Back to the Bosphorus: the 2001 Istanbul Biennial was titled "Egofugal," a term invented by the curator to suggest diffusion of the individual ego into broader systems and networks - Report from Istanbul

Like so much else around the world, the exhibition was suddenly recontextualized by the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. and their aftermath. On a practical level, for many international participants and visitors the trip to Istanbul entailed unforeseen obstacles and understandable worries. One immediate loss was a new light installation by American James Turrell. Planned for Istanbul's Maiden's Tower, it remained unrealized when the artist failed to make it to Turkey, apparently because of canceled flights. During the days leading up to the opening, you could sense the presence of a geopolitical cauldron boiling not far away, destined to yield unpredictable, and perhaps extremely dire, consequences. (Bordering Iraq and not far from Pakistan and Afghanistan, Turkey is, of course, one of the few Islamic countries that's an unequivocal American ally, even to the extent of permitting U.S. forces to operate from its territory.) Interestingly enough, many of the biennial's best projects seemed to respond to these precarious conditions, although the works were hardly conceived with Sept. 11 in mind.

The recontextualization effect started right outside the Hagia Eirene, with a small four-meter-long building by Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, from Denmark and Norway, respectively. This tilting structure (Powerless Structures, Fig. 222, Traces of a Never Existing History, 2001) seemed to be sliding into the earth, as if from an earthquake--or a terrorist attack. With a perfect, spare, rectilinear shape, this white building, illuminated at night by a glowing window, resembled a reduced version of a generic gallery or museum suddenly subjected to a cataclysm. Because of the way the structure tilted, the words "Contemporary Art" painted on the facade were shortened, ominously, to "Temporary Art."

Inside the Hagia Eirene, Mathieu Briand, from France, presented visitors with high-tech helmets that had small video cameras on top and visors that doubled as small screens. As you hesitantly walked through the exhibition wearing a helmet, you saw your own viewpoint on the screen, but when you clicked a button, your private view suddenly shifted to that of another person elsewhere in the building also wearing a helmet, then to someone else's, and so on. Incorporating touches of virtual reality and video-game hijinks, Briand's helmets were hilarious and attention-grabbing as they tapped into the ancient desire to see through another's eyes. You couldn't help wishing that a few of these devices could be sent posthaste to leaders in Washington and Kabul, who otherwise seemed wholly enamored of their own viewpoints.

In a similar vein, Japanese artist Kazuhiko Hachiya's Centrifuge (2001) was a walk-in chamber lined with video cameras. At the center of the room were two pairs of binocularlike viewing devices. Between them was a small circular gadget that visitors could blow on to start it rotating. This activated the cameras, and, by looking through one of the viewers, visitors could see themselves and their Centrifuge companions from rapidly changing perspectives: above, sideways and below. This suddenly decentered, endlessly shifting view of oneself and an "other" effectively personalized a kind of global anxiety. Nearby, there was a haunting animated video (Two Minutes out of Time, 2000) by Pierre Huyghe, from France, in which a Japanese cartoon character named Ann Lee comes into being, reflects on her life with wonder and, presumably, dies, all in the space of two minutes. This stock figure was originally destined to have a brief life as a minor character in a couple of comic books before being tossed on the scrap heap. Huyghe and Philippe Parreno (also in the show) purchased the rights to her, and have featured her in their own works. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, a third French artist participating in this novel project, also contributed an impressive Ann Lee video to this exhibition.