Loading Limit
Gülşah Mursaloğlu, Nicola Lorini, Ambiguous Standards Institute

Pera Museum presents a talk on the video installation For All the Time, for All the Sad Stones, inspired by the Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection. According to the philosopher Marquis de Condorcet, the metric system which was presented in 1799 in France, was “for all people for all time”. The metric unit for mass, the kilogram was modeled based on a platinium-iridium object in 1889. However, the weight of this object changed 50 micrograms in the past 129 years. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures organized a summit to discuss the future of the metric system In November 2018. Kilogram is now standardized according to the Planck constant.

The talk bringing together the artists Nicola Lorini, Gülşah Mursaloğlu and Ambiguous Standards Institute (Avşar Gürpınar, Cansu Cürgen) will focus on concepts like measuring, calculation, standardization, time and change, taking its starting point from the installation that is on view at the Anatolian Weights and Measures Collection gallery.

The installation by the artist Nicola Lorini takes its starting point from recent events, in particular the calculation of the hypothetical mass of the Internet and the redefinition of the kilogram and traces a non-linear voyage through the collection. Keeping a constant tension between material production and the interpretation and transmission of information, For All the Time, for All the Sad Stones aims to question models of thought towards a post anthropocentric understanding of time and history. Questioning the abstract definitions of materials and daily objects which are becoming concepts with the raise of the digital, the installation is centered around a video with sound, and includes a set of sculptural objects made of different materials including sand, silicone and deer bones.

About Nicola Lorini
Nicola Lorini (Como, 1990), lives and works between Milan and London. He studied Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, and product design at Politecnico di Milano and at the Utrecht School of the Arts, The Netherlands. In recent years he has been involved in projects with the Warburg Institute, London; British Museum, London; UAL, London; Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo. Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Cold Stories, Rehearsal, Milan, IT; Insonne, Sonnenstube, Lugano, CH; Placido, Dimora Artica, Milan, IT; Stand By Me, Pelagica, Milan, IT; Bonis Bona, Malis Mala, t-space, Milan, IT; Every Me, Adana Archeology Museum, Adana, TR; Take Me Out, 97 Graham Road, London, UK; Metadata, Lethaby Gallery, London, UK; Annihilation Event (prototype), Tate Modern Switch House, London, UK; Taiyr, ex chiesa di San Pietro in Atrio, Como, IT; Complex Topography, Ritsurin Garden, Takamatsu, JP.

About Gülşah Mursaloğlu
Gülşah Mursaloğlu (b.1989) lives and works in Istanbul. After obtaining her BA in Sociology from Boğaziçi University, she completed her MFA degree at the School of the Art Institute Chicago. In her works, she explores materiality, matter’s agency and human and non-human temporalities. Her installations, which emerge after an in-depth and extensive research process, don’t remain stable in form, and rather manifest themselves as dynamic and fluid systems through their ephemeral nature.Her works were recently displayed in exhibitions including YFD 10: One Must Continue, Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul; Material Play, SU Art Galleries, Salisbury; Pandora’s Black Box, Galata Greek School, Istanbul; A Notation, for Every Crossing, poşe, Istanbul; An Internal Garden, Depo, Istanbul; Artificial Life, Chicago Artists Coalition, Chicago; Other Hours, 601 Artspace, New York ; For Rent, For Sale, Protocinema, Istanbul; -on the bank of what river?, Roman Susan Gallery, Chicago and Ground Floor Biennial, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago.

About Ambiguous Standards Institute
Ambiguous Standards Institute aims to execute a research on literary and visual representation of non-standard or extracanonical measures which can be related with its given references on physical-social and physical-mathematical practices, its intrinsicality and its ambiguousness depending on mathematical equivalency or social/cultural environment.

The Institute authenticates, archives and registers the ambiguities; however, adopting a role as an educational platform, it equally places an emphasis on the recruitment and placement processes of new institutians, thus it aims to register uncharted standards to their greatest extent possible. Benefitting from the previous institutional and intellectual accumulation of knowledge by social institutions of research, the institute aims to portray a conversion table in written and illustrated formats. Through the acquisition of everyday objects, institute collects and archives the fragments from our material culture and registers them according to their discursive potentials of setting/validating the ambiguous standards.

Free admissions, drop in. This event will take place in the oditorium. The talk will be in English with simultaneous Turkish translation.

Related Project