Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center

Platform Garanti organized exhibitions; conferences and events; hosted an international residency program; and maintained a library and archive of contemporary art.

By setting up an unexpected threshold between the street outside and the normally white-walled gallery, Platform’s function became blurred and its status could be perceived as a library or as idiosyncratic exhibition.

Normalization, 2005 In 2003 Platform Garanti was invited by Rooseum, Malmö and WHW, Zagreb as a third collaborator in a series of discussions, exhibitions and publication, which would take as their point of departure the term 'normalization'.

In addition, Platform hosted participating artists of the International Istanbul Biennials in 2005: Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin and Yael Bartana;[1] in 2003 Shahzia Sikander;[2] and in 2001 Carsten Nicolai.

In 2003, Platform was one of ten not-for-profit European institutions to participate in Institution², curated by Jens Hoffmann for KIASMA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki.

[4] Platform organized over 120 lectures with professionals including among many others: Hou Hanru, Charles Esche, Maria Lind, Carlos Basualdo, Phillipe Vergne, Irit Rogoff, Mark Leckey, Chantal Mouffe, Maarten Hajer, Momoyo Kajima, Marcos Novak, Nikolaus Hirsch, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nikos Papastergiadis.

From 2004 the residency program attempted to focus more specifically on inviting artists from the geographies surrounding Turkey with the support of the Open Society and the American Center Foundation.