Serkan Ozkaya and The Courier-Journal :: Louisville, KY
With a longstanding interest in notions of authenticity, Serkan Ozkaya frequently works in collaborative modes to question originality and authorship. With Today Could be a Day of Historical Importance, Ozkaya complicates concepts of “original” vs. “reproduction” — issues of particular relevance in a world which increasingly relies upon mass-production.
Through his collaboration with The Courier-Journal, Ozkaya brings these questions to the general public of Louisville and anyone around the world who visits The Courier-Journal website. The widespread distribution and visibility of Today Could be a Day of Historical Importance highlight the unique role that newspapers play in engaging their communities. Tens of thousands of people will see the paper in convenience stores, airports, or on a colleague’s desk during the day. People who purchase the paper for the standard price of seventy-five cents, or have a home delivery subscription, will own a piece of Ozkaya’s work.
Ozkaya’s installations, sculptures, performances, and other projects have been featured in the 2005 Istanbul Biennial, in the 2007 Performa Biennial in New York City, and in numerous exhibitions in museums and galleries in Europe, the U.S., and Asia. Ozakaya is represented by the Slag Gallery in New York and lives in Istanbul, Turkey.
The Courier-Journal was created in 1868 from the merger of several newspapers, but its origins go back to 1826. It was one of the first papers in the southeast to push for improved public education, support for African Americans and the poor of Appalachia. The Courier-Journal has won ten Pulitzer Prizes, including a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1967 for its fight against the ravages of Kentucky strip mining, a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1980 for a series of articles, “Living the Cambodian Nightmare,” and a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartoons in 2005. The Courier-Journal has a daily circulation of 200,000, and it operates the most visited website in Kentucky, www.courier-journal.com. The newspaper reaches 85 percent of adults in its seven-county market every week and enjoys the sixth highest penetration among American newspapers.
In addition to working with artwithoutwalls and Serkan Ozakaya on the project, The Courier-Journal donated funding to offset the direct costs of the project.