Becoming Istanbul

Exhibition
16. May 2009 - 30. June 2009
DAZ Taut Saal

OPENING 15.05.2009

18 PM Short Lectures, DAZ_Taut Saal
Opening speech: S.E. Ahmet Acet, Ambassador of the Republic of Turkey
Lecture by Pelin Dervis, Director Garanti Gallery, Istanbul.
Followed by short-lectures of the architects from the exhibition ‘7 Architects from 7 Hills’, presented by Dr. Suha Ozkan.
Speakers: Emre Arolat, Can Cinici, Mehmet Kutukcuoglu & Ertug Ucar Teget Architectural Office), Sevki Pekin, Nevzat Sayin, Murat & Melkan Tabanlioglu Tabanlioglu Architects), Han Tumertekin.

20 PM Opening of the exhibition
Speakers:
Ingeborg Junge-Reyer, Mayor of Berlin and Senator for Urban Development
Mustafa Pulat, Consul General of the Republic of Turkey
Ute Weiland, Deputy Director of Alfred Herrhausen Society
Pelin Dervis, Curator of the exhibition ‚Becoming Istanbul‘, Director Garanti Gallery, Istanbul
Dr. Suha Ozkan, Curator of the exhibition ‚7 Architects from 7 Hills‘, Chairman World Architecture Community


This exhibition does not describe Istanbul. Neither does it depict its history, its contemporary architectural environment which is gradually becoming more animated and productive, its complex social and economic structure or its becoming the focus of a popular culture of almost unparalleled richness. The exhibition is prepared with the purpose of visualizing Istanbul’s present state.

It consists of an interactive audiovisual database on contemporary Istanbul and a 16 - minute complementary film titled ‘Mapping Istanbul’. Both attempts to look at Istanbul from multiple perspectives and free of all the familiar clichés. In doing this, the database, instead of producing and placing new stereotypes opposite those clichés, forms its own structure by instrumentalizing the clichés themselves. Media accessed through includes works by artists, architectural projects, videos, photographs, cartoons and essays. Users accessing these works produced in the last 10 years will have the chance to perceive the conditions and actors forming today’s Istanbul. There are 408 visual groups under the 80 sub-headings featured on the database. More than 7000 visuals were accumulated for the project. ‘Mapping Istanbul’ constitutes an important source supporting the understanding of the city and the contemporary view the exhibition presented, at times completely overturning cliché judgments.

Becoming Istanbul
Istanbul was not always Istanbul. It has been Byzantium, Constantinopolis, in the mid-Byzantine period it was simply Polis, in the Ottoman period it was Kostantiniyye, Ýslambol and Dersaadet, and many other things; but it was never only Istanbul. Each toponymic change is a manifestation of radical differentiation in the urban space and a change in its social meaning. From the beginning of the 19th century on, the traditional cosmopolitanism, the plurality of which was formed from the sum of a series of fixed singularities, faced erosion. Although ideological engagements pointed in the opposite direction, the new cosmopolitanism of the city was slowly being constructed in place of the crumbling traditional politanism. The city of fixed communities and statuses, where inflow and outflow was strictly controlled now set out to become a city shaped by the countless parameters of individualities, preferences, expressions, interests, groupings and separations. The city obtained the pluralism of a metropolis. It became an environment of “spontaneous freedom” where the oppression of recurrent totalitarian orientations has collided with the common pluralism of the metropolis. This characteristic of the city is becoming increasingly evident. The ironic aspect of the process is how this modern metropolis singularized its name although it opened itself up to the outward expression of pluralities. Today, for everyone, it is only Istanbul. During the phase of homogenization, which began in the 1920s and the phase of becoming plural, pluralist and cosmopolitan which began in the 1980s, the city forgot its countless old names. It generalized the name Istanbul, which was least political, least religious and least ethnical among the names in use. It became Istanbul. It became a category where countless existences and meanings could be produced and placed under a single name, yet could never be filled. This is exactly what the title of the exhibition is pointing to. These countless existences and meanings are presented to the viewer and the reader in a plural milieu.


BECOMING ISTANBUL is a project of Garanti Gallery originally realized for the German Architecture Museum (DAM Frankfurt) and is curated by Pelin Dervis, Bülent Tanju and Ugur Tanyeli. The exhibition at DAZ is supported by the Alfred Herrhausen Society, the international Forum of Deutsche Bank.It takes place within the 20th anniversary of the city partnership Berlin-Istanbul and is under the patronage of the Mayor of Berlin and Senator for Urban Development, Ingeborg Junge-Reyer.

More Information about
Deutsches Architekturmuseum
Alfred Herrhausen Society
Berlin-Istanbul 2009

WEBSITE: http://wwx.baunetz.de/sixcms_4/sixcms/detail.php?object_id=29&area_id=2816&id=1521463&template_id=10186