Mobile Project – Buffer Zone | Divided Cities

Apartment Project is about to launch a new series of workshops in collaboration with Uqbar (Berlin) and EMAA (Nicosia) in 2013.The workshops under the name of bufferzone are a cultural collaboration project within artists and cultural organizations.The project aims to approach the notion “buffer zone” in a broader aspect by including political, cultural transitional, divided and gentrification zones besides the conventional meaning understanding of zonal areas to separate controversial groups and nations. Accordingly the project intends to think about these issues together with the artists, researchers and sociologists.The workshops will be held in Istanbul and Nicosia with the participation of artists from Berlin, Istanbul and Nicosia. The participants have been selected amongst the proposals for the open call organized by Apartment Project and EMAA.

The artists to take part in the project are Hasan Aksaygın, Özgür Demirci, Didem Erk, Gabriele Garavaglia, Anna Heidenhein, Naomi Henning, Eleni Mouzourou, Erhan Öze, Pick Nick (Panayiotis Michael, Maria Petrides, Alkis Hadjiandreou), Sümer Sayın and Varsity of Maneuver (Birgit Auf der Lauer & Caspar Pauli).During the first workshop in Istanbul, the participants will talk about their practices besides gathering together/come together with historians, researchers, architects, documentarists and sociologists including Mesut Tufan, Mert Eyiler, Nora Şeni and Orhan Esen, who work on issues as such polarization on urban geography, divided cities, the division on the comprehension/perception of urban public life.  Since the first workshop Reciprocal Visit in 2009, Apartment Project organizes experimental workshops that gather/bring artists, initiatives and art operators from various geographies together. In these workshops it fosters an experimental process that focuses on transition and borders, cultural similarities, conflicts as well as encouraging collaborations amongst the artists.Common experiences in different zones and geographies, collaboration of artists by associating their practices and creating possibilities for the production of new ideas have been the main function of the workshops Reciprocal Visit, Re-Locate and Underconstruction-Berlin that have been organized by Apartment Project so far. In this sense Apartment Project suggests a collective reflection on working together strategies.Workshops harbor a mobile experience and an exploration of the dynamics of collective living and working. The foremost essence of the experimental structure is based on the process constructing itself and the common experience of the artists.bufferzone, being the 4th project of the workshop series, intends to provide a possibility of a common experience platform for artists to develop new strategies. For the Apartment Project’s previous workshops you can refer to the links below.

Here you can download the Project – Brochure.