Canan Batur

Dissertation Title: Museums in a Time of Crisis: L’Internationale as a model of Resistance

My understanding of curating can be described in several ways; artist focused, audience driven, attentive to politics and representation, and based on care. I am enthused by the potential of the curatorial to open up new ways of dealing with one’s own position while empowering dialogues, prioritizing urgencies and reflecting ways of dealing between independent research and institutional responsibility, between innovative ways of distributing the knowledge and collective form of production.

My interests, during my time in CCA, have shifted from stems of the causal relationship between technology and human nature, to the act of working closely with artists and providing them the necessary direction, whilst still responding to the urgencies and absorbing the surrounding conditions to change what we have into what we want. Art, in my perspective, has an invisible social contract with its public, from being mirror of life itself to reshaping the imaginary of life.

My projects within the period of my studies at RCA demonstrate these interests. My graduate project, titled #DoingItinPublic, developed through questioning of the idea of public while thinking on conditions aroused with the diminishing of public spaces, which is especially undergoing extremely in London, and regarding on where the notion of public art lies. This project sought to manipulate conventional understanding of public art and the idea of public in general by commissioning two performances as public art - which also focuses on the ephemerality of - and commissioning it within a semi-commercial, Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall. I curated a project titled "Off to Mahagonny" in which I was also focusing on disparities between communities and the intense gentrification is being experience in Rye Lane, Peckham. Whilst the show itself was done for the original community located there, the main audience was the local producers and buyers in the area.

During my studies at RCA, I have established a project space called clearview.ltd, which is mainly focusing on emerging artists and giving them a budget, curatorial support, accommodation and studio space. clearview is a contemporary art project with its base on Fountayne Road, Tottenham (Haringey, North London). clearview is a residency program, a project space, a series of events and a collective, dedicated to the vision of invited practitioners.

Recent shows:

Josefina Nelimarkka ‘ yonder X return’

Jakob Rowlinson ‘Dissecting the Archive’

Raphael Moreira Gonçalves ‘AND SEE THE LAND WHERE CORALS LIE…’

Teddy May de Kock ‘ Duets’

Jala Wahid ‘Shahmaran’

Thomas Hamen ‘Let your Animation Run Wild’