Active in Izmir since 2003, K2 Contemporary Art Association is a non-profit contemporary art organization. It has offered the first sustainable contemporary art venue in Izmir.
While giving priority to working with young and emerging artists, K2 attaches importance to creating opportunities for established artists to produce new works as well. K2 offers platforms where art is created, discussed and mediated to the public. K2 intends to be an open and inviting place for the local public and to play an active role on both the national and international art scene.
In addition to exhibitions by artists from Turkey and abroad, public programs including lectures, seminars, discussions, performances, artist talks, film & video screenings and publications, K2 organizes PORTIZMIR (Izmir International Contemporary Art Triennial), realized four times since 2007. With PORTIZMIR projects, it aims to mobilize the art and culture dynamics of the city of İzmir and bring art together with a wider audience via the international contemporary art platform.
K2 runs 12 resident artist studios that enable visitors to meet and talk to artists and a guest studio for international artists. It offers a rich visual arts library, which is open to public. Additionally, it operates the K2 Urla Breathing Zone (K2UBZ), an artist residency located in a naturally preserved 45-decare land surrounded by forest in the Urla district of İzmir.
Shaped in 2013, a platform inviting people and organizations from various fields of art and design to produce together, NomadMind investigates and argues under its roof the conditions, spaces and forms where the production process emerges and organizes different works and events for this “emergence”.
Although the executive work of NomadMind is led by the core team, Çiçek Ş. Tezer and Emre Yıldız, people working in different fields and on various themes are being included in the team. This way, the variety of quantity and quality is called for.
The platform focuses on realizing its works on design and art disciplines; but in this context it is very challenging and sometimes meaningless to draw lines for the borders of the art and design disciplines and products. NomadMind chases these uncertainties, concepts and hardly defined uncanny spaces. The team is motivated mostly by the possibility of creating unclassified and unidentified contents within the highly sharp academic disciplines.
Among the practice methods that NomadMind focuses on is inviting people to develop new experiences with art and design-based disciplines in an unfamiliar venue and environment. The uncharted and unknown territories in people’s minds and comfort zones constitute the main working areas of the organization. The group goes after these encounters by using different practical approaches that have different managerial quantities and creating contents that are difficult to define and classify. Graphic design, venue works, social works, art practices, city dynamics, verbal history, areas in-between and printed media are the main qualities that the organization has.
With the experiences it has gained thanks to Tandem Turkey III, PORTIZMIR3 and other local partnerships, NomadMind conducts works on the organization’s own dynamics such as enabling the art and design themed projects in the city not to be centralized. The Living Room project created within this context, seeks ways of questioning and graying the line between private and public area by creating an art/ design/ presentation/ discussion area within a local community and inviting artists and designers to share their work and ideas with an audience. This way, NomadMind tries to make multi-disciplined and multi-cultured individuals, groups and infrastructures collide with a local experience and on urban-scale.
Founded in 2012, Troya Culture Association is the legal entity of CABININ – Çanakkale Biennial Initiative which works in the field of contemporary in the city of Çanakkale.
It is a local organization which brings citizens from different segments, profesions and generations together and realizes art and culture projects, particularly the Çanakkale Biennial. Among the other projects are the EU culture project “A Modern Odyssey: The Memory and Future of Migrant Women”, Unlimited Areas Tandem Project, The Troy Culture Route Project supported as part of the Future is in Tourism Program and Tevfikiye OPET Arkeo-Köy art events.
Troya Culture Association which has executed exhibitions and projects in different cities such as İstanbul, Adana, Osnabrück, Thessaloniki, Marseilles, has established “Mahal”, the first alternative art space of Çanakkale, in 2013. In Mahal, different kinds of art and culture events are carried out all year round, projects and co-operations are developed with national and international CSOs.
Established in 2000, SCCA, Center for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana (a successor to the Soros Centre for Contemporary Arts – Ljubljana, 1993–1999) is a model of a flexible and internationally active organisation for layering and comprehensively connecting programs and activities in the field of contemporary visual and new media arts.
Its diverse activities address artists, curators, theorists, experts, critics and general public in the fields of visual and new media arts. They trigger artistic, discursive and social practices and are rooted in the interdisciplinary approach and intense international cooperation.
In recent years, SCCA has managed to establish a referential space for research and exhibition work, dialogue, teaching and service activities.
This interdisciplinary and multimedia nature has also been realised in physical space, under the name SCCA Project Room, which comprises a reference library, an audio-video archive and a digital editing and projection unit. But most importantly, the SCCA Project Room has become a common venue for meetings, workshops, conversation, presentations, exhibitions and performances.
It hosts the World of Art, School for Curatorial Practices and Critical Writing, as well as a series of events and installations, which encourage the thirst for research-related knowledge and constructive dialogue.
The Center forms important segments of support system for contemporary arts & culture and civic society. Its activities are divided into the following scopes:
(A) SCHOOL
World of Art (from 1996/97, www.worldofart.org)
(B) VIDEO / ARCHIVE
DIVA Station (from 2005, www.e-arhiv.org/diva)
(C) PROJECTS
One of the earliest settlement areas, having been home to 13 civilizations, Hatay is a city of peace, brotherhood and harmony where different cultures and beliefs have been living together. It is a gate that connects Turkey to the Middle East, the Middle East to Anatolia, Mediterranean and Europe. It is a safe port which works as a bridge linking Europe, Asia and Africa to one another.
Historical studies show that settlement in Antakya region dates back to very early periods. Settlement in this region started long before invention of writing, in the Palaeolithic Age. The city of Antakya was founded in the reign of Alexander the Great. However, the real founder of the city and the person who named it was Emperor Seleucus. The city was annexed to the Ottoman Empire by Selim the Grim during his Egypt Expedition. The French occupied Hatay in 1918 and controlled the region until Hatay State was founded in 1938. Governed as an independent state until 1939, Hatay joined Turkey in the same year as its 63rd province.
Hatay is situated in the southern region of Turkey. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea (İskenderun Bay) in the west, Syria in the south and east, Adana province in the northwest, Osmaniye in the north and Gaziantep in the northeast. Antakya, the central district of Hatay, which is one of the border provinces of the Republic of Turkey, is located at the southernmost point of the country. Hatay has a population of 1.6 million and it is the 13th most crowded city of Turkey (2017).
The city has an Agriculture Museum, Glass Museum, Cuisine Museum, Medicinal and Aromatic Museum, Archeological Museum and Mosaic Museum. The main handicrafts in Hatay are stonemasonry, replica production of historical and mythological works, silk weaving, xylography, glasswork, wattling and daphne-soap making.
The Antioch Civilizations Choir which was established in Hatay in 2008 has 200 members in total, (100 women and 100 men) belonging to 3 heavenly religions. The Choir reflects all the values and colors of the society of Hatay and Turkey, symbolizing unity. The members of the Choir, which was established to give messages of peace, tolerance, brotherhood and love, sing each other’s hymns and folk songs. The Choir was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012.
Recognized by UNESCO as a Creative City of Gastronomy in 2017, Hatay is well-known for its rich and delicious cuisine that is a manifestation of its cultural life. Hatay cuisine has over 600 different types of food and desserts.
Hatay Metropolitan Municipality has been established with the law published on the Official Gazette dated 6/12/2012 and numbered 284489.
The nomination process of Hatay for Horticultural EXPO 2021 initiated by the Metropolitan Municipality was concluded with success and Hatay has been qualified to organize the 6-month EXPO with the theme “Garden of Civilizations”.
