History

The format of Bahar, which was the name of the Istanbul off site project of Sharjah Biennial 13, was developed as a sequence to the 3 editions of Produce organized between 2012 – 2016. Produce was initiated as a commissioning platform in which artists, and later performers, writers, film makers, were asked to propose a project which they have not been able to realize before. The boundaries that we wanted to play with were not financial, but rather disciplinary, conceptual and also concerning gallery presentation and audiences. As a result, the commissioned projects played on the performative; while many artists, performers, and film directors experimented with mediums they had not regularly worked in before.

Each edition of Produce and consequently Bahar (conceived of as Produce 4 all but in name) was an iteration of a previous edition and expanded on the format and the problems of that particular edition (for a long rumination on the problems of format/problems, please refer to the ‘preface’ of the Produce Book.) One of the central issues that became clear early on was to allocate as much space (physical, but also mental and process-wise) to writers, performers and curators as the artists. Also important was to allocate a separate room to each one of these cultural producers so that they could think independently on their own terms as opposed to their works’ being read in conversation with the rest of the commissioned works. Even though physically the artworks were presented under one roof (3 roofs in the case of Produce 3), each aimed to stand on its own as an exhibition as well. As for performances, they took place in the venue that suits them.

Work above by: Sena Başöz, In the Uncertain Light of Single, Certain Truth, 2017. Image by İpek Çınar