Continuing Education

I hereby refuse to address the topic if migration/immigration/minorities. 

 

There, I said it. 

 

Okay, I will say ONE thing:

Jeffrey Baykal-Rollins is an immigrant to Istanbul. From America. Like many people who are making an impact on Istanbul's cultural sector, Baykal-Rollins is an expat.

 

Hunger vs. Hole

 

When I met intermedia artist Jeffrey Baykal-Rollins last autumn, he had come with his amazing family to Karaköy for an art performance by the waterside. His effortlessly stylish clothes did nothing to signify that he is a teacher of visual art to adolescents (he also teaches intermedia art at Bosphorus University). Flanked by his two (very poised) sons and his beautiful wife, Baykal-Rollins instantly struck me as someone worth getting to know. If only just to find out about how he lives as an artist in Istanbul.

One year after we first met, Jeffrey and I have finally started a dialog regarding some observations of the performance art scene in Istanbul. Brought together by the ‘alternative’ clown debacle we began talking about the hole in Istanbul’s performance art scene. He let loose with this gem:

 

“I see the performance art world in Istanbul in terms of a »hunger« rather than a »hole«. Of course that hunger is a result of a fledgling performance art scene that is both minimal and in many ways limited. Precisely because it is fledgling, the Istanbul community greets performance art with a healthy skepticism. I think that the jury is still out here, and as far as I’m concerned that’s a good thing because it keeps us artists from taking it all for granted.”

 

In response to this ‘hunger’, Baykal-Rollins founded the Silsila public art collective

 

“I have wanted to collaborate with people that believe in the power of poetic beauty as much as I do, to create meaningful, ephemeral gestures with a lasting impact. [Performance artist] Ernesto Pujol encouraged me to form my own structure, an intermedia platform for launching projects that function as social interventions, whether they be site-specific installations or performance art works, with students or professionals.“

 

Istanbul is going through the same growing pains

 

“Back when I was a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, you could not believe the abundance of crap that came out of our classes in the name of »performance art«! We were experimenting and we were passionate but we were young and equally naïve. Yes, Istanbul is going through the same growing pains, but there’s an underlying passion in this city for something that is truly authentic and vital. At the same time I feel that for me, the greatest potential in this city for performance lays outside the confines of the established art spaces and institutions: on the street itself."

 

Baykal-Rollins and I share the view that the key to developing cohesiveness and support for contemporary art and performance when it is in an undeveloped state is through the education and experimentation of young people with young energy.

Lack of education about contemporary art is generally what keeps it at a distance and unobserved.

As a teacher Baykal Rollins adapts valuable lessons that he learned as a graduate student with Ann Hamilton: 

" . . . participating in her own creative process gave me the valuable opportunity to understand how she develops an idea, how she works though it, struggles, fails, and then learns from those failures and transforms them into something truly remarkable. The problem is that most students will never get to observe this from any teacher, because the structure of a classroom (as opposed to a workshop) usually keeps this from happening."

 

Places like Robert College, teachers like Jeffrey Baykal-Rollins, and collectives like Silsila are what will sustain and shape the direction of performance art in Istanbul - not Biennials and cultural organizations which downplay the role of education.

 

Teaser and student photos by author

Film still courtesy of artist's website:  www.baykalrollins.blogspot.com