Istanbul Biennial launches online artist film series

The Istanbul Biennial has launched 'Your new weekly routine: Online film selection by the Istanbul Biennial,' a digital initiative releasing artist films every Friday on its website and Vimeo account. The 16th edition, curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, took place from September 14 to November 10, 2019, featuring 56 artists and 220 works focused on ecological emergency. Now, during the coronavirus pandemic, the biennial offers over thirty films by past participants including Francis Alÿs, Rossella Biscotti, Jorge Galindo, Santiago Sierra, Theaster Gates, Pierre Huyghe, Armin Linke, and Adrián Villar Rojas. The first two films are 'Essential Rules for Understanding the World' by Basim Magdy (13th edition) and 'Home Sweet Home' by Volkan Aslan (15th edition), available until April 10. Magdy's Super 8 film addresses absurdity, while Aslan's 2017 video installation meditates on displacement and shared human fragility. The biennial, organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts since 1987, states: 'We hope that today art finds an even greater range of action and we believe that imagination is incredibly vast to be limited by physical boundaries.'