Solar Fantastic (Prologue)

26/09/2015, SALT Galata (warm up) 16:00-18:00
28/09/2015, SALT Ulus 18:00 -20:00
30/09/2015, SALT Galata 18:00- 20:00

'Solar Fantastic' is an innovative research, exhibition, and publication project that seeks to address the rich and sometimes fantastic historical narratives tying the modernities of Mexico and Turkey. The ancient worship of Sun in both places serves as a bridge for this comparative contemporary study of two very different yet very similar modern projects: post-Revolutionary Mexico and Atatürk's Turkish Republic. The multidisciplinary project will follow the fictions and non-fictions that form the roots of national identity in each country using ancient, modern, and contemporary art, history, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology.

The curators Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu and James Oles have invited an international group of artists, researchers and scholars such as Rossella Biscotti (Brussels), Mariechen Danz (Berlin), Mariana Castillo Deball (Berlin and Mexico City), Aslı Çavuşoğlu (Istanbul), Emre Huner (Istanbul), Pablo Vargas Lugo (Mexico City), Nicholas Mangan (Melbourne), Megan O’Neil (Los Angeles) to contribute to a series of conversations and public programs in Turkey and Mexico in Autumn 2015. Our discussion will move from histories of the Maya and Hittites, to the specific "pulp history" of the lost continent of Mu (supposedly the motherland of humankind), and then turn to broader ideas about the physical and conceptual power of the Sun (heliocentrism) and the role it has played in economics, culture and technology throughout history, from Maya Sun Temples to Sun Language Theory. 

The first Solar Fantastic prologue, to be held in Istanbul and Ankara between 26th-30th September, consists of a series of public events that will define the project's stories, contours, goals, and methodologies, including artist's talks, lectures, and film screenings. Opening with a warm up meeting on 26th September in SALT Galata, our public sessions will continue with a gathering on 28th September in SALT Ulus, Ankara and on 30th September in SALT Galata. Mayan scholar and LACMA associate curator Megan O'Neil will start the sessions with “Visions of the Sun in Ancient Maya Art and Architecture” and project co-curator James Oles will introduce "Maya Revival in Art and Architecture". Mariana Castillo Deball will contribute to the discussion with her talk “What we caught we threw away, what we didn‘t catch we kept”, Pablo Vargas Lugo will speak on “Pebblescript and knot calligraphy” and Melanie Smith will join with her talk “Restoring the Unstable”. Aslı Çavuşoğlu's contribution is a filmic intervention 'On the roads of the Anatolia', an early German production documentary banned in Turkey. Belkıs Işık and Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu will read excerpts from Oğuz Atay's cult masterpiece novel 'Tutunamayanlar' (1971). Solar Fantastic will make another series of introductory discussions in Mexico between 4th-11th November 2015.