The Moving Museum Istanbul Residency featured a curated public programme of events, talks, workshops, lectures and performances with resident artists in close conversation with public programming curator Övül Ö. Durmusoglu. Titled A Public Cycle: Nasılız? Nasılsınız? literally translated as How do we do? And how are you?, saw three months of intense activity where The Moving Museum continued to ask these two questions of empathy and self reflexivity asking how to position this nomadic organisation responsively in Istanbul, a city ruled by natural politics of intimacy.
The public program served as the backbone to the residency as an active interface, a more organic less institutional meeting ground for interested publics. The Head Quarters in Cihangr saw artists and team communal workspace transformed into a discursive conversational space in the evenings. A Public Cycle: Nasılız? Nasılsınız? offered a three-month series of encounters designed around the artists who take part in the residency and exhibition. Durmusoglu worked closely with artists to develop customized formats for a public conversation that looks towards poetics of reciprocity and triggered different possibilities of mutual feedback. The public programme attracted a young and diverse public alongside the artistic community in Istanbul.
Public programme events included Rafael Rozendaal’s performative lecture that took the audience on a journey through his websites and artistic process. Zach Blas hosted Queer Technologies and The Contra Internet, a lecture followed by a short performance from Beatriz Preciado’s 2000 dated Contra-Sexual Manifesto. Haig Aivazian took us through his practice in his lecture Still Water Runs Deep while Jon Rafman hosted a performative lecture In Search of the Virtual Sublime. Amalia Ulman culminated her Instagram performance Excellences & Perfections with “some holiday sugar-baby style selfies”. Phillip Zach and Berlin based curator Julia Moritz presented a recent slab of their long term overlapping of questions and practices while David Douard and Peles Empire hosted exhibitions within the Caferiye Han. Burak Delier gave an introductory lecture over his new poster essay series Gymnastics of Economy and Faith: 6 Compulsory 6 Artistic Routines. Hito Steyerl conducted a post lecture discussion with curator Fulya Erdemci and artist Sener Ozmen over the performance lecture she gave titled Is Museum a Battlefield? for 13th Istanbul Biennial. Famous New Media Artist Jeremy Bailey hosted one of his renowned performative lectures taking us through his practice over the past decade. Collective Ha Za Vu Zu carried out a Crying Workshop in the Caferiye Han engaging with audiences through tears, and Hale Tenger hosted a Theatre of the Oppressed workshop with collaborator Aylin Vartanyan and local participants.