KÜBA
Kutlug Ataman
22nd March – 4th June 2005
The Sorting Office
21-31 New Oxford Street
London, WC1
www.kuba.org.uk
LATEST NEWS
Kutlug Ataman's Kuba is on the move...
Soner, Bahri, Dilsah, Emine, Kadriye, Ilhan, Makbule, Haklan and Zubeyde have left the Sorting Office and are moving to Liverpool Street, Kings Cross, Hackney and West Ham.
The remaining residents of Kuba will move to other locations in London throughout May and early June.
Visit www.kuba.org.uk to see the addresses and opening times for the newlocations.
The area known as Küba first emerged in the late 1960s as a neighbourhood of safe houses in a dangerous time. In today's Istanbul, few people could tell you exactly where it is: some say Küba lies in the southern part of the city, close to the airport, others doubt whether it still exists. Today Küba comprises a few hundred makeshift clapboard dwellings that are still home to nonconformists of diverse ethnicity, religion and political persuasion united in their defiant disregard for state control.
Kutlug Ataman spent more than two years exploring Küba, mapping its physical and psychological terrain through the lives of forty inhabitants whose remarkable stories are the foundation for his most ambitious artwork to date. Initially uprooted in October 2004, the forty residents of Küba first appeared in Pittsburgh where Ataman’s multiple DVD installation – a commission for Artangel – won the prestigious Carnegie Prize.
From 22nd March 2005, the Küba community take up temporary residence in The Sorting Office on New Oxford Street in London from where, up until 1995, almost two million items of post were delivered every week. After London, Küba will travel to a railway station in Stuttgart, down the Danube to Vienna and disembark at a passenger ferry terminal on Circular Quay in Sydney before returning home to Istanbul in 2006.
For further details please call the Artangel Information Line on 020 7713 1402 or see www.kuba.org.uk where you can also subscribe to receive free e-mail updates about Küba’s global journey.
Publication
Küba is available as a 176pp full-colour photo-album for the special price of £20.00 during the project in London (normal price £24.99).
Symposium
A symposium, Where is Küba?, took place on Saturday 7th May 2005
Speakers from a range of backgrounds were invited
to debate Küba’s wider implications,
including artist Kutlug Ataman,
Deborah Rayne (Foreign Editor for Channel 4 News
and Commissioner of Independent Films),
Irit Rogoff (Professor of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths University of London)
and AbdouMaliq Simone (Assistant Director, International Affairs Program, New School, New York).
For further information see www.kuba.org.uk.
Opening Times at The Sorting Office
11.00 – 19.00 Tuesday – Sunday (Closed Mondays)
Late opening Thursday until 21.00hrs
Refreshments available at the on-site Küba Kafé
Admission Free
Nearest Underground Station:
Tottenham Court Road or Holborn
Buses: 1, 8, 19, 25, 38, 55, 98, 242
Nearest parking: High Holburn NCP Car Park
(includes disabled parking)
For details about access to Küba see www.kuba.org.uk or please email access@artangel.org.uk.
Co-produced with Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh;
Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York;
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (T-B A21), Vienna;
Theater der Welt, Stuttgart and the
Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.
Film production by Yalan Dünya, Istanbul.
Küba is funded by Arts Council England with the support of Film London and the special help of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz.
Artangel gratefully acknowledges the generosity of Consolidated Developments,
Morley and Electra who have kindly provided the London location for Küba.
Artangel is supported by Arts Council England, London; The Company of Angels and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Artangel is a registered charity no. 292976
