Each of Erek’s pieces, rather than originating in the studio and bound to a particular medium, formulates a statement responding to a specific context, employing various media and formats which fit best to make the idea visible – or just to evoke it with only the most modest of visual investment. To that end, Erek often works with ephemeral formats such as live sound and performance. The artist’s interest in sound and rhythm is rooted in his larger curriculum. Erek studied architecture at Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul and then worked for four years in an architectural firm. He has also been involved since early on in Istanbul’s vibrant music scene and today, aside from holding a PhD from the Faculty of Music at the Center for Advanced Studies in Music, at Istanbul Technical University, he plays drums in an avant-rock band Nekropsi which he co-founded in Istanbul.

The exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel features Week (2012), a new work conceived for the spacious, sky-lit gallery on the upper floor of the Kunsthalle. In addition to the installation in the exhibition space, a large flashing LED sign has been placed in the window above the main entrance to the Kunsthalle, announcing the WEEK (2012) to passers-by on the street below. This changes the expression of the sober, neo-classical façade of the building into that of a late night music venue, unlikely to be found in the otherwise stately neighbourhood of Grossbasel, the old city centre, home to museums, theatres, galleries and other places of interest that are associated with high culture. However, at the same time, Barfüsserplatz, the iconic city square is located a hundred metres down the street from the Kunsthalle and remains the favourite spot for the local youth from Basel and the entire agglomeration, who meet there on Friday and Saturday night before disappearing into bars and clubs along the Steinenvorstadt, a buzzing and trashy pedestrian street that ends (or begins) at the square. The WEEK sign makes a connection to the nightlife around the square, but as the exhibition of Cevdet Erek is open only during the day, an important difference between a club and an art venue becomes apparent. Another LED-based piece, Day (2011), is installed in the exhibition space – units of blue light interspersed by dark intervals travel along the single LED module and represent all the days of Erek’s exhibition, each one reduced to a specific number of pixels, equivalent to the changes in the duration of daytime in Basel between January 12 and March 4, where one diode emitting the light stands for one minute of daytime.

The main inspiration of Erek’s work at the Kunsthalle is the typical space of a club – such as the notorious Weekend club in Berlin. Usually the entrance to a club involves a corridor leading from the outside world into the inner space, a passage that leaves no time for adjusting the guest’s perception: the change of circumstances between the normalcy of daily life outside and the celebration of the week-end night’s victory over the sun is radical and short. The club is a social space defined by a number of carefully orchestrated elements that build up to a total assault on the senses: the beat of the music, the lights and smoke, the heat of the crowd, the alcohol and drugs. All of this is precisely what is usually excluded in the experience of a museumgoer.

The Week addresses the central issue of Cevdet Erek’s multifarious practice: the mutual translation and permeability between the seemingly different systems of representation, through which we apprehend the world around us and organize our lives: measurements of space (metric system), time (calendar and clock) and musical tempo – measured as a steady number of beats per minute. The artist conflates these seemingly objective measurement systems with other, apparently random ones, such as the timeline of historical events or a changing rhythm in musical improvisation.

The architecture of the show has been constructed around the rectangle of the room’s imposing skylight, emphasizing the fact that contrary to a club, the exhibition is to be perceived only in daylight (replaced by artificial light only twice – during the opening and on the following night, during the “Night of Museums”). A totemic column of a sound-system (Turbosound, used in clubs and for outdoor rock concerts) is located in the centre of the space. The beat (samples of acoustical drum sound) is stripped bare and functions as a diagram; rather than aural seduction taking control over the visitor’s body and soul, it is used as a simple, almost graphical representation, the minimum of sound. The sound of the piece is composed as an aural “grid” made of seven beats based on the unnatural and human-made division of the week, and its inner units – seven days. These seven days are played in several different versions combined in one loop, in Erek’s Week.

The exhibition is generously supported by:
Regent Lighting, george foundation

Supported by: MIAM, Istanbul Technical University

Cevdet Erek (*1974 Istanbul/TR) lives and works in Istanbul. Erek studied 1992-1999 architecture at the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts Istanbul and 2000-2003 sound engineering and design at the Center for Advanced Studies in Music of Istanbul Technical University. In 2005-2006 he was artist in residence at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam. In 2011 Erek received a PhD in sound from the Center for Advanced Studies in Music at Istanbul Technical University.

