EINS, ZWEI, EINS, DREI

In the context of

Rhythm
Section
Im
Köşk

July
3 – 13
2025

Anet Sandra Açıkgöz
Anneke Bosma
Mehmet Çeper
Concernists
Daniel Geiger
Iemke van Dijk
Henriëtte van’t Hoog
Özkan Işık
Oleksiy Koval
Thomas Rieger
Riwar Collective
Veronika Wenger
Guido Winkler
Michael Wright

The exhibition is curated by Dr. Ezgi Bakçay (Istanbul) and Katrin Savvulidi (Munich)

The Rhythm of the Collectivities

Today, public spaces are shrinking under the pressure of neoliberal urban policies, security discourses, and commercialization. This reduction signifies not only the disappearance of physical spaces but also the limitation of freedom of expression, encounters, and shared experiences. It is at this juncture that independent cultural and artistic spaces emerge as vital breathing spaces. While attempting to sustain their existence outside the state and market forces, these spaces create the foundation for individuals and communities to think, produce, and act together. By opening space for untold stories, invisible bodies, and suppressed voices, they contribute to redefining the public sphere.

Independent spaces are not just places where art is displayed; they are also spaces where the collective rehearsal of an alternative life imagination takes place. In these spaces, communities gradually develop a shared rhythm, stretching the patterns of everyday life, establishing new relationships with urban space, and enabling new ways of experiencing time. These structures, based on solidarity, pluralism, and encounter, create a form of resistance against established norms, while also heralding the possibilities that will transform the city and social life. Therefore, independent cultural and artistic spaces are indispensable not only for artistic production but also for keeping our collective imaginative power alive.

This exhibition seeks to closely examine the community-building potential of creative productions flourishing in independent art spaces, the transformative power of aesthetic experiences, and the possibilities for collective emancipation. By reminding us that art is not only an individual form of expression but also a practice capable of creating shared fields of perception, it invites the audience to question the ways of thinking and feeling together. In this context, the exhibition focuses on both the methods of production and the spaces where these productions emerge — independent spaces — while engaging with concepts such as visibility, voice, movement, and solidarity, tracing the path of an alternative understanding of the public sphere.

Dr. Ezgi Bakçay (Istanbul)