Istanbul Under the Yoke of Contemporary Arts

Every two years, Istanbul gets caught in a wave of artsy-fartsy as the Istanbul Biennial explodes like a bomb. Until last week, so many other exhibitions, openings, projects and other things co-incided with the Biennial that even the artsy-fartsy nighthawks got tired of partying around. I couldn't cover them all, but here are some glimpses of the City under the invasion... of contemporary art!

The picture above was a glimpse of the Istanbul Modern, the City's much-vaunted modern arts center. This picture shows what it looks like from the inside, with a special "10 years of the Istanbul Biennial" exhibition held up just for the occasion.

Other places, like Garanti Bank's Platform Gallery are also running exhibits that are unrelated to, but certainly enjoying the popularity of the Biennial.

An influx of foreign artsy-fartsies means that you can find people of every nationality drinking around and having a merry time in the city streets. Some New Yorkers in this bunch were amazed that they could walk around with their beer bottles in Istanbul's streets, something which is punishable by a fine in New York.

They also had a spankin-new Mac which they used as a portable boombox. Better watch out for thieves!

Another artsy, but not fartsy spectacle of the last week was the opening of Santral Istanbul, Bilgi University's monumental new humanities campus and fine arts museum. Why do all of these places have "Istanbul" attached to their names? Do art people constantly forget which city they are in? Or do the Turkish artsy-fartsies still retain a bit of nationalistic place-name jingoism despite their incessant, obligatory attacks on everything associated with patriotism? Nevertheless, this new campus will be a very beneficial addition to Turkish education as a whole.

Santral Istanbul also has its own Otto pub-grill-bar inside, with strange, jellyfish-shaped lamps overhanging a massive dancefloor. Those lucky kids at Bilgi University literally have their own club on their campus. During the opening night, free drinks meant that Otto Santral witnessed strange encounters between thousands of people coming in from the surrounding slums, and the cream of Istanbul's art-and-design communities. Needless to say, it was a slightly uneasy coexistence.

The local municipality also sponsors its own art projects for the beautification of the town, but such works are generally ill-conceived and end up being eyesores instead. Take this piece-of-shit iron door with baskets of bread attached, for example.

Wow, the bread is real and people actually nibble on it as they pass by. I wonder what it is supposed to mean? The title of the 'work'? "Door of Bread"! You get it? It's a door that's full of... bread! Ha. Ha.

No thanks go to Mimar Sinan University member Maryem Denizkran for this truly uninspired piece of crap art.

Exodus! Exodus! Exodus!

The owners of the Exodus Cafe-Bar-Club in Pera must be under the impression that writing their name three times in neon letters will somehow lure in customers. EXODUS! EXODUS! EXODUS! It's the only way!

Blood Thirst

Got blood? A Turkish "red crescent" (it's like the red cross,) blood donation center sits next to a kiosk that sells all kinds of drinks in Besiktas. Feel free to load up on juice and donate some sugary, sweet blood to the needy!

Water Shortage in Istanbul

Record-breaking temperatures meant that a lot of large Turkish cities faced drought this summer. Istanbul, while not hit as hard as Ankara, (where water was provided on alternating days and the mayor advised people to "go on a summer vacation") still had a lot of poor people lining up for water in front of old fountains Ottoman like these.

A Thirsty Wall Lizard

I found this small wall lizard (Podarcis muralis?) by my garden door this August, quietly lapping up water from the sprinklers. I'd never seen one of these wall lizards active at night, nor have I read any such account. Perhaps it was really thirsty?

On another note, determining exactly what species these creatures is very difficult, not only because they are hard to identify, but also because the taxonomy of small lacertids themselves is in a state of complete anarchy. Anyways, this Italian website is a very good source that might shed more light on the subject.

A Haunted Gas Station

When driving from Smyrna to Bandirma this summer, me and my dad ran stopped by this strange, abandoned gas station.

Inside we found this sad, forgotten portrait of Mustafa Kemal, as well as abandoned account books.

It looks like this place was selling fuel for cargo trucks when sometime around 2001, business suddenly stopped. Perhaps this was due to the huge market crash that took place in Turkey in the same year.

Whatever the reason, the place was a true ghost house. Even the trucks parked outside were dead and rusty. We took a leak and moved on.

Nasty Magazines from Greece

You like that, bitch? The unintentionally funny cover of a pulp erotic novel I saw at a kiosk in Thessaloniki. I wonder why the publishers choose an innocent, cute hedgehog as their mascot?

