Serpentine Gallery
Teachers’ Notes

Kutlug Ataman
11 February – 9 March 2003

INTRODUCTION & CONTENTS

Teachers’ Notes are designed to support teachers in the planning, execution and following up of a visit to the Serpentine Gallery. Whilst these notes are usually designed for teachers of all age groups, with specific suggestions for related activities with pupils of Key Stages 1 & 2 and 3 & 4, this edition in relation to the Kutlug Ataman exhibition is intended for teachers and lecturers of an older age range. Themes and issues addressed in the work are adult in places and the frank and sexually explicit content of one of the works, Never My Soul! (2001), is not recommended for people under 18. The Serpentine Gallery is therefore not encouraging visits from school groups during the course of this exhibition.

Please read these notes as a source of ideas from which suggestions for discussion can be taken and adapted where necessary. These notes are not intended to be read as a definitive document or to serve as a prescription of work to be followed, but rather as a collection of thoughts to inspire and inform.

General contents are as follows:

Background information
Notes are designed to provide the teacher with a base-knowledge on which to build. An exhibition catalogue, including information and images from the exhibition are available to buy at the Gallery. Please enquire at the front desk.

Articles of interest & suggestions for further reading
Bibliography of related reading.

PLANNING A VISIT TO THE SERPENTINE GALLERY

TRANSPORT

Car:
Parking is available close to the Gallery
(£1.50 per hour)
Tube:
South Kensington, Knightsbridge, Lancaster Gate
Bus:
9, 10, 19, 12, 52, 94

CONTACT DETAILS

Sally Tallant Head of Education Programming
Anna Linch, Education Co-ordinator
Serpentine Gallery
Kensington Gardens
London W2 3XA
T: 020 7298 1516
F: 020 7402 4103
E: anna@serpentinegallery.org

EDUCATION PROGRAMME

Lunch-time Discussions
Thursdays 1pm (during term-times)
Royal College of Art, MA Contemporary Curating students will lead debates in the Serpentine Gallery’s exhibition galleries focusing on the exhibition. These discussions are open to members of the public.

Gallery Talks
Saturdays 3pm
Artists, writers and critics give public talks at 3pm every Saturday, with one talk every exhibition accompanied by a British Sign Language Interpreter.

Education Private View
Monday 24 February 4.30-6pm
An evening invitation to view the exhibition with the opportunity of discussion with colleagues and the education team. There will give a talk about the exhibition at 5pm.

Workshops for community groups
Artist-led workshops for adults with special needs incorporating a visit to the Serpentine Gallery and a discussion about the Kutlug Ataman exhibition with artists Annis Joslin and Tara Sampy.

Entrance to the Serpentine Gallery is free of charge.
All education events are free of charge.

EVENTS LINKED TO KUTLUG ATAMAN

GALLERY TALKS

Serpentine Gallery, Saturdays 3pm. Admission free.
Artists, critics, writers, gallerists, academics and arts professionals provide visitors with an informal introduction to the Kutlug Ataman exhibition.

15 February Gregor Muir, Kramlich Curator of Contemporary Art, Tate
22 February Catherine Elwes, artist and writer
1 March Cherry Smyth, writer (BSL interpreted)
8 March Rachel Withers, critic and lecturer

SPECIAL EVENTS

Artist’s Talk
Tuesday 11 February
6.30pm
Clore Auditorium, Tate Britain

Artist and filmmaker Kutlug Ataman in conversation with Irit Rogoff, Professor of Visual Culture at Goldsmiths College.

EVENTS LINKED TO KUTLUG ATAMAN

SPECIAL EVENTS (CONTINUED)

Veronica Read’s Hippeastrum Surgery
Sunday 16 February
2-5pm
The Sackler Centre of Arts Education at the Serpentine Gallery
Admission free

Veronica Read, National Plant Collection Holder of the Hippeastrum and protagonist of Ataman’s The 4 Seasons of Veronica Read (2002), will demonstrate planting, pollination and propagation techniques and will advise on how to care for the plant throughout the year.

Open House: Veronica Read’s Hippeastrum Spring Show
Sunday 9 March
2-5pm
£3

A rare opportunity to visit the National Plant Collection of Hippeastrum in Veronica Read’s London home, and to see new varieties of the plant. There will also be refreshments and a display of botanical paintings. Tickets for the event are limited and will be allocated on a first-come-first served basis.

Information/bookings:
Sally Tallant, Head of Education Programming
T 020 7298 1514

KULTLUG ATAMAN: AN INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUND TO THE ARTIST & EXHIBITION

Kutlug Ataman was born in Turkey in 1961 and currently divides his time between London, Barcelona and Instanbul. He began his career as a writer and director of feature films for which he has won many important awards nationally. Since 1997, Ataman has turned his attention to video installations presented in the context of art exhibitions. Working in documentary style, Ataman explores the boundaries between reality and fiction. He investigates the way individuals construct their identities through telling stories about themselves and their experiences. Speaking becomes the primary event and the viewer (or witness, as Ataman prefers) is left to complete each story without being able to see the whole at any one time. Ataman has described the individuals he portrays as: both true individuals and extensions of myself. I am particularly interested in people who are bigger than life because they are extreme individuals who are constantly performing their personalities. (Kutlug Ataman).

