From Resistance to Cooperation:
Transformation of Yırca Village Culture and Cultural Memory
September 2023 - July 2024
MANİSA
The project is designed as an oral history study on cultural transformation, focusing on the effects of thermal power plants on local culture.
In ecology, everything is interconnected; coal-fired thermal power plants negatively affect the entire local culture, starting with the geographical culture. It damages the living spaces of local people and causes the destruction of vital elements. On the other hand, the individualization that inevitably comes from participating in the coal economy, due to the loss of ecological livelihood methods, causes the solidarity practices of rural life to decline and even disappear in some places.
Yırca is a village right in the middle of these effects of the coal economy. The village, which has developed a culture that is at peace with nature, compatible with ecology and solidarity, and runs its economy with these elements, has lost its culture day by day with the thermal power plant. This project followed the traces that are about to disappear, together with the village people who, with their resistance, prevented the last thermal power plant planned by the capital owners. It recorded the things we say should not be forgotten, before they are completely erased from memories, through oral history workshops. Thus, it created the memory of lost solidarity practices. Again, within the scope of the project, geographical cultural elements are also recorded by making field trips in the village area as a community. While the project aimed to preserve village culture, it also took the cultural effects of coal-fired thermal power plants under record.
