Welcome to the first iteration of a new collaboration between the Department of Visual Arts & Visual Communication Design at the Sabancı University in Istanbul, Turkey and the Art Academy at the Faculty of Art, Music & Design at the University of Bergen, Norway.

The collaboration was intended as an extensive dual residency, where students from both institutions were able to meet and visit each other in both Istanbul and Bergen. Due to the many restrictions caused by the covid-19 pandemic this was not possible. Instead an online collaboration was initiated. As a result of an open call to students at both Universities, 8 art students – 2 from Sabancı University and 6 from University of Bergen has been selected to present artworks on this online platform.

I would like to thank student Siavash Kheirkhah from the Art Academy in Bergen and professor Murat Germen from the Sabancı University in Istanbul for organizing this collaboration.

Even though the 8 artist display a wide variety of contemporary art strategies, their projects for SKAP share a surpricingly consistent interest in the structures of the everyday. From the structural investigations of painter Trude N. Bredholt, the urban curiosity and focus on details in the cityscape by both Ada Yazan and Benedicte Dahm, the ephemeral poetry in the work of Ann Edvartsen, the playful memory game of Kivanç Sert and the reflections on altered perception in the documtentary of Mina Paasche. To the more dramatic, foreboding anxiety in the works of Johan Severin and Jenny Hellström. Common to all 8 artworks is an interest in how seemingly mundane details of our daily lives carry deeper, poetic meaning. More than the diverse visuality of these artworks the titles points to the close connections of everyday perception:

I saw a reflection in the window bathing in ambience
There was a wall, it did not look important
Untitled
Cats’ Change of Perception
We Adapt
Structures on move I & II
A Bundle of Echoes
Kvartalenes kveldssang/ The streets evening song

In Norwegian SKAP is an imperative call that can be translated as: Create!

With the perceptive attitudes of these 8 artists, we might propose another unfolding of the abbreviation:
Structural Kuriosa Attention Poetry

Frans Jacobi

Head of Department / Professor
The Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art
KMD
University of Bergen