TR + NL collaborations

Currently there is more e-culture movement of people and projects from Turkey to the Netherlands than the other way around: there are some Turkish artists working with digital media in the Netherlands and that is about it. So more action is needed, in both directions.

TR in NL

Digitally literate contemporary artists living and working in Netherlands are Tunç Topçuoğlu, Ahmet Öğüt, and Emre Hüner. The director of the SKOR Foundation curator Fulya Erdemci’s program also includes interesting work in digital culture. Banu Cennetoglu from Istanbul collaborates with Dutch artist Philippine Hoegen in Amsterdam on the BAS/BENT artist book publishing project.

Born Digital

 In December 2009 Born Digital initiated an exchange with Turkish artists and organizations to collaborate on new media art projects and festival programs. Visiting the Contemporary Istanbul exhibition and other events, Born Digital became acquainted with several Turkish organizations and artists and performed at the release party of Ice (Istanbul Contemporary etc.), a magazine aiming to ‘translate Istanbul's dynamism to the whole world and document everything that's going on in this city’. In May 2010 Born Digital participated in the VJ Fest Istanbul conducting videomapping workshops in collaboration with new media artists from Turkey and a VJ performance by Dutch visual artists. The new media artists from Turkey are invited to the electronic art festival that Born Digital organizes in Utrecht. In order not to depend on actual physical events, Born Digital developed an online platform whereby online artists can meet and collaborate in an open source format on multimedia projects.

Born Digital also collaborates with the A-M-B-E-R festival, which they also want to connect to Utrecht School of the Arts (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht), currently looking for exchange possibilities in new media. Together with the Utrecht School of the Arts, Faculty Art Media & Technology Born Digital is working on Urban Screen Gameplay projects, investigating the playful impact of new media works in public space. In collaboration with the A-M-B-E-R Art & Technology festival Born Digital will conduct a week long workshop with 5 teams of Turkey based artists, designers and programmers to investigate urban video projection and interaction. Following the workshop, which takes place in September 2010, participants cooperate to create 5 interactive / video works for 5 public locations in Istanbul which will be shown or performed to the public during the A-M-B-E-R festival in November 2010. Born Digital organizes a yearly new media art festival and for the next edition in October 2010 several visual artists from Istanbul are invited to perform in Utrecht as a result of this new born exchange. The collaboration with the Utrecht School of Arts will be part of this exchange between the different festivals and newly made media art projects. Finally Born Digital explores and develops new media tools which facilitate online remote collaboration between artists working on different locations (i.e. Istanbul, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Berlin) in future projects and events, extending the creative process.

Steim

 A-M-B-E-R festival also has a long held wish to collaborate with Steim (2007 Interactive concert, they wanted to work together on public works/art in ordinary daily life but due to the subsidy stop that affected Steim their project could not continue).

TU Delft

 The Faculty of Architecture of TU Delft and the Department of Architecture of METU developed a Joint Master of Science Program on Computational Design and Fabrication Technologies. The program aims to form a well-structured collaboration between the two universities in a graduate program ending with a double Master of Science degree. The Joint Program focuses on Computational Design and Fabrication Technologies with the goal of research in cutting edge design technologies and new design tools as well as new design paradigms in architecture. Candidates are expected to be adequate in research and have a background to follow up new design technologies and to enrich research and design in the field of architecture.

StrangerFestival Workshop 2009 

StrangerFestival Workshop 2009 participants Naz Belkaya and Volkan Karataş were invited to Digital Dreams Festival in Rotterdam, The Netherlands with their respect videos “On the Beach” and “The Kiss”.

Digital Dreams Festival was hosting youth coming from Rotterdam, Istanbul and Paramabiro, who shot videos about their identity, thoughts, dreams and especially their future in the context of their city and the world. Naz Belkaya and Volkan Karataş also joined a workshop in November 18th and 19th where they were shooting videos with students from Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam (Graphics College Rotterdam), the largest specialized vocational college in the field of media and design in the Netherlands. On November 20th and 21st, they participated the film screenings and the award show in the arts center Your Space. Digital Dreams Festival is organized by Kosmopolis Rotterdam in collaboration with MODE ISTANBUL, Grafisch Lyceum Rotterdam, Zadkine College, Albeda College, De Heuvel, Beeldfabriek, Patching zone, Cultdoc, stichting Frequency, R.A.M.P, Network Star Suriname and Strangerfestival.