Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 10:22:02 GMT
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extension#09 pavilion-location photos
extension#09 pavilion-location photosextension#09 pavilion-location photos

A.I.R extension#09

During a residency at Platform Garanti in 2006 the artists discovered the Ataturk Marine Pavilion in Florya (Istanbul). Doing research on this pavilion they made some location shots for their new video installation they would later present at the 10th Istanbul Biennial. The artists were interested in the ideological exploitation of architecture, and this was how they came about to consider using visuals of the Ataturk Marine Pavilion, which is a modernist summer residence of Ataturk, built by the Turkish architect Seyfi Arkan in 1935. The pavilion functioned at the time as a holiday space for Ataturk, where could be close to ordinary, but 'modern' people, men and women alike enjoying swimming close to the pavilion. To the pavilion were also foreign guest invited to visit Ataturk. The pavilion was showcased to disseminate a new vision of living to the whole nation and to exhibit to the rest of the world how the Turkish republic, with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as its founder, had stripped off its ‘oriental’ habits. The architectural inspiration to achieve this progressive modernity were Le Corbusier’s architectural forms. Le Corbusier, while being himself inspired during his stay in Istanbul in 1911 (according to his notebook 'Voyage d'Orient' (1910-11)) by certain elements of the vernacular architecture of the Ottoman past to create his radically different housing models in the West, became a major inspiration for Turkish architects in the early 30ies, who wanted to get rid of their Ottoman heritage to be modern and was idealized by them as a reformer and revolutionary. Since 1993 the marine pavilion is used as an Atatürk museum. The ideological exploitation of the pavilion is still tangible today, f.e. in the continuous restauration of its wooden finish and in the amount of soldiers guarding it.

A.I.R extension #09 pavilion -location photos
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