Protocinema

Protocinema is a non-profit art organization based in New York City and Istanbul, founded by Mari Spirito in 2011. Protocinema commissions and presents Site-Aware Art around the world, producing context-specific projects of the highest artistic quality that are accessible to everyone. Furthering its mission to engage cross-cultural dialogue, Protocinema has presented over 90 exhibitions, talks and screenings worldwide, including Istanbul, New York, Athens, Paris, Tangier Seoul, New Dehli, Porto, Moscow, Tbilisi, and Lima.

Protocinema evokes empathy towards understanding of difference, across regions through art exhibitions, public programming and mentorship. Protocinema creates opportunities for emerging and established artists from all regions; these artists share a dynamic affinity and are committed to raising consciousness on a range of issues, often using personal narratives to interrogate the socio-political. The exhibitions are typically presented outside of traditional art spaces, including parks, garages, abandoned spaces, and storefronts. Protocinema also partners with other non-profits and museums.

Protocinema was named after Werner Herzog’s film Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), and his comments about cave paintings: “Why do these drawings show the beast with eight legs instead of four legs? Maybe this is man’s the first attempt to represent motion, maybe this is protocinema.”

History

While working as Director of 303 Gallery in New York City from 2000-2012, Mari Spirito was “traveling to Istanbul quite a bit, to visit artists and work on projects. I was working through [303 Gallery] with artists who had long-term projects underway, such as Mike Nelson, Karen Kilimnik, Hans-Peter Feldmann and Doug Aitken ... That way of working with artists became really interesting to me, and I wanted to investigate that more with long term, site-specific works. Because I was going back and forth between New York and Istanbul, it was like a door opened to me—it was a moment when I knew enough people and I knew the context here, but I wanted to work between the two cities. That’s why I designed Protocinema.” According to Spirito, Protocinema’s approach to worldwide, traveling exhibitions is “about movement because we want to link cultures and create conditions for empathy, and it’s site-aware because it’s sympathetic to context.”

The first exhibition by Protcinema was in partnership with Rose Lord and Itinerant, and presented two 35mm slide works by Mario Garcia Torres from April 23 -l May 8, 2011, at 45 Orchard Street in New York. What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger (2007) investigated Martin Kippenberger's attempts to establish a Modern Art Museum on the Greek island of Syros. With a new work Cover Letter (2011), Garcia Torres examined the relationship between the artist and the art institution by re-presenting a letter recently sent to the Kunsthalle Bern. A review by The New York Times asked, “Can a museum be transient? The conceptual artist Mario Garcia Torres poses that question in this clever pop-up show … His two projects could be taken as artist proposals, job applications, travelogues, or documentaries.” In 2012, Protocinema presented the U.S. premiere of Ahmet Ögüt’s Oscar William Sam. This video was filmed in Zucotti Park three days before the NYPD removed all tents and sleeping bags and cleared the Occupy Wall Street camp. The title is suggestive of the acronyms often used by Law enforcement, emergency and military forces, and the identity of the figure in the film is unclear - he could be a police informer, one of the occupiers, or a computer game character. He is seen pointing out individuals in the camp and identifying them by first name; the names used are the most popular in the US. The video alludes not only to the putative anonymity of the collective movement but also the ambiguous shift in the relationship between power and impotence, between perpetrators and victims.

Also in 2012, Protocinema commissioned and presented 121st NIGHT an event-artwork by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster that took place in Istanbul, on the night of a full moon. The guests of the event were unaware of what they were going to experience; as time passed, recognizable images of fictional characters emerged: Holly Golightly, Hrundi V. Bakshi or Alicia Huberman, All films alluded to had parties at the center of their narratives: Les Nuits de la pleine lune (1984), Notorious (1946), The Exterminating Angel (1962), The Party (1968), and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1963).

From September 12 - October 25, 2013, Protocinema presented Trevor Paglen’s Prototype for a Nonfunctional Satellite (Design 4; Build 3), a 4-meter tall model for an orbital spacecraft. Developed in conversation with aerospace engineers, Prototype for a Nonfunctional Satellite (Design 4; Build 3) was a sculpture designed to be placed into low-earth orbit and reflect sunlight from space down to the earth's surface. Once launched, it appeared as a bright point of light slowly moving across the sky over several months, before burning up in the atmosphere. The sculpture was displayed in an abandoned mechanic garage off of Dolapdere Caddesi, just north of Gezi Park. Time Out Istanbul said of Paglen, “Though much of [his] previous work has been openly critical of surveillance and secret government power, especially in the United States, he says he’s taking a different approach with his nonfunctional satellites. ‘Instead of being critical of the world as it is, I’m trying to take the same engineering skills that are used to make machines of warfare and surveillance, and to use them to make something that cannot be used for either [purpose]’”

In 2014, Protocinema commissioned and presented Atalay Yavuz's Strata, an "intervention" in the convenience store Özge Bakkaliye. The work was a clear Plexiglas box filled with light-blue Ultrasound gel, placed just behind the shop’s street-facing windows. Taken out of its medical context, the gel was employed by the artist to produce a Minimalist aesthetic, while knowledge of the substance’s conventional function when treating patients added a layer of humanity to the piece.

