The Istanbul Biennale is held in huge sheds by the water in Karakoy, a hop step and jump (or tram ride) from Galata Bridge). .
Pelin Tan: The curators of the 12th Istanbul Biennial worked with architect Ryue Nishizawa in order to create new pavilions for the solo presentations of artists and group exhibitions' spaces. How did you experience the relation between the design of the exhibition and the art within?Nikolaus Hirsch:Together with Jens Hofmann and Adriano Pedrosa, Nishizawa created a strong intervention in old depot buildings close to the Bosporus. It reminds me of Rémy Zaugg´s ideal art museum of his dreams (Das Kunstmuseum, das ich mir erträume oder der Ort des Werkes und des Menschen, 1987) but also of some of SANAA's museum designs such as the 21st Century Museum in Kanazawa: a multitude of autonomous spaces within a large container. This strategy produces individual, intimate spaces for the artworks, it creates micro-environments. From within these spaces are "white cubes", from the outside they form a "micro-urbanism" of exhibition architecture.
Like a small city on its own, this exhibition somehow inverted and interiorized the specifically urban concept of the previous Istanbul biennials. Given that the Istanbul Biennial doesn't have a fixed venue, this year's spatial-curatorial decision to concentrate on one spot, the depot, has a strong impact on the exhibition itself and the way it changed the character of the Istanbul Biennial as a whole.
