater director, writer and Spanish filmmaker Fernando Fernan-Gomez, on his own particular way of celebrating the end of the war (buying a bottle of cheap cognac and exhilarating to walk and walk out of the city and come to some neighboring village). He was...
Istanbul Biennale
Between the 17th of September and the 13th of November, Istanbul gets ready to celebrate, with the Istanbul Biennale 2011, a gathering of the best contemporary artists, art theorists, and international public in the name of seeing, and contemplating art and creation. The Biennale is organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and the Arts (IKSV) which since 1987 has been successfully running this event now considered to be one of the most important, exciting arenas for the world of international art. The Biennale has paved the way for an international cultural network covering all spheres of art, and has been a great generator for great cultural tourism. Today the Istanbul Biennale competes with the most prestigious art gatherings in the world such as the Venice, Sydney and Sao Paolo Biennales. Its creators had the brilliant idea of designing a model of exhibition which is open to a dialogue between the artists and the spectators, which goes by the motto: Contemporary art in traditional spaces, changing the relationship between the artist and the museum – an institution historically accused of being an elitist space. The geographical situation of Istanbul makes it a connecting point between Europe and Asia; thus a collision the East and West, so it was essential that the project be a place open to transcultural dialogue. The curator of this year´s Biennale are Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Pedrosa, who have conceptualised the event as a space which will attempt to explore the relationship between art and politics. In this edition, the exhibited works will express a clear political dimension, having been chosen for their innovative part...