Protocinema took over the basement of the renowned Westbeth Building in Manhattan for a Hale Tenger exhibition from May 14 - June 13, 2015. The piece, entitled We didn't go outside; we were always on the outside / We didn't go inside; we were always on the inside (1995 and 2015), was originally created in 1995 on the occasion of the 4^th Istanbul Biennial. Consisting of an old wooden guardhouse surrounded by a barbed wire fence, visitors were invited inside to enter the ‘isolation zone’ – which contained a small seat, a tiny transistor radio playing music from the 1990s, and printed images of nature from around the world. Art in America stated that the work was, “as disturbingly relevant today as it was 20 years ago. The disjunction between the cozy guardhouse interior, with its nostalgic music and romantic vistas, and the militaristic exterior, reminiscent of refugee and detainee camps, is, of course, deliberate. It evokes the way media operates as a form of cultural propaganda to pacify a populace under siege, and calls to mind what is systematically hidden from view in repressive societies.”

In 2015, Protocinema launched its Emerging Curator Series at 5533, an independent contemporary art space in Istanbul in the 1950s Han building, which sold textiles and sewing machines. "[Owners] Nancy Akakan and Volkan Aslan don’t want to run an exhibition space, so every year they invite another curator to run the space, and for 2015/2016 they’ve invited me,” said Spirito to ArtSpace. Spirito's project became a year-long series of exhibitions by emerging artists and curators, accompanied by a mentoring system and public programs, which now continues annually. Included among the early Protocinema Emerging Curator Series from October 31-November 28, 2015 were works by Syrian artist Ghaith Mofeed, including as the centerpiece his work The Journey of a Cell, 2015, “a wall installation, showing the map of a journey of two men - the son of a counselor to the Ottoman Sultan Abdülhamid and his son … the significance of the piece does not rely on these men's specific journeys, but the whole human journey,” wrote Daily Sabah.

From November 8 - December 4, 2016, Protocinema presented Lara Ögel’s Come Back! All is Forgiven, a video composed of several found moving images around the theme of ‘running away,’ related to the ‘fight or flight’ impulse to survive when one is seemingly out of options. The exhibition took place at a storefront in the Le Marais section of Paris, with the video Home Dream appearing alongside two other video works, Dream Sequence (2016) and Agustos (2016). Hyperallergic said, “a polyphonic stream of consciousness sets the background for a centerpiece installation (titled after the show) made of iconic street bollards from both Istanbul and Paris, aptly called baba (father) in Turkish slang, which are used to control traffic or obstruct passage in urban space. Understood by Ögel as phallic objects, they are a metaphor for the patriarchal social order in Turkey where movement — physical, intellectual, political, and ultimately spatial — is tightly controlled and prescribed.”

Protocinema presented Albanian artist Adrian Paci’s film, Interregnum, 2017, from September 9 - October 14, 2017. A collage of found footage on display in the Beyoğlu section of Istanbul, Interregnum offered an uninterrupted survey of death rituals within different cultures, social classes, and religious groups. Coinciding with the opening of the 15th Istanbul Biennial, the film “flashes through close-ups of faces twisted in misery, through wild sobs to enduring stoicism… Paci’s work examines and explores how distinct individuals can be united in their suffering. Much like his other works, Interregnum makes a connection between physically separated societies and cultures by stitching together a shared language of grief.”

Protocinema commissioned and exhibited Hasan Özgür Top’s video The Atelier, in Lima, Peru with support from SAHA Foundation, from January 25 - February 24, 2018. Presented in the context of Peru’s right-wing populist movement, The Atelier took the viewer to a specific Turkish flag manufacturing shop in Istanbul, where the audience is introduced to a few workers making flags amidst their employers: a tour of the technical process at a modest workshop unfolds into an age-old practice of transforming a simple piece of fabric into a sacred symbol. In an interview with Barahunda, the artist said the film, “deals with the Turkish flag that is excessively represented in public spaces in the eyes of foreigners. I was really interested in the question of where this piece of fabric is created in order to become this icon loaded with symbolism. And it was under these premises that I found a small factory, actually more like an atelier. Here I discovered, paradoxically, that it was Syrian refugees who are sewing this flag. This short film tries to demystify and dismantle the most basic symbols and take them to their minimum expression.”

