4th Istanbul Design Biennial

The 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, titled A School of Schools and curated by Jan Boelen with Nadine Botha and Vera Sacchetti, is pleased to announce the first participants of this year’s edition, which takes place from September 22 to November 4, 2018.

Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) and sponsored by VitrA, the Biennial will bring together old and new knowledge, academic and amateur, professional and personal, engaging multigenerational, transdisciplinary practitioners from Turkey and abroad.

Over the course of six weeks, the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial will inhabit six of the city’s most iconic cultural institutions, which will play host to the biennial’s many schools, exploring the multiple dimensions of design as learning.

At Akbank Sanat, the Unmaking School emphasizes the irrepressible human instinct to be creative as a pedagogical dynamo that drives innovation in production, redefines the future of work, and reframes our engagement with our cities; at Yapı Kredi Culture Centre, the Currents School explores flows, networks, distribution, and hierarchies of information and subjects, both digital and analogue, abstract and embodied, to critically examine new technology and systems.

At Pera Museum, the Scales School investigates the fluidity of taxonomies, quantifications, and institutionalised norms, standards and values to highlight biases and assumptions in our social, economic and intellectual agreements; at Arter, the Earth School asks what is natural, what is disaster, and what is evolution when the planet and human are forced to renegotiate their pedagogical relationship.

At SALT Galata, the Time School travels from hyper-speed and acceleration into the expansiveness of deep time, learning about contested pasts and speculative futures from paradoxical durational perspectives and the objects that dictate them; at Studio-X Istanbul, the Digestion School learns from metabolic systems, patterns of consumption, cultural rituals, and food infrastructure to consider how circular education and lifelong learning manifest.

Biennial participants include [AI]stanbul (Turkey/United States); AATB (Switzerland/France); Åbäke (France/United Kingdom); Bakudapan (Indonesia); Kerim Bayer (Turkey); Cihad Caner (Turkey/Netherlands); Ali Murat Cengiz (Turkey/Netherlands); Taeyoon Choi (United States/Korea); Commonplace Studio (Netherlands), Jesse Howard (United States/Netherlands) and Tim Knapen (Belgium); Danilo Correale (Italy/United States); Amandine David (France); Teis De Greve (Belgium); Derya Irkdaş Doğu (Turkey); Eat Art Collective (Netherlands); Ecole Mondiale (Belgium); FABB (Turkey); Studio Folder (Italy); Avşar Gürpınar and Cansu Cürgen (Turkey); Mark Henning (Netherlands/South Africa); Nur Horsanalı (Turkey/Finland); Ils Huygens (Belgium); Navine G. Khan-Dossos (United Kingdom/Greece); Roosje Klap (Netherlands); Land+Civilization Compositions (Turkey/Netherlands); Pedro Neves Marques (Portugal/United States); Margarida Nunes da Silva Mendes (Portugal); Alexandra Midal (France); Carlos Monleón (Spain/United Kingdom); Gökhan Mura (Turkey); Martina Muzi (Italy); Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios (France); New South (France); Camilo Oliveira (Brazil/Italy); Thomas Pausz (France/Iceland); Ana Peñalba (Spain); Juliette Pepin (France); Charlotte Maeva Perret (United Kingdom); Radioee.net (Argentina/United Kingdom/Netherlands); Emelie Röndahl (Sweden); Helga Schmid (Germany); Judith Seng (Germany/Sweden); SO? (Turkey); Studio Legrand Jäger (United Kingdom/Germany); Studio Makkink & Bey (Netherlands); SulSolSal (Netherlands/South Africa/Brazil); Jenna Sutela (Finland/Germany); Ali Taptık and Okay Karadayılar (Turkey); Jennifer Teets and Lorenzo Cirrincione (United States/France); Unfold (Belgium); Ottonie Von Roeder (Germany); Henriëtte Waal and Studio Klarenbeek & Dros (Netherlands); Mark Wasiuta (United States); Lukas Wegwerth (Germany); Pınar Yoldaş (Turkey/United States); and Peter Zin (Netherlands/Portugal). More names will follow.

A School of Schools: Orientation
The opening programme, A School of Schools: Orientation, held from September 20 to 21, 2018, will see practitioners, educators and thinkers from Turkey and abroad converge in a Biennial conceived as a public space for dialogue, provocation and production. Together, they will test and revise a variety of educational strategies to reflect on the role of design, knowledge, and global connectedness in contemporary Istanbul and beyond. All are invited to take part, and join in the creation of spaces of exception.

For more information and to apply for the media or professional accreditation for the opening programme, please visit: aschoolofschools.iksv.org

For high resolution images: www.iksvphoto.com

For press inquiries:
İKSV Media Relations: media [​at​] iksv.org
Flint Istanbul: funda.kucukyilmaz [​at​] flint-culture.com / T +90 533 496 48 14
Flint London: emily.saunders [​at​] flint-culture.com / T +44 20 3470 0093