SA: Hello Gülsen, let’s start talking about you. You were born in Izmir, Turkey. Could you tell us about your background? How long have you been living there? And why did you choose to settle in Vienna?

GB: Initially I would like to thank you for getting in touch and inviting me. 
Well, I was born in Izmir, Turkey and got a Serbian blood running in my vein, have been living in London where my home is more than half of my life and currently I am based in Vienna since December 2007. Before getting into the question of why I choose Vienna, I guess I should talk a little bit about who I am rather than where I come from as this will shed a better light on not only “where we are and have been, but what we leave through and behind” which is placed within ‘inside-outside’ flux.
Clearly, describing along situations of “existential plunge” in a constant process of ‘becoming One/self’ drives one to question the dynamics of differential structures within a constant expanding of rigid boundaries. This follows addressing an account of a transformational processes occurring on social, cultural and “identity” construct. This traces a generative process of a transitory characteristic: the “in-between-ness” in an attempt to underline a multiplicity of physical and social locations which engender a new space formed by a space of production. The emerging point here is a focus on the flux of nomadic figuration behind the limits of mirrors beyond its totalising vision within the realm of how you define this space of engagement in its entry of almost impossibility of transcending intersections.
Now, let’s get back to the question of why Vienna! As I am somebody who always interested in aforementioned issues while initiating as well as taking part in different projects in Eastern Europe and Balkans with questioning the dynamics between habitual durations and what is already operative within this proliferation; obviously, location wise Vienna extricates itself as the most important gateway to Eastern Europe and neighbouring countries. This brings a rupture that engenders the temporary systems concerned with bringing different modes of manifestation onto the surface which allows for different intensity and contents to be challenged. So, here I am, in Vienna.

SA: What is Open Space? When did you found it?
GB: To answer this question I have to address certain issues that are related to having an understanding on a different kind of creative journey in its mode of production. This maintains its reflection of culturally specific conditions that focuses on making invisible “visible” by attempting to enforce a structure of positions or positionality which exposes the unclearness of the situation. This is what makes it possible to identify some specific and determining characteristics that compile different practices taking place at Open Space. The idea came about in mid 2007 with an urge how to build and create interconnected routes concerned with European space as well as building a cross border dialogues within its multi layered constituents. The initiation led by me intends to bring diverse creative practice together as well as creating real and virtual collaborative forum and opening spaces to encourage exchange and joint projects with aiming to explore the future, generating new ideas and implementing them in a collaborative effort to improve trans-national network as well as creating network of networks, a zone of communicative transfer in a particular socio-cultural setting. 
The designation of “one always searches for some symbolic point from which one can claim that something ended and something else began” maintains real life case studies and reveals how cultural specific conditions in and/or afar its trans-locality. This sets new kinds of creative connections around the boundaries of ‘New Europe’ in motion. In this manner, the issue commence here introduces an experimental dynamic that define the space of current relations to be problematised. This formulates the special attributes of Open Space that lies in its input towards the “production of subject” on the basis of improving new approach with its visual arts and educational programme that designates an inter-relationship between production of creative practice and divergent lines of encounters. 



SA: I know that your first exhibition project at Open Space, “Temporary Zones,” with artists like Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Nada Prlja, Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer, was a strong and important event concerning the potential of a project space to state the role of independent artistic research in face of economic and institutional contexts. Could you confirm this? 

GB: In fact, we opened our doors with “Temporary Zones” in the first week of January 2008. This project offers a space for exploration of current relations of and in predicated conflict and negotiation within cultural specific conditions. In pointing out the space of current relations, the scope of the project allows an engagement of a space that identifies the transitional conditions and globalised flows where the temporal construct seemingly erases all its secrets and ambiguities. In a passage of an unstable world, this hunts for a moment of urgency in the insistence of a dissonant power of role of independent artistic research towards economic and institutional context.

SA: You say that Open Space “aims to create a facility for contemporary creative practice concerned with contributing a model strategy for cross-border and interregional projects on the basis of improving new approach with its visual arts and educational programme”. That’s a difficult project. How is this concept linked to practical aspects of your work?