Freemasons Rule the World

The silent entrance of the Freemasons' lodge near Asmalimescit, Taksim. Like their counterparts in every other country, bullshit conspiracy theorists generate a lot of confusing slander about the Freemasons in Turkey.

An Ophisaur

A friendly Eurasian glass snake (Ophisaurus apodus) I'd kept as a pet. As you can see from here, these creatures look superficially like snakes, but possess a very un-snake-like rigidity, almost like the hose of a vacuum cleaner. This is due to the presence of armor plates under their skin.

Furthermore they have external ears, something which no snake is lucky to have. I bought this ophisaur from one of the horrible petshops near my house, and rehabilitated it for a few weeks before releasing it to the wild on the plains outside my city. For more on ophisaurs, (or Scheltopusiks, as they are better known,) read this article on Wikipedia.

A Dirty Trick

Nope, it's not what you think it is. Just put your heels together and hold the camera as to clip off the edges. The results, as you can see here, are remarkably similar to close ups of a transvestite's private parts.

Haydarpasa

The Haydarpasa railroad station in Kadikoy, one of the Asian districts of Istanbul. From here you can take a train and go to Ankara or Eskisehir, as well as more outlandish destinations such as Van, Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran.

Built by the Germans during their quasi-imperial "alliance" with the Ottomans in 1906, this building is the only train station that is surrounded on three sides by water. Many people from inland Anatolia get their first glimpse of the sea at this place.

You can see the German-made clock set in the facade, as well as one of the station's earliest steam locomotives in the foreground.

Octopus Delight

Softly grilled octopus, probably my favorite food on the entire planet. Once every year, I go to a seashore restaurant in Bodrum and tell them to prepare an entire octopus for me. I eat every arm individually, plus I have the thing's head filled with calamari rings and rice, and eat that too!

At the end of the night, I leave the table as distended as the restaurant owners' pockets.

At the Weavers' Bazaar

The Sepetçiler Kasrı (translated as Basket Weavers' Bazaar?) on the shores of the Golden Horn has been reincarnated as a concert venue.

I know my posts have been getting a little lazy these days, but hang on. Soon enough, you'll be drowned in an orgy of new posts... Just let me finish choosing and re-sizing the images!

A Dead Bird

I found this little dead bird in Greece. I couldn't identify the poor thing, can you?

The Bosphorus Bridge, Again

The Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul. Its cables are undergoing repair these days, after an investigation discovered minute cracks in some of them.

A Reminder Before the Elections in Greece

Elections in Greece are closing up, so here's an important reminder: Don't vote for these malakas.

For non-Greek readers, LA.O.S. is a party that boldly proclaims: "...that the divisions of left and right don't make sense after the end of the Cold War." Whatever the new dividing line is, these guys are on the wrong side. Their leader, Georgios Karatzaferis, is a holocaust denier who spoke about "...the Auschwitz and Dachau myth..." Their ranks also include maniacs such as Anestis Keramidas, who really seems to believe that the Greeks are a master race from Sirius.

An Occulted River

A small river runs peacefully into the Bosphorus from the European side of Istanbul, from around Emirgan. Istanbul has many such rivers, but this is one of the rare ones that is not a stinking, dried-up dump. The city is so large that it has swallowed up some rivers entirely. Such streams run completely underground, unknown to the people walking above.

Two Slugs

My sister loves slugs for some reason. We went out searching one warm July night...

...and found these small, brownish ones. Trying to be a bit more professional, we tried to photograph them against a ruler for size comparison.

The End of Summer

Summer is over, and I can finally devote more time to my blog. Stay tuned for an orgy of new posts, including a trip across the Turkish Aegean, the deserted Greek villages of Karaburun, a local rock festival and many more!

Did you also notice that now you can comment on individual posts?

A Beached Jellyfish

This is what a jellyfish looks like after it has been stranded on a beach for a day. Their bodies, made mostly of water, degrade into a sort of mushy goo that makes identification mostly impossible. As a result, they are only good for hurling around, preferably onto other people.

Farewell to Igor

Igor wants to get out.

UPDATE!

This is the last photo I have of Igor. He died a few months later of a heart attack, when I was away in London.

The Snipers' Alley

When we were younger, (ie: five or six years ago,) my brother and I used to hide behind this wall and shoot our BB guns to passing cars' windows. Snit! Snit! We would then mark our "scores" on the wall with a Sharpie. I returned to this makeshift "snipers' alley" a few weeks ago, to find the "kill counts" still on the wall. We'd chalked up more than 210 hits before stopping out of boredom.

