VCMD Sergisi, Mutluluk Fabrikalar

Sexy Mechanics & Their Ordinary Lives. The Brief: From our perspective the exhibition process had this graceful balance between an open ended carnival-of-ideas and curatorial scope concisely defined in form and topic. Curator, Sait Ali gave an informal and brief description about his considerations for the topic of Technological Development, but an elaborate animated description of how visitors should experience the exhibition as a whole – lots about “touching” and “feeling (s)”. The Process: As we dove into this topic, our team’s internal discussions became more and more focused on the ‘feeling’ of desire that is pervasive in the marketing of technological devices/tools/services. This includes the end-user’s use of technological advancement to ‘improve’ their quality of life, but also the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries advancement of technology to ‘improve’ the quality of the physical environment. The Result: A3 Technological developments evolved as a mixed-media installation to express the various aspects of this narrative. The discreet sub-topics are composed to be read as a whole, but also as distinct juxtaposition: A) still images of 100 objects/devices of technological development in 100 years; B) a collage and a video of Istanbul’s commercial built environment in 2012; C) black and white photographic compositions of the most pervasive of today’s technological developments integrated into Istanbul’s commercial buildings; and, D) 'hand-made' crocheted forms made from the variety of cabling specified for technological requirements of buildings today. With Ahmet and Didem, we worked in concert to encourage the installation to ‘spill out’ yet be physically ‘connected’, to have the graphics be as ‘touchable’ as the cable forms are 'handable'. Reflection on the Whole: And the whole, well it was whole! For everyone in our team it was exciting to see the dynamic nature of all the different installation topics, the co-events of the exhibition and the energy of the community on opening night. What struck me the most when seeing the whole was the virtue in the collaborative minds that realized this work; where the whole and its very unique parts reflects the fluid dialogue amongst varied groups under a uniquely organic leadership. Team: ŞANAL ma | pu Alexis Şanal, Murat Şanal, and Philippa Tamsin (object stills + video works), Cibeles Sanchez, Orkun Beydağı, Merve Akdağ, and Hazar Arasan Refik Anadol, visual artist Refik Anadol (black-white photography) Exhibition Website: http://vitracagdasmimarlikdizisi.net/tr-TR/exhibition