GB: I certainly agree… this is not an easy task at all.
I aim to put across different creative production in each individual project which is engaged with a continual research on contemporary art looking for new outlines of the possible practices where each project remains as accountable for a new discourse to be discussed. 
Unlike other small or major institutes in Vienna, Open Space offers a place for exploration of space of current relations associated with a generative process of a transitory characteristic. Mindful of these issues and current conditions in art; works that has been presented at Open Space keeps the form of multi/trans-disciplinary configuration from installation, video, performance to an online platform: Internet-based works. This helps to identify some specific and determining characteristics that shape project-specificity within multi-directional models that behaves “rhizomatically.” And this begins with beginning from beginning. 


SA: How could be possible for transgressive - social and artistic - practices to coexist with great cultural strategies in this moment of global crises? 

GB: I certainly think this is one of the issues that worth pondering. This also shows to be true where everything progress towards the transformations of “demographic politics” and politicisation of life.

SA: Open Space was has been characterized since its birth from an operating system directed to bring diverse creative practice together as well as creating real and/or virtual collaborative forum and opening spaces to encourage joint projects. What is Open Systems today? And What changes have you made to the curatorial line and outline proposal form since 2010?
GB: The Open Space program with its three successful years of highly acclaimed international exhibitions and events, I have offered a laboratory environment derived from contemporary creative practice to discourses of intercultural dialogue and competence through our visual arts and educational programme. At the location of emergence, we have self-contained situation presented by each year: Open Space - Mapping contemporary creative practice (Prog 2008) - Open Space - what is possible in creative practice (Prog 2009) - Open Space - what is possible in the political potentiality (Prog 2010). Also produced a yearbook for each year, which not only covers the projects that have been presented but also includes additional critical/theoretical essays to provide a different if not better understanding of an essential geopolitical stand in which a political position and a certain creative/artistic agenda offer new potentials. In addition, Stadt Wien - Kulturabteilung MA 7 gave us an award which is organised within the scope of bestowing the distinguished delivery of the programs among the Viennese galleries. In recognition of the accomplishments of its activity and demonstrating considerable commitment to contemporary art, the jury members have decided to grant a premium award to Open Space in November 2010. This engagement emerges with the production of encounters from elsewhere, bringing together of different forms of thought. I as the initiator and founding director have idecided to engage with a shift on overarching structures at a turning point where the establishment functioned as Open Space, Open Systems in January 2011. And that was the first time we released an ‘open call’ in pursuing these transformative connections towards our 2012 year program, and really entering to the realm of OPEN leading to pluralistic approaches. A subsequent transitory year period with 2011 program, the initiation now functions as Open Systems with an active involvement of advisory board members 2012 onwards in our program making… the advisory board formed of Susanne Lummerding, Elisabeth Mayerhofer, Suzana Milevska, Helge Mooshammer, Peter Mörtenböck, Nada Prlja and Walter Seidl.

SA: How far do you think your project of networking will take you and Open Systems?
GB: Well... “this identifies a specific conjunction of the new outlines of the possible where ‘nowhere’ meets with settled map through multiple entrances and exits” as I have mentioned it somewhere...

SA: What question do you pose, what kinds of issues do you consider in your approach to the theme of cultural identity? Does the so called collective memory cross cultural boundaries? In which way? I’m thinking for example of the recent project such as “State of Transit” and “Mapping Mobilities” that took place recently at Open Systems.
GB: "A ‘map’, or a ‘diagram’ is a set of various interacting lines” constituting spatial metaphors at a locus of situations and events. Subjectivity exists as a territory and it engenders itself through multiple connections by mapping both psychical and the social locations when engaged in multiple networks of production. There is a discernible approach towards the concept of sovereignty that supports the current political construction in terms of bio-politics, especially about the transformations of "demographic politics” and the politicisation of life. A particular element of encounter, which unfolds a proliferation not just of the forms but of the modalities within creative practice, brings the moments of rupture into “existential territories.” The space of current relations is thus the space affected by an immanent reification. Its vital or critical importance to this analysis is the processes of the engagement of the production of subject. Nevertheless, this seems unattainable; an uncertain transition "can be defined [as] a territory capable of moving, not confined by geographical, national and cultural borders; [but] a territory realizing its own notional space.” Yet it is worth dwelling upon a related thread to identify the cultural objects. Conceptual wise "State of Transit”, a project that we hosted right before "Mapping Mobilities,” focused on the sad events of colonisation and the ensuing decolonisation processes in which territorial disputes and political conflicts give rise to the enormous contradictions embodied by Mediterranean Sea. The curatorial team of the project, Frida Carazzato & Maria Garzia, were calling into question both personal and collective identities; as they both beleive that history plays a crucial role in the affirmation of the Mediterranean character. We had five artistic position; barbaragurrieri/group, Taysir Batniji, Esra Ersen, Mario Rizzi and Zineb Sedira who – based on the state of transit that has always characterised the region in question – have dedicated part of their research to the Mediterranean area and its dynamics of mobility. In “Mapping Mobilities,” the project curator Christine Takengny invited Michael Hieslmair / Michael Zinganel, Gulnara Kasmaieva / Muratbek Djumaliev and Esther Polak / Ivar van Bekkum. The exhibition presented new and experimental approaches to explore questions around mobility, displacement and migration. This reinforces the transitory space that determines the routes taken per se where she was more interested in how globalisation has dramatically changed our experience of space. This is also where the static, two-dimensional map no longer adequately reflects the constantly shifting world we live in and the global networks that migratory experience produces.

