Vasif Kortun is a writer, curator and teacher in the field of contemporary art. He is the founding director of Platform Garanti CAC a non-profit contemporary art institution with an extensive library, documentation center, artist archives, exhibition space and an international residency program for artists, critics and curators. He also founded Proje4L, Istanbul Museum of Contemporary Art [2001- 2003], where he curated seminal exhibitions of artist from Turkey. The first director of the Museum of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College [1994 and 1997], he organized the first U.S. museum exhibitions of artists like Kara Walker, Nedko Solakov and Boris Mikhailov. Vasif Kortun was the chief curator of the 1992, and co-curator of 2005 Istanbul Biennials; a co-curator of Sao Paolo [1998], Second Ceramics Biennial [Albisola, 2003], Taipei Biennial in [2008], He is the curator of the UAE Pavilion, Venice Bienial [2011]. He has curated the Turkish pavilions for 1994 and 1998 Sao Paolo and 2007 Venice Biennials. He is a board member of the Foundation for Arts Initiatives, and sits on the advisory committees of the Periferic Biennial; Artists Pension Trust Dubai, The Gyeonggi Creation Center, Korea, and Broadsheet Magazine Australia.

The lecture will revolve around questions of attempting to institute specificity with a focus on SALT a new program to open in Istanbul in the Spring of 2011.