Round­table Discussion:
Union of the Imaginary (VOTI)

SALT Galata, Workshop

To mark the launch of the e-publication Union of the Imaginary (VOTI) a roundtable discussion with past VOTI participants will take place at SALT Galata on September 14.

March 31, 1998: New York. Carlos Basualdo and Hans-Ulrich Obrist found the digital forum Union of the Imaginary (VOTI) in a meeting with Jordan Crandall. Later in the year Susan Hapgood is invited to help run the VOTI platform. Initially established as a permanent forum for the discussion of issues pertaining to curatorial practice in the context of contemporary society, over fifty arts professionals were invited to contribute to the forum by participating in themed conversations.

Over time the forum opened to the wider public and the contributions diversified culminating in the last structured forum “Cultural Practice and War.” Shortly thereafter thirty-four VOTI contributors gathered physically for a series of VOTI curated conversations that took place at ARCO in 2000. Following this meeting VOTI organically came to an end.

Many of VOTI’s aims are just as relevant today as they were in the late 1990s. In collaboration with Susan Hapgood, SALT has gathered and ordered hundreds of the VOTI forum emails that could still be sourced to form an e-publication that revisits these early curatorial discussions. Their urgency at that time preceded a period of growing normalization and institutionalization of curatorial practice.

The discussion will comprise VOTI participants who are in Istanbul for the opening of the biennial. They include Zdenka Badovinac, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Dan Cameron, Jordan Crandall, Okwui Enwezor, Charles Esche, Susan Hapgood, Vasıf Kortun, Cornelia Lauf and Hans Ulrich Obrist.