Solo exhibitions (selection): Update, Akinci, Amsterdam (2011); Ahmet Cevdet Bey, duo show with Ahmet Öğüt, Overgaden, Copenhagen (2011); El Ele, duo show with Anna Boghiguian, Rodeo Gallery, Istanbul (2009); Ankara Modern 1, Masa, Istanbul (2009); Side by Side, m3, Göteborg (2009); On the day I fix a turbine to my belly, Lokaal 1, Antwerp (2009); A Few Retrospectives, Galerie Akinci, Amsterdam (2008). Group exhibitions (selection): Untitled, 12th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2011); Aksak Ritim/Odd Time Beat, Rodeo Gallery, Istanbul (2011); Art of Climbing Mountains, 303 Gallery, New York (2011); Tactics of Invisibility, Arter, Istanbul (2011); Out of Place, Darat al Funun, Amman (2011); Out of Place, Tate Modern, Level 2, London (2011); Another Country, IFA, Berlin (2010); Unincorporated, Manzara Perspectives, Istanbul (2010); Tactics of Invisibility, Tanas, Berlin (2010); Home Works 5, Ashkal Alwan for Contemporary Arts and the Home Works Academy, Beirut (2010); Tactics of Invisibility, TBA21, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Wien (2010); I’m not there, Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York (2009); Centry – Fugacions, La Capella, Barcelona (2009); Columns Held Us Up, Artists Space, New York (2009); Manifesty Destiny, Extra City, Antwerp (2009); Istanbul, traverses, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille (2009); Just in Time, Stedelijk Museum CS, Amsterdam (2006); Poetic Justice, 8th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2003). Performances (selection): Activity Report, Salon, IKSV, Istanbul (2010); Dokuman, together with Taldans, Centre National du Danse, Paris (2010); SSS, Extra City, Antwerp (2009); Independence Month, Artist Space, New York (2009); The day I fix a turbine to my belly, Lokaal 1, Antwerp (2009); Graf, with F. Sizanli, M. Kaplan, E. Devries Istanbul Dance Festival, Istanbul (2008); 4/4, together with Nekropsi, Platform Garanti, Istanbul (2007); SSS, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2006); Unruhe Bitte, together with Alexandra Bachzetsis, Gessneralle, Zurich (2005).

An essential mode of Weinberger’s artistic practice and production to date has been that of collaboration and participation. Her music and sound works were often included in exhibitions as live performances that took place during opening nights or special events. Thus, her pieces added another dimension to other artists’ works, and were occasionally also co-performed or co-produced by them. Each of Weinberger’s works engaged with a particular exhibition space and was the outcome of a collective endeavour. Weinberger employs different genres and transgresses the limits of youth subcultures that identify each with one particular genre and the corresponding look and lifestyle. The artist’s open-ended way of working challenges the role hierarchical processes play in contemporary art, and shifts the focus to the importance and presence of collective creativity in our time.

As a representative of the generation that has unlimited access to information and media, Weinberger situates her work in the production sector of music and sound performance. The availability of affordable technology puts the production – and instantaneous distribution – of high-quality music or film within everyone’s reach. Consequently, the hierarchy of artistic production and distribution is transformed, as a single person can access all channels necessary to present a work to the mass audience. Online platforms such as YouTube are only one part of the machinery that enables the new generation to foster the distribution of films and music productions. The majority rules, and its ‘clicks’ alert major corporations to promote certain titles via their distribution networks. The discovery and selection of artistic works are therefore no longer only in the hands of a small number of individuals or of talent scouts. A pre-produced album compilation loses its importance, since the playlist changes constantly. Music becomes a data stream of sounds. New pieces of music received from friends via email complement purchased tracks, as do personally composed tracks and those downloaded from the Internet.

For Kunsthalle Basel, Weinberger has produced a site-specific sound installation. When You Leave, Walk Out Backwards, So I’ll Think You’re Walking In is the title of both the exhibition and the work. Music and sound fill the five ground floor galleries of Kunsthalle Basel. Their visual impact derives solely from the arrangement of loudspeakers while curtains installed alongside the walls assure the absorption of echoes. For the first time, Weinberger’s work, evinced solely by music and sound, stands for itself and relates to the layout of the galleries. The collective processes are not on display: Weinberger has produced twenty-two hours of sound for her exhibition. Eleven loops are played on the eleven channels the artist installed in the galleries and, given their varying lengths the result is a spatial layout of sound, constantly shifting through the exhibition spaces. The Grand Opening Soundtrack devised as an invitation to the opening offers a foretaste of the various loops in the show.

