Chus Martinez is one of the most speculative and critical minds within contemporary art and the curatorial field. We’ll hear her discussing the possible and perhaps necessary end of the art institution as we know it, and on what can be done to imagine other art sustaining environments: towards an understanding of art, that is more in tune with the growing complexity of life, and one that is more at peace with its transformative role within this complexity.
“I’m much more interested in an exhibition in the forest, rather than trying to produce a white cube which is not white, or it is round, or it’s virtual… Those kinds of modifications are not productive in speculative thinking.”
Chus has an internationally acclaimed curatorial practice that spans over almost two decades that generated myriad exhibitions, publications, and at times some of the most unexpected forms of cultural production. She is currently the head of the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Arts and Design in Basel. She is also the expedition leader of The Current II (2018–20), a project initiated by TBA21–Academy. 
Her very interesting trajectory to this point includes many curatorial and directorship roles, from Sala Rekalde in Bilbao, to MACBA in Barcelona, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, as well as being a core figure in the curatorial team of Documenta 13.

Episode Notes & Links
Chus is currently the director of the Art Institute at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design. https://institut-kunst.ch/en/we-are/studium-master/
Chus was writing a short story a day and keeping the doctor away during the first COVID-19 outbreak. She published her stories through Instagram and later on compiled them into a book titled “Let life Happen to You” published by Lenz Press. https://lenz.press/products/corona-tales-let-life-happen-to-you
Suzi Gablik is an artist and a professor of art history and art criticism.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzi_Gablik
Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy which promotes the inherent worth of all living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, plus the restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology
TBA21–Academy is an institutiton that promotes ocean literacy, research, and advocacy through the arts. The Academy is dedicated to fostering a deeper understanding of the ocean in order to engendering creative solutions to its most pressing issues. https://www.tba21.org/#item--academy--1819
Donna Haraway is a leading scholar in the field of science and technology studies with a focus on contemporary ecofeminism, associated with post-humanism and new materialism movements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Haraway
Stephen Wright is a writer and gardener based in France. He was the guest of the first episode of Ahali. https://www.ahali.space/episodes/episode-1-stephen-wright
Joan Jonas is a pioneer artist whose work typically encompasses video, performance, installation, sound, text, and drawing.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Jonas
Jon Mikel Euba is an artist whose work is grounded in drawing as a procedure, and sculpture as a program, resolved in diverse media. https://dutchartinstitute.eu/page/6012/jon-mikel-euba
Joan Jonas’ work “Moving Off the Land" (2016–ongoing) includes video, sculpture, drawing, and sound, centering on the oceans as a totemic, spiritual, and ecological touchstone. The performance was commissioned by TBA21–Academy and first presented in parallel to the 2016 Kochi – Muziris Biennale, and again in collaboration with Tate Modern at the Turbine Hall in 2018. https://www.ocean-space.org/exhibitions/joan-jonas-moving-off-land
David Gruber is a marine biologist, and Presidential Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gruber
Episode recorded on Zoom on November 9th 2020. Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.

Ahali Conversations Ep.10 Chus Martinez

Collecteurs is an independent public-benefit corporation with a mission to give public access to the world's unseen private art collections. In their words, they "aim to bring these unseen works out of the dark, and back into culture, where they belong.”
“Collectors have been conditioned to believe that they should feel and not think and show up but not speak. We don't think that way. We think a collector can and should be more than that. We advocate for a collector who employs research, critical thinking, rigor, social accountability.”
Jessica and Evrim Oralkan (the co-founders of Collecteurs) started collecting more than a decade ago. While they were considering options to catalog their collection, none of the alternatives met their expectations. Long story short, they came up with a collection management system that also accommodates a built-in social network. To finance this work, they created a business model based on membership fees and revenue from services to users. Today Collecteurs host more than 1200 collectors within its database.