Pulp Bar in Taksim

The Imam Adnan street near Taksim is home to one of the most garishly-decorated indie rock bars in history. A purple stairway lined with notebook-doodle style characters greets you as soon as you enter through the door. Welcome... can you resist the urge to advance?

So... purple! Must... resist! The drawings get progressively more irksome as you climb up the seemingly endless flights of stairs. The unnerving atmosphere is further enhanced by the fact that the drawings talk to you. "The world is one day, that one day is today!" announces the green-headed gimp with the ironic business suit. Wow! Like, so deep!

Do you think this grotesque work is the product of one amateur artist, or a dozen? I could not decide. Nor could I understand if all those faces were meant to be famous rock stars, or a pantheon of aneuryism-suffering peace kids. Notice how someone has administrated the finishing touch by artfully applying a sticker of John Lennon, that tax-dodging, hypocritical twat.

At last! The view that greets you as you climb to the top floor of the apartment. Despite my artistic rants, this place is actually very comfortable and friendly, and the live music keeps on playing every day of the week, until dawn. Given that it can get impossible find a decent bar in the middle of the week, Pulp Live Music Bar is always a Pearl-Jam-busting oasis.

This bar was actually located in a ground-floor establishment right around the corner. It used to host a myriad of local punk-alternative-indie bands, as it still does. However, during the fall of 2004, a crowded punk concert turned into a massive three-way fight between young punks, the establishment and various other drunken thugs. The police arrived to seal down the scene, and Pulp was forced to relocate to its present place on top of the Yesilcam Theatre. For more information, please visit their website. (It's only in Turkish, sorry!)

Street Art from Istanbul

Boink! Even street-art critters in Turkey are tainted with a bit of nationalism.

You can still see this sticker at the notorious "street art corner" in Cihangir. Local viewers will doubtlessly be able to identify its exact location.

Speaking of street art, here is Mr. Blumbo! There are still many Blumbos left in Istanbul and Athens... Could you find them all, dear readers?

Two Preserved Millipedes

Two local millipedes I collected for Professor Zoltan Korsos from Hungary. Make no mistake, I don't enjoy killing animals and it was extremely painful to watch them struggle as the helpless creatures drowned in alcohol. I am only collecting them since there is a slight chance that some millipedes in my garden might represent undescribed species.

However, the dead millipedes got a sort of poetic revenge as their body secretions reacted with the alcohol solution to form an impermeable gunk, making them impossible to remove from the vials, let alone study. I hope I can figure out a clean way to preserve them, so that science will be able to understand the millipedes of Istanbul with a minimal loss of life.

Greek Nationalism in Thessaloniki

Beautiful Thessaloniki! Here is a small collection of random shots from my visit to this city last year. I stayed for one night at this cheap hotel, only to move out immediately after discovering that it was mostly used for prostitution.

A couple in traditional Pontiac costumes pose in a rally to remember the "Pontic Genocie", a collection of massacres and Christian-Moslem clashes at the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Was this an actual genocide like the Armenian one? Or was it a bloody, guerilla civil war between two different ethnicities inhabiting the same place? Perhaps historians can know better.

A gallant statue of Alexander the Great dominates the waterfront of Thessaloniki, a city which actually didn't exist when he was alive.

Ok, so these three pictures might be a bit drab but believe me, Thessaloniki is still a beautiful place to visit.

Fauna from the Garden

I took a walk out in my garden last night to look for millipedes. I couldn't find any, but instead I ran into a whole bunch of other critters...

I saw small slugs...

...as well as this polka-dotted monster that was as long as my index finger. Mr. Ümit Kebapçı has identified the first slug as a Deroceras, while the spotty giant is possibly a Limax maxiumus. Thank you so much!

I also saw this huge Helix Aspersa snail.

This tiny Cyrtopodion kotschyi gecko is very peculiar because unlike the majority of gecko species, it lacks ahedsive pads on its toes. (Compare it with pictures of other geckos I posted earlier.) Instead, it manages to hold on to walls with zig-zag kinks on its fingers. I wonder if they belong to a more "primitive" lineage than other geckos, or if they have secondarily lost their finger-pads.

You viewers are probably saturated with photos of all the green toads (Bufo viridis) I keep finding everywhere, but who could resist such cute things? I placed a small lacewing in front of this frog, and he ate it without thinking twice. It happened so fast that I couldn't take a picture.

Of course, frogs should better watch out for hedgehogs (Erinaceus concolor) like these. These spiny animals have been getting more and more common around where I live, possibly because they keep having sex all the time.