Exhibition at Depo istanbul featuring Fia Backstrom [Sweeden/U.S.], Johanna Billing [Sweden], Susanne Burner [Germany], Chto Delat [Russia], Marcelo Exposito [Spain], Claire Fontaine [France], Igor Grubic [Croatia], Sharon Hayes [U.S.], Inventory[UK], Olga Kisseleva [France/Russia], Ligna [Germany], Ciprian Muresan [Romania], Marta Popivoda/Illegal Cinema [Serbia], Radek Community [Russia], R.E.P group [Ukraine], Revolution Will Not Be Televised [Brazil].

Lecture by Brian Holmes: Ecstasy, Fear & Number: From the "Man in the Crowd" to the Self-Organizing Multitude.

Curators: Claire Staebler and Jelena Vesić

Exhibition Producer: Vladimir Jerić

Production: Depo-Istanbul and Anadolu Kültür

Exhibition Managers: Asena Günal and Balca Ergener

Emerging out of AlmostReal as part of the No More Reality project, Crowd and Performance: demonstration, public space, use of body, examines the new possibilities of collective thinking and collective acting in the public space. No More Reality gathers a group of artists, activists, theorists, curators, magazines and radio broadcasters to investigate performative aspects of the crowd in the streets and the political implications of body practices in the public space. Since 2005, No More Reality has been developing in several stages and formats: exhibitions, publications and discussions accompanying this process are conceptualized as fragmentary situations and steps in the research, rather than the final projects with the fixed and definite conclusions.

The exhibition No More Reality Crowd and Performance: demonstration, public space, use of body,curated by Jelena Vesić and Claire Staebler, offers a chance to examine a wide range of artistic approaches to the ecstatic and frightening element of number, with its invitation to self-dissolution and/or collective agency. Do we face an environment of simulation and simulacra, a fully manipulated realm where every significant gesture has been foreseen or even scripted in advance? Is the violence of the state and the mob the only alternative to the submissive acceptance of neutralizing control? Or are there still ways to elicit a public confrontation over substantial issues, by subverting the figures of seduction, indifference and self-interest that contemporary democracies celebrate as an ideal and enforce as a norm? — Brian Holmes