Among the Ruins
October 2023 - July 2024
ISTANBUL
Inspired by Zabel Yasayan’s book with the same name, Yıkıntılar Arasında (Among the Ruins) focused on the ruined buildings in various districts and neighborhoods in Istanbul city center. It explored the historical, social, economic and political causes and dimensions of the political violence which had an impact on the destruction of these places. It examined the effects of destruction on individuals and communities through the phenomena of forced displacement, dispossession and urban transformation. It addressed destruction not only as spatial destruction, but also as destruction of time, body and language, the interruption of intergenerational transfer, and destruction of cultural heritage and memory. By tracing memory, that was attempted to be erased, in these spooky places that once hosted life through the traces left by individuals and communities, the project aimed to reveal the social, cultural and political projections of acts of violence. Wandering among the ruins like an urban archaeologist, the project targeted to uncover the violence that has persisted from the last century to the present day, as well as ruin itself, the most important metaphor of history, thereby revealing the counter-memory. It dreamt of reassembling the shattered ones, just like Benjamin’s Angel of History.
Consisting of a series of research, exhibition and interview, the project first aimed to collect information and documents about the places abandoned for demolition due to various violence incidents and to archive all kinds of items collected. Secondly, an exhibition was organized consisting of works to be created for the project by artists from different disciplines, which emphasized, and recreated the image, that the ruins are an overview of history, or maybe the history itself, against a regime of remembering and forgetting that prevents us from having a “real” look at the ruin and therefore from remembering the past. Finally, the project concluded with panel discussions both the research and exhibition processes publicly with the participation of academicians from different disciplines.
