CAUTION! SLIPPERY GROUND

Initiated by VitrA and the Turkish Association of Architects in Private Practice, the VitrA Contemporary Architecture Series aimed to document and discuss the contemporary architectural context in Turkey and create a basis for new work by focusing on different building types. Five exhibitions took place within the series between 2012 and 2016. Public programs and film screenings accompanied the exhibitions, bringing different perspectives on the subjects into view and exploring their further implications.

The forth exhibition in the series, Caution! Slippery Ground, examined the static, inward-looking nature of architects, architecture, and architectural culture: their tendency to turn inward, remain fixed, and cling tightly to a particular ground without engaging with what lies beyond it. From this perspective, the exhibition brought the symbols and rituals of architectural culture into view, while also showing that structures could exist beyond these static conventions. It reminded us that architecture and architectural culture are not confined to an ivory tower whose position is ambiguous: they are part of everyday life, remain alive and continually evolve, and everyone is both a producer and a consumer of this cultural environment.

From the exhibition text:

“It is difficult to say that today’s cultural production rests on fixed ground; these shifting grounds multiply and diversify as elements from many different actors come together. The more a person tries to remain still, the more the ground beneath their feet disappears; yet this disappearance points to a condition that is constantly diversifying and multiplying. We must confront our unshakable beliefs in a fixed cultural ground and recognise that it is not a single ground, but one that multiplies, disperses, and becomes richer through its fragmentation.”

“The exhibition Caution! Slippery Ground circles around architecture, laying bare the symbols and rituals of architectural culture and questioning how culture is produced within architecture and what new forms of existence it can take. The exhibition’s design is based on the idea of a cultural landscape. This landscape consists of surfaces that are continually renewed in homage to the dynamic nature of culture.”

“Who can speak of the cultural world of today, yesterday, or the future by identifying a single point of reference? It is clear that we are dealing with a constantly evolving landscape of cultural production, composed of complex, intertwined elements. Which layer are we in? Which time period?”

The exhibition was first shown at Istanbul Modern and then at the Turkish Association of Architects in Private Practice.