In this, his first survey exhibition in a public gallery in the United Kingdom, Ataman presents seven video installations, including the world premier of 1 + 1 =1 (2002). Work by Ataman will also be featured in Days Like These: Tate Triennial of Contemporary British Art 2003 at Tate Britain and in Witness: Contemporary Artists Document Our Time in the Curve at the Barbican.

For the purposes of these notes, each of Ataman’s video installations will be discussed in turn:
Semiha b. unplugged (1997)
Women Who Wear Wigs (1999)
Never My Soul! (2001)
The 4 Seasons of Veronica Read (2002)
It’s a vicious circle (2002)
99 Names (2002)
1+1=1 (2002)

KUTLUG ATAMAN’S SEMIHA B. UNPLUGGED (1997)

Format: Single-screen projection
Duration: Approximately 8 hours
Protagonist: Semiha Berksoy
Location of production: Istanbul

Background Information

A single screen shows Kutlug’s interview with the first Turkish opera singer Semiha Berskoy, at 87 years of age, who recounts some of the most dramatic episodes of her life, including her family history, operatic career and later experiments in painting. Her re-enactment of her own life that took place in twentieth-century Turkey is often interpreted through operatic parts that she once sung. Left behind by the development of opera in Turkey, Semiha lost her popularity and strove to remain on-stage by continually changing her identity, re-writing and re-inventing herself

This piece was the first video to be made by Ataman for the Gallery context. This step into the world of contemporary art happened by chance, when Kutlug was waiting for funding for his second (and last) feature film Lola + Bilidikid (1998), passing time with his hand-held camera and an acquaintance, Semiha. Ataman had no idea how and where the piece would be shown initially and was surprised when it was received well by European gallerists following its exhibition at the Istanbul Biennale.

The length of this work, and others in the exhibition, make it difficult for the viewer to see each in its entirety, leaving visitors to complete the stories for themselves and create the characters from the fragments of their stories: By making semiha b unplugged almost eight hours long – it’s about an entire life, after all – I wanted the audience to have to return to this piece again and again without ever being able to see the whole thing, and to be forced to make their own Semiha out of the fragments they did see. (Kutlug Ataman).

WOMEN WHO WEAR WIGS (1997)

Format: Four-screen projection
Duration: Each screen approximately 1 hour
Protagonists: Melek Ulagay, Nevval Sevindi, anonymous, Demet Demir
Location of production: Istanbul

Background Information

Four videos, projected side-by-side in a row, show Ataman’s interviews with four Turkish women who wear wigs, each for a very different reason, described from left to right of installation:

Melek Ulaguay – a political activist tells her tale of escape from arrest during the military dictatorship. She tells of the miraculous way the blonde wig helped her to avoid arrest and how she disguised herself as the stewardess, Leyla, who became a mythical figure in the political struggle of the seventies. We never see her face, but are presented with the back of her head or with a close-up of her handling the wig itself as she narrates her life-story to a dressing table mirror.
Nevval Sevindi – a journalist and Turkish television personality tells of her battle with breast cancer, subsequent chemotherapy and of the consequences on her self-image as a woman. To maintain her feeling of femininity and to continue her career in television, she chooses to wear a wig. She discusses her feminist approach to women’s identity in private and public spheres of society.
An anonymous woman – a young Muslim student gives an account of her religious reasons for wearing a wig. She protests at the fact that the university she attends does not allow Islamic women to wear veils and feels so uncomfortable at revealing herself to the institution as a rebel against the rules, that Ataman chooses to present us with a blank screen. She remains anonymous, leaving us to create our own image of a woman who wears a wig on campus to cover her head.
Demet Demir – a transsexual prostitute who has become a woman through gender re-surgery discusses her long, blond wig that she wears to reinforce her female identity. She explains that the use of the wig was a means of maintaining her income as a prostitute when police cut her hair or when it had fallen out due to excessive stress.
NEVER

in german versionFür Women Who Wear Wigs (1999) interviewte Ataman vier türkische Frauen über ihre Erfahrungen im Tragen einer Perücke. Die erste Frau, Melek Ulagay, war ein Mitglied der linksgerichteten Organisation und versucht ihre Identität zu verbergen. Die Perücke hilft ihr dabei. Aataman filmt mit einer Handkamera, aber nie ihr Gesicht. Die zweite Frau ist die Journalistin Nevval Sevindi, die eine Perücke trägt, weil sie ihre Haare nach einer Chemotherapie verloren hat. Die Perücke erlaubt ihr eine positives Selbstbild zu haben. Die dritte Frau “Woman X” ist eine muslimische Studentin, der das Tragen des Kopftuches an der Universität untersagt ist. Die Perücke erlaubt ihr gleichzeitig zwei Traditionen zu folgen, ihrer religiösen und der der türkischen Gesellschaft. Sie wird überhaupt nicht gezeigt. Die vierte Frau ist Demet Demir, eine Transsexuelle und politische Aktivistin, die eine Perücke trägt, um einerseits ihren hormonellen Haarausfall zu kaschieren und weiter als Prostituierte arbeiten zu können. Jedes der vier Portraits beginnt als persönliche Antwort auf existierende gesellschaftliche Bedingungen und wird dann immer stärker zur individuellen Selbstmythologie.

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