Ali Kazma & Mari Spirito

Notes for Tomorrow features contemporary artworks brought together to reflect on the cultural transition ushered in by the COVID-19 global pandemic. With the ever-present backdrop of the crisis, Independent Curators International (ICI) turned to 30 curators from 25 countries to question and reassess values and relevance in contemporary culture, and to share an artwork they believe is vital to be seen today. 

As part of the exhibition, the artist Ali Kazma’s video is being shown, upon the curator Mari Spirito’s invitation. Kazma’s two-channel video work North is being exhibited for the first time in Turkey. North takes the viewer to Pyramida in Svalbard Islands to explore a deserted mine, operated by the Soviets from 1930 to late 1980s. The talk will feature a conversation between Ali Kazma and Mari Spirito. 

About Ali Kazma 

Ali Kazma is a filmmaker whose work explores a fascination with the actions of work and labor enacted by human bodies. Many of his works capture the minute specializations of a range of professions, performed by people who have developed a knack for their task; over the course of his career, Kazma has filmed a taxidermist, studio ceramicist, brain surgeon, factory worker in a blue jeans assembly line, watch repairman, butcher, and many others. His most famous and ambitious work to date is seven-channel film titled O.K. (2010), studying the stupendously fast hands of a notary stamping stacks of papers. For Kazma, processes of work, particularly those that have involved mechanical repetition or artisanal hand labor, are related to national and global issues of production, commerce, and social organization.

About Mari Spirito 

Mari Spirito is Executive Director and Curator of Protocinema, a cross-cultural, site-aware art organization commissioning and presenting exhibitions and public programs in Istanbul and New York, since 2011. She launched Protocinema’s Emerging Curator Series mentorship program in 2015. In 2020 Spirito was commissioning curator of Ahmet Öğüt: “No poem loves its poet’, Yarat Contemporary Art Center, Baku, and Theo Triantafyllidis’ “Anti-Gone” which premiered at Sundance Film Festival, New Frontier; she curated public talks for Beijing Art Summit, 2019; was faculty for Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive, Bangkok, and guest curator, Alserkal Arts Foundation Public Commission, Dubai, with Hale Tenger, in 2018. From 2013 - 2018 Spirito programed Conversations for both Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach; served as International Advisory Committee Member for the Inaugural High Line Plinth Commissions, New York, 2017; was Curator and Director of Alt Art Space, Bomonti, Istanbul from 2015 to 2017; curated “On the Nature of Justice” exhibition and talk for Onassis Cultural Center, 2017, Advisor to the 2nd Mardin Biennial, Turkey, 2012; and Director of 303 Gallery New York, 2000 - 2012. She is on the Board of Participant, Inc, New York, and holds a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston. 

Image Credit:
Ali Kazma
North, 2017
Two channel HD video, 5’10’’
Courtesy of Jeu de Paume, Paris and Galeri Nev, Istanbul 

Free admissions, drop in. It will be in English with simultaneous translation to Turkish available upon request.

Temporary Exhibition