Barmagazine: A Magazine That Seeing Itself as a Bar, 2018

 

Barmagazine took place in the bar opened by Taylan Kesanbilici, who was dismissed from a media company for his union activities, and Emre Tansu Keten, who had been removed from his position as a research assistant at a university for signing the petition We Will Not Be a Party to This Crime. Their main goal in opening a bar was to earn a living while being able to work as journalists. The Barmagazine project was conceived by Burak Delier and carried out in collaboration with Kesanbilici, Keten and Eylem Akçay in March and April 2018. The task was to turn the bar into a magazine. Barmagazine overlapped the management of the bar, which was the activity which would earn Kesanbilici and Keten’s livings, and the magazine publishing activity that they essentially wanted to carry out.

 

The artwork, which was not supported by any art institution, focused on everyday life and the conditions of speech and transfer of knowledge, trying to make these conditions visible and flout them. Of course, a bar cannot be converted into a magazine. It can be made like a magazine with a suitable design, but the distance between a bar and a magazine will not be covered. Barmagazine ignores this objective and factual truth and attempts to close the gap between bar and magazine. Being aware that the economic and political problem that determines the shape and flow of our daily lives cannot be solved with a 'creative' invention, a design trick, it settles in this impossibility in the heart of everyday life and makes it visible.