Sinopale (1. International Sinop Biennial)

“Şey/ – thing”

One of the oldest cities on the Black Sea coast, Sinop was named after the goddess Sinope and bears a name that has remained almost the same for centuries. Despite its small size, the city has witnessed several historically significant events within the area it is naturally isolated in, away from the centre of attention.

Also known as “the city of the refused,” Sinop has, since the time of Diogenes, stood out as a centre of opposition and dissidence.

A centre of specialist shipbuilding in the Ottoman period (its shipyards also served other empires with which commercial partnerships had been developed) Sinop later increasingly became known for its “prison,” converted from a dock building.

This old centre of commerce fell from grace during the transformation of the empire and was left in poverty and the city became synonymous with the prison building it housed. (The dock building was converted into a prison complex after 1887).

However, there was something that was forgotten in this process of reconstruction, and that was what the inhabitants of the city would do under these changing conditions.

Sinop, in a sense, was geographically a natural “prison town,” and also because of the fact that it had only a single entry point, the political authority of the time ordered that Sinop was transformed into an actual “prison town.” Individuals that posed “a threat to society,” often guilty of ‘thought crimes’ were incarcerated here. On the other hand, what was produced here (the prison assumed a reverse function and became an environment where serious intellectual, literary work was created) supported the emergence of a different kind of synergy for the city of Sinop and its inhabitants and established a reputation as the “dissident city” in the history of the Republic.

In the cold war period, the most important “big ear” of NATO and the USA was placed in Sinop, hosting this device which one “bloc,” to which almost half the world was member to, was using to control the “other bloc.” We could see this military base placed on a hill dominating the area and established in order to provide a simultaneous monitoring of information and best assessment of defense-related data, as a concrete implementation of Michel Foucault’s interpretation of the concept “Panopticon.” The state “turned a deaf ear” and based the entire economy of the city on the revenues it received from this centre, never responding to the needs of this city where people that almost did (could) not exist lived. The hundred years of solitude the city suffered triggered the development of a different kind of perception in the community: To think and create independently!

The Panopticon was originally a prison building with a round-shaped section designed to allow an observer in a central tower observe all prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell whether they are being watched. Foucault claimed all hierarchical structures like the factory, the school and the hospital were later based on the Panopticon.

This new stance which developed unawares, became the agent legalizing an uncanny situation and supported the process of “creating a new other within,” perhaps realized by the local population only years later.

1. A reasonable process for new environments and togethernesses

Modernist culture and art policies of the central political administration often triggered the “urbanite”s faculty of thought here, engendering the birth of a contemporary “urbanite” free of bias and bigotry. The prisoners of thought (writers like Sabahattin Ali, Eşber Yağmurdereli) and their production in “prison,” the process of being “some place in the north” and the popular following artistic production within a central program created the environment for the infrastructure of an “educated” “new centre” which questioned and demanded.

The “thing” which developed as a “counter-action” against official authorities who didn’t even consider appreciating the value of the special geographical position and historical layers of the city centre, which stand out as a national treasure to even the untrained eye, was the “thing” one felt to now develop an awareness towards the consumption of culture and art and to preserve them as “values”.

The concept defining this condition of obscurity would also define the conceptual structure of the first biennial.

2. The transformation of the indescribable condition : “şey, thing”

Sinopale determined the conceptual framework of its first activity as “şey, thing.”

The ‘thing’ describes the endless distance between the known and the unknown, every-thing and no-thing. The inevitable reality of being a ‘thing’, our responsibilities and things we turned a blind eye to, the position of things in the face of re-formation and destruction, the gaps in and the naïvete of our actions were discussed from an artistic point of view in many of the works to be installed in Sinop Prison where “thing” inhabit in an intense manner. Other spaces throughout the city also witnessed this discussion.

Sinop reopens the discussion of the relationship between art and historical process. This ancient town is searching for its codes.

3. The Issue of Purpose and Means

While the “urbanite” experiences intensity within the impasse of this condition, the urgency to use the phenomenon of the “thing” for a purpose emerges. Many factors including the effort shown by young people to receive art education, the instinct to produce with aesthetic concerns and the historical layers of the city walked over every day, form the structure of the ‘thing’ described here now.

The state does not reach areas it once used to, and the private sector only serves where a “political target audience” exists. In the context of culture and art policies, the criticism or obstruction of modernization efforts by forcing them towards a point of political obscurity (without allowing the people to internalize these efforts) has now begun to trigger the formation of a new awareness.

Having lost their functions along with post-1980s liberalization, central art institutions are now being closed. We now witness the private sector entering the race at full speed. However, it is also an indisputable fact of Turkey that art, even in the hands of the private sector, has not been institutionalized yet.

At this point, the following question comes to mind. Can the civil initiative form a new structure by activating (by networking and forming partnerships) local, national and international dynamics? What can the new stance to be taken in the face of the terminated relationship between centre and periphery be?

“Sinopale” is a structure formed to respond to this question.

4. Sinop and the Biennial (Sinop+Biennale=Sinopale)

Sinopale is a structure where the main idea develops from the bottom up, and in this context, it also has an influence on cultural values. –The community did actually want an activity like this, but didn’t have the know-how to shape it. The existence of a will is a constructive reason for organizations like Sinopale.- Here, local thought is transformed into an international language.

Sinopale has basically been designed as a structure to develop its own practice on its own area of use. This structure has been constructed to begin a movement to activate civil initiatives in an area where policies do not exist and to create demand.

“Requirements, Obligations, Plans and Results.”

Sinopale assesses the entire process within an artistic context, and unlike other biennials, is an art organization which involves the inhabitants of the city in the production process. The driving force behind Sinopale is the belief that the one-sided difference observed in the relationship with the environment of the high cultural production in more conventional biennials can be overcome with a new model.

Artists organized workshops in their fields of interest with various groups from the community while designers, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations, tried to create an “awareness of ownership” to make visible the “local disaster phenomenon” using design tools.

The central political authority has drawn up plans to build a nuclear reactor in Sinop and the construction of related coordination centres has begun. In response to this, the non-governmental organizations in Sinop have come together under a single roof to make their voices heard with protest demonstrations with tens of thousands people taking part and meetings to raise awareness. The population of Sinop central province according to the most recent census is 29,000.

Works of artists who pointed to values not realized by local elements (or were made to forget) and placed the problem of “inhabitation” back on the agenda were installed in spaces including the Sinop Prison, the Aslan Torun Mansion-Ethnography Museum and the Seljuk Madrasah according to their preferences. The performance program opened all areas within the city to the artists’ use and works focusing on Sinop were again in the forefront. Interactive works, instruments necessary to enable the participation of the local people in artistic production, are important in that they function to accelerate the process of “internalization,” a point taken into consideration for the first Sinopale.

Sinopale existed as a whole with its 3 curators, 60 artists, its organization crew and the 29,000 people of Sinop who made an effort for its success. The people who considered themselves a part of this project at this stage, who came and created, are pioneers who have formed a model for the structures to be formed in years to come.

“Sinopale” is a continuous situation to be remembered by its own name.

T. Melih Görgün