WHY AN IMAGINATIVE CIVILIZATION?
Adıyaman, Kahta and the surrounding area have been home to many civilizations for thousands of years. Powerful civilizations have created and left a strong heritage that have reached today. The region was dominated by the Hittites, the Mittani, Arameans, Assyrians, Late Hittites, Persians, Kummurs as well as the rule of the Alexander the Great of Macedonia and sovereignty of the Eastern Roman Empire from 2000s B.C. till the foundation of the Kingdom of Commagene (69 B.C.). The region was dominated by Umayyads in 670 A.D., Byzantine and Sasanians in 758, Hamdanids in 926, Seljukians in 1226, Memluks till 1284, Artuqids and Dulkadir Principality, Timurids in 1393 and the Ottoman Empire as of 1516.
Not only those civilizations and what is left behind them, but also the enormous development, dimensions, complexity and ability to catch the audience of imaginary worlds from tales to avatars, from the zero point of imaginary geographical locations in undiscovered lands to the digital universes collectively created and inhabited by millions of people in the last three thousand years have laid the foundations of the idea of a biennal, within the framework of founding “an imaginary civilization”. Our journey started with the idea of creating “an imaginary civilization” on an ISLAND off the coast of Nevali Çori within the administrative borders of Kahta. With the ISLAND being the main venue, artists will also display their arrangements to be made of natural materials and through exhibitions in other venues including the Mount Nemrut, Kahta (New) Castle and Cendere (Septimius Severus) Bridge.
The experiencing of imaginary worlds has always required active participation of the audience, whose imaginations are called upon to fill gaps and complete the world gestalten needed to bring a world to life. However, such participation does not actively change the events occurring in the worlds imagined; stories have predetermined outcomes, and their worlds are experienced vicariously through the characters in those stories. Nevertheless, just as the role of stories’ main characters changed from observer to participant, interactive worlds changed the audience member’s role from observer to participant. Although they can be everything from escapist fantasy to lenses that help us see our own world more clearly, imaginary worlds are more than art, entertainment, games, tools, dreams, nightmares, experiments, or laboratories; they are nothing less than the fulfillment of humanity’s subcreative vocation.*
Once lived in this region Lucian of Samosata who says: “For seven days and seven nights we sailed the air, and on the eighth day we saw a great country in it, resembling an island, bright and round and shining with a great light. Running in there and anchoring, we went ashore, and on investigating found that the land was inhabited and cultivated. By day nothing was in sight from the place, but as night came on we began to see many other islands hard by, some larger, some smaller, and they were like fire in colour. We also saw another country below, with cities in it and rivers and seas and forests and mountains. This we inferred to be our own world.”
Have we found Lucian’s ISLAND yet?
The choice of ISLAND as the main venue of the biennale is a reference to Lucian. An imaginary civilization; a fictional archaeology, a fictional history, a fictional language, a fictional economy, a fictional music, fictional symbols, fictional agriculture, fictional architecture, fictional gastronomy, fictional fashion, fictional laws… Artists from various disciplines will meet at the Commagene Biennale with answers to these questions!
* Wolf, Mark JP, Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation
Director of the Kommagene Biennale: Nihat Özdal (TR), poet
Curator of the 2nd Kommagene Biennale: Prof. István Erőss (HU), visual artist and rector of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts
Coordinator: Seval Çelenk
Director’s assistant: Hazal Altay
Exhibition manager: Buse Atay
Curator’s assistant: Kund Kopacz (HU/RO)
Translation and PR: Ece Özdal
Graphic design: Inanç Avadit
Translator: Sadık Aslan
Site coordinators: Ramazan Turan, Nuri Özenç, Mustafa Gümüş, Özgül Demiral, Zeliha Çiftçi, Uğur Karadeniz, Bünyamin Özsürünç
Photography and video: Kahta Art, Onur Polat, Kund Kopacz
Artists’ guide: Yunus Köse, Mehmet Adalı
Jury members of the 2nd biennial: Prof. Kristaps Zariņš (LV), Varol Topaç (TR), Prof. István Erőss (HU), Ri Eung-Woo (KR), Prof. Bogdan Achimescu (PL)
Visiting dates of the biennial: 24 August – 8 November, 2024
Production period of the biennial: 9 – 23 August, 2024
Locations of the site-specific artworks: Mount Nemrut, Severan Bridge, Kahta Castle, Karakush Tumulus and Lucian Islands on the Atatürk Dam Lake