In the first gallery, three different loops are playing over three doughnut-shaped loudspeakers. Each loudspeaker generates a field of sound whose intensity increases the closer you get. Overlapping sounds reverberate between the loudspeakers and between the galleries. Directional loudspeakers in gallery 2 fill the space with another two loops while in the following room one encounters a more intimate atmosphere. Four loops in gallery 4 and one in the final room of the Kunsthalle both open up and close the circuit. The exhibition is not conceived like a record album that runs from beginning to end. Each of the rooms and each of the loops may be the beginning or the end of Weinberger’s work. It is the visitors of the show who determine how long they linger in a room, with a loop, or at a certain position between two or several loops. Hence, the visitors mix personal tracks and create a Weinberger work of their own. The loops are always composed in one timbre, in which major and minor keys harmonize. The basic form of each harmony develops into a body of sound and introduces the next harmony. This conveys a sense of calm underlying the overall composition or of an ingenuous interplay of different elements. The crux of the matter is not so much the development of a danceable beat like for example in electronic music. Instead, the various samples of presets including drum kits, percussion, basses, grand pianos, synths and strings, revolve around the idea of a universal composition.

Hannah Weinberger composes with the aid of programs that are available to many of her peers. When You Leave, Walk Out Backwards, So I’ll Think You’re Walking In does not incorporate any live music or vocals. Instead, the artist appropriates those elements supplied by audio programs whose recombination is left to the user. Appropriation, recombination and repetition are hence essential features of this work. They underpin not only Weinberger’s practice per se but also the listeners’ perceptions, for they necessarily experience the work as a permanent re-mix. As far as musical genres are concerned, When You Leave, Walk Out Backwards, So I’ll Think You’re Walking In can perhaps, best be described as ambient, which is to say, as a style of electronic music dominated by soft and drawn-out sounds. Minimalist beats interspersed with world music clips can be heard alongside other variations that run in a constant 4/4 cadence at a rate of 80–140 bpm (beats per minute).

What remains at the end of the exhibition visit is augured in a poetic and melancholic manner by the title: When You Leave, Walk Out Backwards, So I’ll Think You’re Walking In. Each exhibition visitor is enveloped by the work, and walks away immersed in his or her own personal impressions. Musical elements such as playback, repetitions and overlaps play with perception. The limits of the exhibition space - that Hannah Weinberger merely uses as a minimal backdrop to sound - are thus transcended. The music of the exhibition is subconsciously retained and remains tangible in viewers’ bodies after they left.

The exhibition is generously supported by george foundation.

Hannah Weinberger (born in 1988 at Filderstadt/D) lives and works in Basel and Zurich/CH. Weinberger studied Media Arts from 2007 to 2010 at the Zurich University of the Arts where she received her BFA in 2010. She is currently finishing her MFA at the Zurich University of the Arts. In 2010 Weinberger received the travel award from the Kunsthalle Basel, awarded in the course of Regionale ’11. Hannah Weinberger is one of the founding members of the project space Elaine Mgk together with Tenzing Barshee, Nikola Dietrich and Scott Cameron Weaver in the courtyard of Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel.
Group exhibitions (selection): Inside/Outside: Dressing the Monument Opening Reception, Lynden Sculpture Park, Milwaukee (2011); Group Affinity, Kunstverein Munich (2011); Corso Multisala, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2011); Magical & Poetical Structures, Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil (2011); The Village Cry, Kunsthalle Basel (2010); SLIP SNIP TRIP, Karma International, Zurich (2010); Of Objects, Fields, and Mirrors, Kunsthaus Glarus (2010); Bridges & Tunnels, curated by New Jerseyy, Hard Hat, Geneva (2009); FILE RIO, Oi Futuro Cultural Center, Rio de Janeiro (2009); The World Is Our Culture, ZHdK, Zurich (2008); Shift (Electronic Arts) Festival, Basel (2008); FILE – Electronic Language International Festival, Sao Paulo (2008). Performances (selection): Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing, Kunstverein Munich (2011); Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2011); PASSAGE(S),Theatre de L‘Usine, Geneva (2011); Jam Session, Museumsnacht, Kunsthalle Basel (2011); Regionales Konzert, The Village Cry, Kunsthalle Basel (2010); Transdisziplinäres Konzert, ZHdK, Zurich(2010); Interdisziplinäres Konzert, ZHdK, Zurich (2009).