This new network project emerged from the lack of contact and exchange among artists in the mentioned region. This is true of arts in general and especially true of the emerging field of Arts and Technology . Turkey as a country and Istanbul as its largest city have a developing art scene that traverses between diverse geographies, cultures and religions. We believe that an Istanbul based network will be very useful and efficient to develop the cultural exchange and mobility of artists and artworks.
We believe that amberNetwork will constitute an institutional framework of production and communication that will be beneficial to the artists and to their far and close neighbors. In a broader sense, this project aims to promote and serve the idea that exchange of all sorts promotes contact and that contact bears an unconditional potential for universal understanding. We believe that the uncanniness and inherent curiosity of the art form is a good means for cultural exchange and contact.
The Purpose
amberNetwork aims at connecting individual artists, art technicians and organizations that are working in the field of Arts and Technology, in Middle East, Caucasian, Balkan and Turkic Countries.
Considering the political state of the region that we all live in and the field of art and technology, the main objectives of the network are:
• To support exchange of experience and knowledge among artists, art technicians and cultural institutions,
• To provide physical mobility for the artist and the art works in order to develop cultural exchange,
• To increase international cooperation,
• To promote digital technology as a medium of art and increase the usage of digital technologies in art,
• To create a larger audience in the member countries
• To create a ground for the development of new forms of artistic expressions within the global art and technology scene by bringing together diverse artists together
• To make the artists and their works from this vast and culturally nuanced region, visible and accessible worldwide,
• To create a smooth passage over Istanbul between European countries and middle eastern and Turkic countries
Background Of The Project
The art and technology circles in Turkey have had a continuous and developing relationship with similar circles in Europe and the Balkans. The art and technology festivals/platforms that took place in Turkey in the recent years all featured artists and experts from most regions of Europe, including the Balkans but lacked in terms of artists who are not from Europe. Even though there is an established group of artists who combine digital technologies with artistic concerns in the former Soviet Republics, the Middle East, Turkic Countries and North Africa, these artists are not well known in Turkey. The latter’s art circles are mostly interested in gaining access to the European art world. In sum, Turkish art circles in general and Art and Technology circles in particular lack when it comes to establishing relationships with their non-European counterparts.
This project aims to remedy this situation by establishing a new international network of artists and art professionals from the area that lies to the East and South of Turkey, the cluster of regions that are non-European. The objective is to bring together in Istanbul a new art World that, Turkish artists, researchers and cultural institutions have not had access and/or interest before. By doing so, the project will open a space in which art operators and artists of member countries will have better access to non-European artists who are working in the field of art and technology. At the same time, it aims to make Istanbul an art center that does not only orient towards Europe, to its West but also to the parts of the World about whose artistic output the Turkish art public has little or no knowledge. amberNetwork roughly targets the following countries: Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Bulgaria, Greece.
If you are working in one of the above mentioned countries as an individual artist or as an organization working in the field of art and technology or related areas please contact us to to join and help to extend the network. mail to eertan@a-m-b-e-r.org
Founding Members
Abdo Nawar* (SHAMS, Beirut, Lebanon)
Amirali Ghasemi (Iran)
Arpi Adamian* (Utopiana, Armenia)
Claudine Dussollier* (ZINC-ECM, Marseille)
Deniz Erbaş (BM-Suma, İstanbul, Turkey)
Ekmel Ertan* (BIS, Turkey)
Erfan Abdi* (Iran)
Kostas Moschos* (IEMA, Greece)
Lika Dadiani (TRAM Foundation, Georgia)
Lucine ?* (Utopiana, Armenia)
Lucine ?* (Utopiana, Armenia)
Mesut Arslan* (0032, Belgium)
Nafiz Akşehirlioğlu* (BIS, Turkey)
Özlem Alkış* (BIS, Turkey)
Ricardo Mbarkho (Lebanon)
Samar Martha* (Art School Palestine)
Shaarbek Amankul* (Б’Art Contemporary: Bishkek Art Center, Kyrgyz Republic)
Shervin Afshar (Iran)
* founding members who joined the first meeting in 16th of November 2008