From September 28 - October 27 2018, Protocinema presented a new five-channel video installation entitled The City (2018) by Italian artist Rossella Biscotti in a subterranean space in Taksim Square, Istanbul. The film visits Çatalhöyük, a 9,000-year-old Neolithic archaeological site recognized as the earliest urban development. Apollo magazine stated, “the 50 minutes of footage offer a close examination of the intersections between ancient and contemporary communities at Çatalhöyük. [The] archaeological ethos somewhat echoes the community ideas unearthed at Çatalhöyük – an emphasis is placed on subjective experience and traditional archaeological hierarchies are eschewed, with every team member treated as an equal. The parallels between those being excavated and those doing the excavating are evident.”

Management and funding

Protocinema is a legally registered non-profit 501(c)(3) in the United States with a branch in Turkey, founded by Mari Spirito in 2011, who is now its Executive Director and Curator. Protocinema is funded by contributions and grants, such as: Henry Moore Foundation (for Mike Nelson); SAHA Foundation, Istanbul; Mondriaan Fund and NEARCH project, supported by the European Commission; Cowles Charitable Trust, New York; Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council; Institut Français, Istanbul; Moon and Stars Project Grants of American Turkish Society. Further support comes from Protocinema’s Board of Trustees which is made up of: Defne Ayas, Artistic Director, Gwangju Biennale, 2020; Dillon Cohen, Angel Investor, Managing Partner, Carlin Ventures, New York; David Howe, Chairman of Board, ART 21, New York; Ari Meşulam, Art Collector, Managing Partner, Interspor Dis Tic AS, Istanbul; Jason Heard, Financial Management, Consultant, New York. Protocinema has an International Commissioning Committee made up of: Sascha Bauer, Board of Painting and Sculpture, Whitney Museum of Art, New York; Haro Cumbuşyan and Bilge Öğüt, Art Collectors, Öğüt is Managing Director Private Equity Directs, Partners Group, London, Zurich; Afroditi Panagiotakou, Artistic Director, Onassis Cultural Center, Athens; SPOT Contemporary Art Projects, which was founded by Tansa Mermerci Ekşioğlu and Juan Carlos Verme, Chairman of Board MALI (Lima’s Fine Arts Museum), and a Trustee of Tate Americas Foundation. Additional management is in the form of insight and guidance is provided by Protocinema’s  Advisory Committee which is made up of: Yona Backer, Executive Director, Third Streaming, New York; Elizabeth Baribeau, Baribeau Consulting, New York, London; Ömür Bozkurt, former Director IKSV, Istanbul; Tamara Corm, Director Pace Gallery, London; Adib Dada, Principle, Dada Architects, Beirut; Koray Duman, Founder Bürü, Architects, New York; Anne Ellegood, Senior Curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Reem Fadda, Chief Curator, Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi, UAE; Kate Fowle, Chief Curator Garage Museum of Art, Moscow; Lia Gangitano, Director Participant Inc., New York; James Lingwood, Founder ArtAngel, London; Rose Lord, Director, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; Tuce Peksayar, Founder, The Glowings, Istanbul; Renaud Proch, Director, ICI, Independent Curators International; November Paynter, Curator, Toronto Museum of Contemporary Art; Helen Warwick, Principal, Warwick Management New York.

Artists presented by Protocinema

Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme

Allora & Calzadiila

Can Altay

Mounira Al Solh

Andreas Angelidakis

Vajiko Chachkhiani

Ani Çelik Arevyan

Marwa Arsanios

Volkan Aslan

Özgür Atlagan

Vahap Avşar

Luna Ece Bal

Rossella Biscotti

Hera Büyüktaşçıyan

Gerard Byrne

Berk Çakmakçı

Onur Ceritoğlu

Liu Chuang

Antonio Cosentino

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Mimosa Echard

Latifa Echakhch

Brian Eno

Köken Ergun

Mario Garcia Torres

Eda Gecikmez

Dan Graham

Rodney Graham

Alexandra Howland

Emre Hüner

Burak Kabadayı

Gülsün Karamustafa

Jacob Kassay

Essi Kausalainen

Ali Kazma

Michelle Lopez

Gülşah Mursaloğlu

Angelica Mesiti

Mike Nelson

Brian O'Connell

Lara Ögel

Ahmet Ögüt

Trevor Paglen

Dan Perjovschi

Angelo Plessas

Joseph Redwood-Martinez

Tabita Rezaire

Rachel Rossin

Martha Rosler

Natascha Sadr Haghighian

Aykan Safoğlu

Volkan Şenozan

Rania Stephan

Superflex

Hale Tenger

Mika Tajima

Serra Tansel

Hasan Özgür Top

Deniz Tortum

Theo Triantafyllidis

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Mark Van Yetter

Atalay Yavuz

Müge Yılmaz

References

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