Heterotopia

July 2022 - January 2023
GAZİANTEP

Heterotopia is an innovative documentary project that examines the potential for intercultural interaction and social harmony through a common appreciation of two different cultures, such as coffee. The project aims to examine the existing or potential social harmony dynamics between Syrian immigrants and the people of Gaziantep, and has conveyed this process to the public through a feature-length documentary. Heterotopia, which evaluates the phenomenon of migration not only in terms of differences but also in terms of partnerships, aims to offer a new perspective on social harmony.

The idea of the project was first put forward at the IV. Relational Social Sciences Congress held at Hacettepe University in November 2020; within this scope, project manager Emre Burhan made an oral presentation titled “The Migration of Coffee and Its Reflections on Intercultural Communication”. The academic outcomes of the project were shared with the public at the “Migration Studies” Congress held at Istanbul Bilgi University in December 2022, with an oral presentation titled “Writing a Documentary: Coffee’s Migration to Gaziantep and Its Effect on Social Cohesion” by project co-director Hilal Sevlü.

The first documentary screening within the scope of the project was organized at the Gaziantep Art Center in May 2023. The second screening was hosted by the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) in Berlin in November 2023.

Heterotopia stands out not only with its documentary screenings, but also as a platform aimed at developing new ways of thinking about social cohesion. The events aim to raise awareness and develop solutions to problems such as social tension, xenophobia and violence by bringing together local people, Syrian migrants, civil society organizations and academic stakeholders.

Inspired by examples of social cohesion shaped around coffee, this project emphasizes the unifying aspects of cultural diversity. Heterotopia is a creative initiative that aims to show that different cultural elements can play a unifying role and contribute to social harmony by promoting intercultural interaction.

Neo - Zosimos Culture and Arts Collective

Zosimos from Samsat, whose existence we are aware of with the mosaics he created, rather than the written sources. Zosimos's signature can be found on some mosaics in the city of Zeugma and currently exhibited in the Gaziantep Zeugma Mosaic Museum. Today, Neo - Zosimos Culture and Arts Collective mediates to process and bring in the public eye the cultural diversity of ordinary people, just like Zosimos who used colours in his mosaics so skillfully and bringing them together in a whole. Together with a multidisciplinary project team, the Collective aims to transform subjects with different ontological foundations from culture to art history, the city, daily life, migration and gender into visual documents. Collective's founders, Emre Burhan and Hilal Sevlü, collects these visual documents and narratives with an academic approach.

This page is published on 23 June 2022.