++++ Erden Kosova is PhD candidate at Goldsmiths College London. He has worked for two art magazines in Istanbul, Resmi Görüs and art-ist.

++++ ISTANBUL, NOT CONSTANTINOPOLIS / The recent tension being produced by the membership negotiations between the EU and Turkey has a decisive influence on the formation of contemporary Turkish citizens’ psyches. Constant oscillations between recognition and exclusion, desire and resentment, cosmopolitanism and isolation fabricate a reflexive process, a crisis of the Self which has to be defined anew due to the changing relations with the ‘historical Other’. Contemporary artists from Turkey have an additional concern regarding this tension because they are welcomed by the European institutions more than the local ones. They feel the urge to criticize both the increasing nationalism at home and the expectations for products of representational character, for illustrations of a geography of the nation abroad. In relation to this double-edged displacement they employ varyious strategies of resistance. Sometimes they refer critically to the prevailing, ridiculous rhetoric of the heroic past of the Ottoman state or to the historical images of European imagery which reflect an apparent enmity. Sometimes they problematize their own status as artists from the periphery or sometimes they reject all sorts of cultural binaries and seek transversal mappings of alternative geographies. In my paper I will discuss some particular works and illustrate those strategies of resistance.