SA: I’d like to talk about one of the latest projects you curated at Open Systems, “It’s in the ‘can’”. You have chosen a very complex subject and basic at the same time: the critical potential of conteporary art, investigating the concept of power as expressed in the “can”. May you define that problematic space “where the question of the political opens up within the creative practice”?
GB: I am very glad that you bring this up. At this point, culture, in the sense of practices that represent ways of being, also generates forces of resistance to homogenization. Strategically, the project was formulated by what engages culture’s own account of its affirmation of the specific and the local, the limited and the situated, as a source for proliferation. For example, Sanja Iveković’s mixed media work Nova Zvijezda deals with the collective social codes of symbolic and real representations onto surface. This is linked with another question: what forms the counter-strategies to globalised forces towards excessive decline of the boundaries between geopolitical and economic conditions in which we place the new artistic capacities? And that frame, the place where one takes a stand, is in its reflection to critical questioning when one considers her practice “as deeply politically committed and historically relevant then as now.” Here I feel obliged to say that this partcilar work had been shown in Vienna for the first time, thanks to Kontakt, the Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation. Yet Christine Schörkhuber intends to reflect politics, social structure, culture and way of living in contemporary Hungary in her speaking walls of Budapest installation. However, Kamen Stoyanov in Guys, this is not LA, but it is a cool place too! allows us to engage of a space that identifies the transitional conditions and the flows where the present geopolitics as well as cultural shifts that are as profound and evident in today’s factual daily life. Hollow Land is an art project that Macedonian artist Yane Calovski developed during his first stay on IJburg. Caught in a moment of flux, identified still with unfinished and suspended structures, IJburg is a location that could easily be appropriated as a film set where the entire production could happen without disturbing the ‘normality’ of the already existing life. The subject touches upon the possibilities of provoking a self-reflective response as introduced in Heba Amin’s video work. This experimental video work Voices from the Revolution presents selected speak2Tweet messages prior to the fall of the Mubarak regime on February 11, 2011 and juxtaposes them with the abandoned structures that represent the long-lasting effects of a corrupt dictatorship. It attempts to depict the harsh reality of the physical state of the city and addresses the role that the urban infrastructure plays in instigating unrest amongst its inhabitants. In this stance, the critical moments of a plurality of questions become countenance, where the question of the political opens up within the creative practice. This signals, for me, the possibility of a new type of politics centered in the question of what is in the ‘can.’

SA: What about the role of cultural institutions in Open Systems projects?
GB: Above analysis leads to the construction of new concepts in creative processes, which are always an open space or a multiplicity of planes within differential structures. And we are still keeping the unquie position that had been built upon what formulated the special attributes of Open Space in the midst of mirror disposition. This articulates how these fields of critical inquiry are interrelated and as a result can be used to produce art practices in spaces of production. It is within this context there lies our mission, in which the practice becomes a mode of distributing and activating ideas and challenges given circumstances.

SA: Let's talk about the present. You're going to open an interesting exhibition, “You are kindly invited to attend”. Could you tell us something about that?
GB: It is a project curated by Branka Stipančić, opening on the 4th of September 2012. The exhibition engages with “a conceptual action that raises the basic questions: what, where and why?” The entire artistic position in “You are kindly invited to attend” are from Zagreb: Mangelos, a member of the Group Gorgona which was active in Zagreb in the 1960s, and the works by the generation of Conceptual and Postconceptual artists: Goran Trbuljak, Dalibor Martinis, Mladen Stilinović, Vlado Martek, and Boris Cvjetanović. The title is appropriately enigmatic and defines unilateral mindscapes: You are kindly invited to attend!