Monday Night 03.24.08 -- Stefan Römer and Aras Ozgun



Contents: 


1. About this Monday 

2. About Ulus Baker and "What is Opinion?"
3. About Boulevard of Illusions – Learning from Novi Beograd
4. Links related to Aras’s work
5. Links related to Stefan’s work
6. About Aras Ozgun
7. About Stefan Römer

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1. About this Monday

What: Presentation / Screening / Discussion 

When: Monday 03.24.08 @7pm 

Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor 

Who: Aras Ozgun + Stefan Römer

This Monday we will have Belgrade meet Ankara through the thoughts and works of Aras and Stefan and their related projects there.

Both have been part of 16 Beaver in one way or the other: Stefan introduced “Some remarks 
on the structural change between artistic space and public sphere” in 2004 see http://www.16beavergroup.org/monday/archives/001296.php.
And Aras is also one of us, he contributed to several of the continental drifts and 16 Beaver Monday nights.

We are very happy to have them both this week!

Aras will present a lecture/interview by Ulus Baker, one of the founders of Ankara based korotonomedya collective, who passed away last year. He will also present and discuss the works of the korotonomedya collective in general, in the context of the Anatolian political and social settings from the 90's to the present. See # 2 below

Stefan will introduce his film “Boulevard of Illusions – Learning from Novi Beograd” in the context of the project. See #3 below.

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2. About Ulus Baker and "What is Opinion?"

In this lecture/interview, produced by Aras in 2001 and titled "What is Opinion?", Ulus Baker traces the notion of “public opinion” back from its Ancient Greek origins following the major schools of western thought, and criticizes what he calls “sociology of opinions”.

“We have lived at least one century within the idea of opinion which determined some of the major themes in social sciences… In short, social sciences were designed in terms of opinion; asking people what they think about themselves, their lives, their stories, their issues, their problems. And I believe that social sciences have been transformed into a kind of doxology, but I’m tending rather to oppose this status of sociological research. My problem here is that; sociology is epistemologically -or logically- tending rather to become a general opinion about opinions; of what people are supposed to think about themselves and others. And this a clear distinction from the early emergence of social sciences and social research in general…And, through this, in social sciences, we have lost the ability to create (what we may call) the “life of affects” -an affective life…”

Ulus Baker, whom we lost in July 2007, was an influential figure in contemporary Turkish political thinking, both as a frequent author in major academic and intellectual periodicals and as a professor of sociology, media and film theory. He was also one of the founders of “korotonomedya”, an autonomist political/artistic collective based in Ankara. The works of korotonomedya has been a major resource for a distinct line of experimental media arts and politics for Anatolian public since mid 90's.

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3. About Boulevard of Illusions – Learning from Novi Beograd

Public installation and documentary film

Director: Stefan Römer
Duration: 24:47 min.
Colour DV, 16 mm film, Photography; music
Two language versions: English, Serbian

Project:
On two billboards, one at the beginning and one at the end, for one week a poster with the title of the project was mounted:

Boulevard of Illusions – Learning from Novi Beograd

Public installation Stefan Roemer

The project prospects historical aspects of New Belgrade’s development on the former »Boulevard of Lenin« where Tito drove up and down in his Mercedes facing thousands of waving people. It raises questions of the urban and historical function of New Belgrade: What was the plan for the block system as a socialist utopian city project? What are the specific stories told here in this new extension of the old city of Belgrade?
If the whole city is considered a panoptical system, New Belgrade with its block system in particular is a utopian format of this. The new growing areas – big international hotels, banks and shopping malls – in contrast to the apartment blocks and the representational buildings from the Socialist era prospected on the »Boulevard of Illusions« represent visible history in its own right: on one side the socialist monumentalism – from ruined to gigantic – and on the other side the new capitalists from east and west. Between this you find for example the Ex-embassy of the People’s Republic of China which is destroyed by collateral damage.

