Arter initiated a new publication series, ARTER BACKGROUND, in 2019 to accompany exhibitions drawn from its collection, which holds around 1,400 works of art. This third book in the series accompanies the collection-based group exhibition On Celestial Bodies, opened at Arter in September 2020. In the book, excerpts of texts selected around the ideas active in the curatorial process put in practice by Kevser Güler are complemented by new essays written specifically for this context. While the exhibition deals with the ways that beings come together and disperse, the manners through which they build relations, and their ways of distancing and converging with each other, the accompanying publication, through its distinctive editorial structure, features textual and visual content pointing towards questions of materiality, embodiment and objecthood, as well as spatial, temporal, social, historical and political forms of gathering and being together.

with contributions by

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE AMMANN, KEREM OZAN BAYRAKTAR, OLIVER BENDORF, KATE BRIGGS, BAZON BROCK, JOHANNES BRUDER, JOHN CAGE, SEVİNÇ ÇALHANOĞLU, ASAF HÂLET ÇELEBİ, LYDIA DAVIS, BURAK DELİER, GAYE ÇANKAYA EKSEN, IRMGARD EMMELHAINZ, REHA ERDEM, İRİS ERGÜL, SÜREYYYA EVREN, SUSANNE VON FALKENHAUSEN, CARLOS GAMERRO, MAYA INDIRA GANESH, ELIZABETH GROSZ, KEVSER GÜLER, NİLÜFER GÜNGÖRMÜŞ, GEORGES DIDI-HUBERMAN, REHA KESKİN, SERDAR KOÇAK, ELKE KRASNY, CLARICE LISPECTOR, DOREEN MASSEY, RUBÉN MIRA, ROBERT MORRIS, VICTORIA NOORTHOORN, ABDULLAH ONAY, GÖZE ORHON, BERNARDO ORTIZ CAMPO, ESRA ÖZDOĞAN, SİLVA ÖZYERLİ, MARİNA PAPAZYAN, HARALD SZEEMANN, MURASAKİ SHIKIBU, ALEJANDRO TANTANIAN, TLGADİNTSİ, HAKAN YÜCEFER, ZAHRAD