Is it possible to extract from the ‘Seventh Continent’, this cluster of floating plastic waste covering almost 3.4 million square kilometres in the North Pacific, fertile territory for contemporary creation? This is the challenge taken up by Nicolas Bourriaud, curator of the 16th Istanbul Biennial that is hosting together Tersane Istanbul, the Pera Museum, and the island of Büyükada from 14 September to 10 November 2019. Organised by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and the Arts, this Biennial obliges us to face one of the most alarming news headlines of our time: how the overproduction and overconsumption of plastic is impacting the environment. Fifty-seven artists from 26 different countries, including Ernst Haeckel, Luigi Serafini, Yuji Agematsu, Glenn Ligon, and also Güneş Terkol and Güçlü Öztekin, will explore what the discovery of this Seventh Continent may mean: not only the perpetual interconnection between nature and culture in a totally intertwined world, but also that which touches all our cultures. At a time of extreme mobility and growing migration flows, what role can particularism play? What concepts can we draw from closer ties between this ‘new world’ and our own? Answers coming this autumn…

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Find all the articles from Impact Art News n°10 – Jully-August 2019