Zilberman | Istanbul presents the group exhibition 2019 with works by Ateş Alpar, Alpin Arda Bağcık, Aïda Bruyère, Guido Casaretto, Isaac Chong Wai, Bawer Doğanay, Memed Erdener, Camille Henrot, Fatoş İrwen, Zeynep Kayan, Maria Klonaris & Katerina Thomadaki, Jaffa Lam Laam, İz Öztat, Furkan Öztekin, Erinç Seymen, Lucia Tallová, and curated by Yekhan Pınarlıgil.
Reviving the sensual memory of the nightclub 2019 which opened in 1993 in a car graveyard right next to the Maslak auto industry site and quickly gained cult status, the exhibition can be visited between September 21 and November 25, 2023.
In the 1990s, the year 2019 seemed like too distant, a future that will never come. It was a time too far away to be imagined and thus full of possibilities. It is called to mind science fiction movies. Today, 2019 seems like a past that had never existed—a year that swings between existence and nothingness, a year sacrificed to the pandemic with no remains.
In the 1990s, the year 2019 was a nightclub. It was a space of freedom hauled from the future and an oasis where bodies resisting the domination of the routine and controlled life danced as if they were in a trance. Today it seems as if it had never existed. It is a hazy story, a fairy tale, a gradually forgotten urban legend that the transvestite grannies tell.
Night is a path that travels to the unconscious of humanity. It is a pitch-black street, a bleak and daunting atmosphere, a luring tale, and indeed, a spell. Those who have the courage to follow the path are greeted with a heavy metal door in the end. Just on the other side of the door lies a festive place. Colorful lights, never-ending rhythms, music, dance, and trance.
The nights have always been very lively and zippy in Beyoğlu, or if you fancy the fairy tale name, in Pera. Even the intricate depths of the recent past cannot cast a shadow over the razmataz. Casinos, European style places with or without alcohol. The arabesque freshly taken out of the luggage of the newly arrived migrants; the belvederes flooded with the melancholy of the arabesque. Then, there are the jazz bars, the windows opening to the west. And, of course, the discotheques and dancing halls. Under the shadows of the military coups, economic crises, cold cases and pogroms, a vibrant nightlife with street demonstrations, Labor Day parades, and trams, exists.
This festive commotion is naturally eclipsed by the darkness of the 1980s. However, as soon as the livid atmosphere is cracked open, the nightlife enlivens in Beyoğlu. Perhaps, this time, the sound of the razmataz coming from the great depths is stronger and louder. Soft melodies flow out of the decent bars with few customers who drink café cognac. The sounds of shabby places drown out the calm. Metal music and head bang! And then rhythms of electronic music join the hustle of the nights. There are now alternative “weird” places which were hard to imagine until then. Valentino, Vat 69, and 1001. They are followed by Yeşil and 14. 19 and 20 are the most popular of them all. You enter the clouds of perfume and come out drenched in sweat. Spotlights, neon lights, very tall women with blue hair, bass in the lungs, rhythms, techno, dance, and trance.
And then there is the summer place of 2019. The nightclub, which has acquired the status of a cult in the memories, is located in a slightly different place than all the others. It was opened in 1993 in the car cemetery right next to the Maslak auto industry site. Its entrance reminds one of the prison gates or watchtowers on borders. The inside is completely independent from the outside, impossible to snoop. Passage through the tower is subject to strict control. What follows is another country or a prison that is much freer inside than outside. To reach the stage one has to pass through pathways between car wrecks. Lots of make-up, all sorts of colors, famous DJs, lithe performances, and horror shows; bodies, all different from each other, carrying their singularity on their skins, dancing in a frenzied rhythm just below the sky…
The exhibition, opened in Zilberman’s three exhibition spaces, aims to capture, in the light of 2019, the memory of these oases that emerged in Istanbul’s nightlife in the short period from the late 1980s to the early 2000s. Memory is not, as one might fathom, a collection of documents and rational historiography, in short, an intellectual exercise. The aim here is to embark on a subjective journey that focuses entirely on sensual memory.
Today, when you roam the streets or the corners of the city, you will come across almost nothing that might remind you of the undefined excitement that flourished thirty years ago, of individuals who could not be uniformized and, above all, of the feeling of freedom that prevailed on the dance floor and in the car wrecks. It is as if time has stopped, washed in bleach, dried on barbed wire, and then laid out on Pera. This exhibition aims to make the viewers feel rather than ponder on this past. It aims to trigger the feelings experienced by the bodies curled up on the runway of the nightclub back then; it endeavours to be an installation that will lure the visitors, make them forget the present for a moment, and take a look at the 1990s to the future. 2019 is a journey to long forgotten feelings, vanished freedoms, and lost time.
