Cabaret Voltaire Art Center 'Memory Drops' by Sükran Aziz an Interactive Sound/Image/Video Installation

Cabaret Voltaire Art Center presents, as its first show, Memory Drops, a site-specific, interactive media installation by Sükran Aziz, consisting of video, sound, light, objects and text, based on real-time participation of viewers.

(PRWEB) November 3, 2006 -- Cabaret Voltaire Art Center presents, as its first show, Memory Drops, a site-specific, interactive media installation by Sukran Aziz, consisting of video, sound, light, objects and text, based on real-time participation of viewers. According to the artist, interactivity is a technique that goes only halfway in bridging the traditional gap between the viewer and the viewed art object. In this project, she incorporates the viewers themselves into the art project. True to her belief in artwork as process, rather than finished product, human inputs collected from viewers in this show will be utilized, as building blocks, in another show in the future. These 'inputs' will consist of impressions, comments, stories, anecdotes and memories of participants, related to the life of the city of Poughkeepsie that the local and outside visitors to the show will provide freely in response to media-prompts presented in an interaction booth called the 'Recovery Room.' As this continuing interactive process becomes an integral part of this unique media event, voices of viewer-participants from earlier shows whisper through suspended metal globes the artist calls 'Memory Drops' that connect the past with the present.

Before living and showing in NYC between 1987-2000, during her formative years the Turkish-born artist Sükran Aziz traveled extensively in Europe and researched art history and movements. In 2002 she moved to Poughkeepsie where she re-designed and worked on a historical building for four years as an art project. This is where Cabaret Voltaire Art Center was born.

Her concept of art is based on dissolving the boundary between art and everyday life, humorously and critically, much in the spirit of Dada and Fluxus. The artist says, "I realize the preciousness of the lived-moment. I like to capture a segment of time and document it. For me, the use of video and technology as a medium of artistic expression is not an end in itself, but merely a means through which to achieve my substantive aims." In the chain of art projects she has created over the years, Sukran Aziz has consistently worked on a progression of interrelated and evolving themes. What began with her explorations on time, migration and identity, has led to her fascination with language and memories as powerful manifestations of cultural identity. This evolved into her later interest in the past as a repository of human experience. Memory Drops, which focuses on the life and identity of a city, the city of Poughkeepsie, is an embodiment of all these themes.

Some of Sukran Aziz's critically acclaimed exhibitions from the past include Memory As Metaphor, O' Difference – Off Difference, Room For Rent, Mythology Of Tongues, and The Past Is With Us shown in New York City, Dream Drops in Los Angeles, Reminiscences II at the 5th International Istanbul Biennial, Oscillations at the Habitat International Exhibition in Istanbul, Polish Alphabet in Krakow, Poland, and Stones And Voices in Global Bridge Project in Reutlingen, Germany. Also, her Body Identity project was selected by Fundacion America for the Traveling Body-Museum and shown in Santiago, Chile.

CaBAreT VOltAIre aRT CeNTeR
358 Main Street
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601
TEL: 845-473-7800 TEL/ FAX: 845-473-1181

'MEMORY DROPS' by SÜKRAN AZIZ
An interactive sound/image/video installation

November 9 - December 24, 2006, Opening Reception Thursday Nov. 9, between 4 – 8 p.m.

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