Talk by Isaac Julien

SALT Beyoğlu, Walk-in Cinema

Geo-poetica: Choreographing the Moving Image: Post-cinematic Desire, the politics of aesthetics, and the aesthetics of Politics

Beyond the cinematic realm moving image art practices have split into two separate spheres: experimental film and projected installations. In this talk Isaac Julien will consider his own position regarding these bifurcating practices as questions surrounding the movements of people around the globe in lure of capital seep into his work and shift the ethical to questions of aesthetics and politics. He will discuss the consequences of new spectatorial paradigms in the digital age, as vision is ruptured across several screens; creolizing vision; his interest in choreography and his use of sound and montage to create new kinds of spectatorship; the legacies of expanded cinema; globalisation and poetics.

Isaac Julien was born in 1960 in London, where he currently lives and works. After graduating from St Martin’s School of Art in 1984, where he studied painting and fine art film, Isaac Julien founded Sankofa Film and Video Collective (1983-1992), and was a founding member of Normal Films in 1991.

Julien was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2001. He was awarded the Semaine de la critique prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Young Soul Rebels (1991) the same year.

Julien was visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Schools of Afro-American and Visual Environmental Studies and is currently a visiting professor at the Whitney Museum of American Arts. He was also a research fellow at Goldsmiths College, University of London and is a Trustee of the Serpentine Gallery. Most recently, he has had solo shows at the Pompidou Centre in Paris (2005), MoCA Miami (2005) and the Kerstner Gesellschaft, Hanover (2006). Julien is represented in the Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim and Hirshhorn Collections.

The talk will be held in English.


Europe (to the power of) n is a transnational project of the Excellence Initiative of the Goethe-Institut. It is a collaboration of the Goethe-Institut in Munich and the Regional Goethe-Institutes in Central and East Europe, South-East Europe, North-West and South-West Europe and East Europe/Central Asia, in Belgrade, Brussels, İstanbul, Warsaw, London, Minsk, Vilnius, Oslo, Beijing and Madrid with institutions in and outside the European Union. Europe (to the power of) n is coordinated by Sabine Hentzsch, Goethe-Institut in London. Artistic Director is Barbara Steiner.

The external partners are: Co-Organisers: Curating Contemporary Art Programme / Royal College of Art, London; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden / Oslo; Associated Partners: Contemporary Art Study Centre / European Humanities University, Vilnius; Novaja Europa Magazine, Minsk; Galerie Y, Minsk; SALT, Istanbul; Muzej savremene umetnosti Vojvodine, Novi Sad; Sint-Lukasgalerie, Brussels; Taipei Contemporary Art Centre, Taipei; Vitamin Creative Space, Beijing / Guangzhou; San Telmo Museoa, Office for European Capital of Culture 2016, both Donostia-San Sebastián

Curated by Esra Sarigedik Öktem
Coordinated by Lara Fresko

In collaboration with SALT



With the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union