Episode Notes & Links
Founded by Evrim and Jessica Oralkan and developed at the New Museum’s cultural incubator, Collecteurs is an independent public-benefit corporation with a mission to give the public access to the world's unseen private art collections. https://www.collecteurs.com/about-us
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/arts/design/art-collection-digital-museum.html
https://observer.com/2019/05/collecteurs-jessica-evrim-oralkan-qa/
The International Council of Museums establishes professional and ethical standards for museum activities. https://icom.museum/en/about-us/missions-and-objectives/
Episode recorded on Zoom on October 8th 2020. 
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.

Ahali Conversations Ep.11 Collecteurs

Filipa Ramos is a writer, curator, and educator, who has been working on the relationships between contemporary art and cinema, and the way environmental and ecological matters of concern are tackled or manifested in and through art.
"Like when you watch a good film, you may be attentive to the edits, to the montage, to the sound; and then all of a sudden, you are crying. And you know, you are willingly suspending your disbelief. But that's why you go to the cinema as well. And I think the zoo offers exactly that same kind of back and forth experience and in a really important way.”
Filipa Ramos is one of the founding curators of Vdrome, a self-proclaimed online cinema. She is also the Curator of Art Basel Film. and a Lecturer in the MRes Art: Moving Image of Central Saint Martins, London and the Master’s Program of the Arts Institute in Basel. She is co-curating the symposia series, or the “interdisciplinary festival” The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Lucia Pietroiusti for the Serpentine Galleries, London. Ramos is currently the Head of Research and Publications for the 13th Shanghai Biennale.

Episode Notes & Links
Filipa's writing and research on art, film, and nature have been published in magazines and catalogs worldwide. She authored "Lost and Found" (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2009) https://en.silvanaeditoriale.it/libro/9788836613397 and edited "Animals" (London: Whitechapel Gallery/MIT Press, 2016). https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/documents-contemporary-art-animals/
V-drome is a perennial online program that presents films by visual artists and filmmakers. http://www.vdrome.org
Lucia Pietrouisti is the head of the general ecology department of the Serpentine Galleries where she also curated the interdisciplinary festival titled "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish" along with Filipa. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/general-ecology/
The 13th Shanghai Biennale aims to advocate for processes of planetary re-alliance relying on transspecies collectivity. https://www.powerstationofart.com/whats-on/programs/shanghai-bienniale/home
Published in 1998, “The Power of Display: a history of exhibition installations at the Museum of Modern Art" is a seminal study of design as an aesthetic medium and cultural practice by Mary Anne Staniszewski.
"Plant Sex" is a mind-boggling public program that took place at the Serpentine galleries. Co-curated as a prelude to "The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of a Fish with Plants" by Filipa, it sought to reflect on the long and deep relationship between botany and eroticism. https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/plantsex/
Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalized binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Linnaeus
Octavia Butler was a groundbreaking afro-futurist science-fiction writer. Her short essay, “The Lost Races of Science Fiction" tackled the issue of racial presentation within the field of science fiction was first published in Transmission Magazine's summer issue in 1980. https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/d3ekbm/octavia-butler
"Sex, Botany, and Empire" explores the entwined destinies of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks’ influence served both science and imperialism by Patricia Fara. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/sex-botany-and-empire/9780231134262
“The Company One Keeps: Laptops, Lap Dances, Lapdogs” was published at e-flux journal #93 in 2018 https://www.e-flux.com/journal/93/215746/the-company-one-keeps-laptops-lap-dances-lapdogs/
Episode recorded on Zoom on December 7th 2020. 
Interview by Can Altay. Produced by Aslı Altay & Sarp Renk Özer. Music by Grup Ses.

Filipa Ramos

Ahali Conversations Ep.12 Filipa Ramos

2020:
MÇPS Studios are back with a new series of releases, such as the podcast: 
"Ahali Conversations w/ Can Altay"

2017:
MÇPS, İstanbul'dan sesler ve sözler toplamayı hedefleyen geçici kayıt stüdyosu ve yayın projesidir.
"Manifaturacılar Çarşısı Plakçılık Sunar" Can Altay ve Saz Arkadaşları tarafından kurgulandı. Prodüktörümüz Amira Arzık, ses mühendisimiz Doruk Keskin ve ev sahibimiz İMÇ 5533.

MÇPS Studios

Popular tracks