Didem and Osman run the artist space PIST that also publishes the contemporary art guide LIST and they toured with the participants through the city to visit other artist-run initiatives. Why are these kind of alternative art spaces important? Because there is no state financing of contemporary art in Turkey. Contemporary art is a relatively young tradition, is relatively young, with corporate giants using art for self promotion, achieving a national modernization agenda and for their international positioning game. The top-down approach used to promote contemporary art made it possible to set up the needed infrastructure in a short time, but also resulted in a kind of cultural monopoly by these corporations, mostly banks. Looking at the macro level, these institutions all seem very alike. Without rooting this new art in previous cultural layers and traditions, these cultural institutions developed a detached almost ‘look-alike’ cultural climate where art is just seem as a consumer good that audiences associate –copying the corporate players that set up the infrastructure- with a life-style choice signaling their ‘modern’ identity. Artist initiatives are extremely important in this climate because they can build up a bottom-up answer to this situation, they explore what art and modernity have been, are and can become. However small their visibility, they help to make the cultural environment more diverse and start much needed debates. Alternative groups and spaces in Istanbul are important so that Turkey can develop a full cultural climate.  Understanding and seeing this grass-roots, bottom-up movement to anchor contemporary art into the fabric of Turkisch culture was what this tour was all about.