Is a good neighbor hard to find in the Middle East?

In the 15th Istanbul Biennial, the theme grabs you almost as much as the works of art. It is a misleadingly simple, event upbeat phrase: "A Good Neighbor." Yet, it is so emotionally explosive, so laden with baggage and so variable that, as the Nordic duo of curators, Elmsgreen and Dragset said, it seems to have an invisible question mark at the end. The inevitable reply, after touring the six different venues of the Biennial, that a good neighbor, in the troubled Middle East and the troubled world, is hard to find, let alone to be.

Is a good neighbor simply someone who does not storm into your village, destroy your house and kill your parents? Yes, if we go by one of the most forceful works of the Biennial, the short video of Mardin-born Turkish artist Erkan Özgen, where a deaf-mute boy describes without words the violence he has witnessed when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters seized Kobani in January 2015. In this video ironically titled "Wonderland," the thirteen-year-old Mohammed's account ends with a brutal hand movement that shows a decapitation. According to many critics, the video is "the crown piece" of the Biennial, which is otherwise subtle in its political criticism.

Is a good neighbor someone who does not spy on you? Turkish artist Burçak Bingöl's surveillance cameras, made of white porcelain and decorated with flowers, takes up the global surveillance culture. In Turkey, it strongly recalls the culture of snitching, the recent headlines about a man who complained about his neighbor to the police for wearing shorts in Ankara and the calls by the president and the government to report to the police if you think your neighbor was involved in a conspiracy against the government.

Is a good neighbor one who...