Plot:
A Roadmovie in Novi Beograd
A car drives from the Square of the Republic over Brancos Bridge in the direction of Novi Beograd on the Boulevard Mihajla Pupina up to the Cinema Fontana and back. On the road you see a lot of advertisement billboards. One billboard at the beginning and one near Fontana display the title of the project »Boulevard of Illusions – Learning from Novi Beograd«, and define the project.
From site to site and from billboard-installation to billboard-installation the car drives with some off-voices telling stories about the city and the different places which pass by. These stories range from a kind of information style to more subjective impressions, experiences or historical reflections. It consists of different perspectives on urbanism, history, graffiti or art. The sites will be more or less on the road. Textanimations on the screen display found graffitis which reflect the last fifteen years in a kind of street culture history as a transparency screen before the architectural façades. From site to site the gaze of the camera follows the street life and shows the apartment blocks that pass by.

Off-voices by:
Branislava Anđelković, Director of MoCAB
Ivan Petrović, Film and TV director
Mina Petrović, Professor of Sociology
Ljiljana Radošević, Art Historian
Stefan Roemer

Part of the project: Differentiated Neighbourhoods in New Belgrade
Curated by Zoran Eric

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4. Links related to Aras’s work

korotonomedya web site
http://www.korotonomedya.net/

and the section on Ulus Baker's writings: http://www.korotonomedya.net/kor/index.php?ulus_baker

Most of these texts are not translated to English, but the links to the English texts below are interesting

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COPY AND PASTE THE WHOLE LINK IN THE FOLLOWING 4 LINKS

Aras Ozgun, "On Cinema and Ulus Baker; An interview with Can Sarvan":
http://www.korotonomedya.net/kor/index.php?id=22,272,0,0,1,0

Ulus Baker, "Between the Images": http://www.korotonomedya.net/kor/index.php?id=21,165,0,0,1,0

Ulus Baker, "A Comment on Dziga Vertov: The Cine-Eye": http://www.korotonomedya.net/kor/index.php?id=21,181,0,0,1,0

Ulus Baker, "The Political Film": http://www.korotonomedya.net/kor/index.php?id=21,261,0,0,1,0

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5. Links related to Stefan’s work

http://www.conceptual-paradise.com/

http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~roemer/

http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~roemer_adbk/

http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/dissertationen/roemer-stefan-1998-07-09/HTML/index.html

http://www.hgb-leipzig.de/~hempel/roemer/

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6. About Aras Ozgun

Aras Ozgun is a media scholar/artist who teaches theory related courses at Media Studies Department of the New School. He was born in 1970 in Turkey, he studied political sciences and sociology in Ankara, and media studies in New York. He produced experimental video works, documentaries and installations, and published about media, arts, culture and politics Turkish scholarly journals. He is currently working on his Ph.D dissertation on the political-economy of contemporary cultural production.
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7. About Stefan Römer

Stefan Roemer is professor for New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and works conceptually between art practice and theory; his works and essays are widely exhibited and published. His background is political motivated activism and documentarism with the tendency to de-conceptualize traditional epistemological canons and dissolve academic subjects. In this framework his PhD in arthistory has the title »Artistic Strategies of Fake––Critique of Original and Forgery«.
http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/dissertationen/roemer-stefan-1998-07-09/HTML/index.html
His experimental film »The Analysis of Beauty« was shown at the Bonn Videonale in 1998 and is published on the DVD “loop pool” by Graw & Boeckler (Cologne 2005), and his short film »Corporate Psycho Ambient« at the Foto Biennial in Rotterdam in 2003; it is also released as DVD at 235 media, Cologne.
His documentary film »Conceptual Paradise« is produced with the support of Kulturstiftung des Bundes and presented in cooperation with Museum K21, 2005. His documentary »Boulevard of Illusions« on a representational street in New Belgrade was published by the project »Differentiated Neighbourhoods« in 2007.