Urban Blockade Atlas
"The architecture of today counts that it still saves the world with well-intentioned concepts. These voices from its centre create illusions in the name of a good life. It's possible to talk about the fallacy that all these concepts are turning around. These nonsense are useless on their own. When architecture can accept the normality of the system that produces it, it can organize new positions against it.
The starting point for the architecture that can be spoken, radicalized and discussed today can be formed by destroying its centres. Defects positioned on this entire production line, blockades, new expression styles, and expression sources may change course. "
— Urban Blockade Atlas, p. 32 (Draft Edition)
It's a new
language, a new definition.
What is the architecture of destruction, of being in between, of surveillance?
What would the atlas look like with these world-blocking forces?
I started the Urban Block Atlas at the "We Won't Leave" exhibition curated by Pelin Tan, it's still under development. It is exhibited at Goethe Ankara Institute in 2016.
Exhibition : We Won't Leave / Terk Etmeyecegiz
Participants : Artıkişler Collective, Ayşe Çavdar, Sevgi Ortaç, Önder Özengi, Seçkin Aydın, Ahmet Öğüt, Ilhan Sayin, Gülsün Karamustafa, Ege Berensel, Yelta Köm
Curator : Pelin Tan
Exhibition Design : Yelta Köm & Pelin Tan
Institution : Goethe Ankara
Photo : Burak Ercan
The title of the exhibition We Wont Leave is borrowed from the a photo-collage series by artist Ahmet Ogut. The slogan "We Won't Move!" ("Ons dak nie, ons phola hier") that was used by Sophiatown residents during the 1955 forced removals. This exhibition focuses on the urban conditions in Turkey and artistic methodology of representation, engaging and researching. How we can record the image of urban action? How artistic methodology could engage and participate as an affect methodology in urban uprisings? As we are living in intense socio – spatial transformation fostered by upside down urban transformation projects, territorial border politics, migration/refugeehood and local urban movements in Turkey. All cases indicate the ethics of how we want to live together in cities. We Wont Leave exhibition invites artists from different cities and practices that metaphorically designates the will and visual strategies of a demand for to remain and resistance in urban spaces. The exhibition presenting a knowledge of artistic methodologies focusing on artistic research, archival practice, images of civil disobedience from trans-medium practices.