Burak Arikan

Burak Arıkan (1976, Istanbul) is a Turkish media artist who works with complex networks. He takes the obvious social, economical, and political issues of the current capitalist society as an input and runs through an abstract machinery, which generates network maps, results in performances, and procreates predictions to make inherent power relationships visible, thus discussable. Arikan’s software, prints, installations, and performances have been commissioned and exhibited at numerous international institutions and venues including Transmediale in Berlin, Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, the Venice Architecture Biennale, São Paulo Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, Berlin Biennial, and Ars Electronica.

Arikan is the founder of Graph Commons collaborative network mapping, analysis, and publishing platform.

His work MyPocket (2008) combines data from his own spending habits with custom software algorithms and generates predictions on what he's going to purchase next every other day. The predictions as well as the information on his everyday spending are disclosed to the world. MyPocket was shown in Neuberger Museum of Art New York, Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, and Media Space / FilmWinter Stuttgart in 2009.

Arikan initiated the Networks of Dispossession (2013-), a collective data compiling and mapping project on the relations of government and corporations in Turkey. It was started during the Gezi Protests and the results were first exhibited at the 13th Istanbul Biennial (2013) and most recently at MAXXI Museum in Rome (2015).