In its thirty-three years-long journey, Istanbul Biennial has always traced flourishing ideas, excitements and wonders in the midst of various fluctuations and uncertainties. These times when we reconsider the boundaries of our lives all around the world, also generate new spaces to revisit the relationship we form with our surroundings and ourselves.

We hope that today, art will find an even greater outreach, and reckon that imagination is incredibly vast to be defined by physical boundaries. To celebrate art in all its forms in these times, we will be opening two artist films to online access every Friday in weekly periods.

The artists who will take part in the online selection with their films in the coming weeks are Halil Altındere, Francis Alÿs, Volkan Aslan, Ozan Atalan, Ed Atkins, Alper Aydın, Rossella Biscotti, Kristina Buch, Vajiko Chachkhiani, Jonathas de Andrade, Elmas Deniz, Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe, Jorge Galindo & Santiago Sierra, Theaster Gates, Suzanne Husky, Pierre Huyghe, Emre Hüner, Rashid Johnson, Georgie Nettell, Armin Linke, Amar Kanwar, Maider López, Basim Magdy, Ursula Mayer, Melvin Moti, Erkan Özgen, Zeyno Pekünlü, Cheng Ran, Mika Rottenberg, Pelin Tan and Anton Vidokle, Kaari Upson, Adrián Villar Rojas and Phillip Zach.

We extend our thanks to all the biennial artists for their support to the project and hope this selection of thirty films will guide you through many different territories.

Enjoy the screenings!

7 AUGUST FRIDAY

Ed Atkins
Death Mask 5, 2019
Single-channel video
77’27”
Courtesy of the artist.
Originally put together for Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo. Shards of something similar were sequenced for videoart at Midnight in Berlin.

Ed Atkins
Atkins was born in 1982 in Oxford, UK. He lives and works in London, UK and Berlin, Germany.

In his video works, Atkins plumbs the corporeal depths of digital moving imagery. Computer generated animation, emo musical theatre, collaged stock imagery, field recording, performance capture, disease, motion graphics and starless humour muster within his videos. Atkins’ unique visual language, both melancholic and absurd, confronts the viewer with intimate, arcane visions that seem caught in a purgatory of afterwards.

For his presentation in Kunstnernes Hus’ cinema, entitled Death Mask 5, Atkins presented a specially compiled mix of works from the past decade. Sequenced and edited like a particularly adventurous provincial multiplex programme, Atkins’ assemblage will feature unseen tests, trailers and teasers interspersing sections of significant works from his catalogue.*

Included in the screening are fragments from the following:

• ‘up/down, in/out’, 2017 
• ‘DEPRESSION’, 2012 
• ‘A Thousand Centuries of Death’, 2010 
• ‘Death Mask III’, 2011 
• ‘Good wine’, 2017 
• ‘Good bread’, 2017 
• ‘Good smoke’, 2017 
• ‘Hisser’, 2015 (Screened at the 14th Istanbul Biennial.)
• ‘A Primer for Cadavers’, 2011 
• ‘A Tumour (In English)’, 2011 
• ‘Cur’, 2010 
• ‘An Echo Button’ with James Richards, 2011 
• ‘Performance Capture’, 2015/16 
• ‘Even Pricks’, 2013 
• ‘Untitled’, 2018 
• ‘Happy Christmas!!’, 2014 
• Test for ‘Material Witness OR A Liquid Cop’, 2010 
• Teaser for ‘Material Witness OR A Liquid Cop’, 2011 
• Trailer for ‘Happy Birthday!!’, 2014 
• Tease for ‘Recent Ouija’ at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2015 
• Tease for ‘Safe Conduct’ at SMK, Copenhagen, 2016 
• Tease for ‘Warm, Warm, Warm Spring Mouths’, 2013 
• Super 8 footage from 1988 ‘Hair by Ed’ for Mark Leckey, 2014

*Written for Kunstnernes Hus, in August 2019.

Click here to play the video on Vimeo.

Suitable for ages 18 or older.