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Through research and deliberation, we have come upon several leads for a critical look at the city of Istanbul. We call them layers. They comply with the problematic issues that concern us for a long time in all our productions.
The Panorama:
Every great city of the world offers a grand panoramic view for the delight of its viewers, and Istanbul is no exception. But very few cities of this magnitude enjoy a topographic outline that makes the panoramic gaze part of an everyday experience. If Constantinople was the Rome in the East, one underlying link was the topographical similarity of the seven hills. Conversely, Paris had Nadar to fix the camera on the baloon, and New York had its tall buildings.
For a long time, Istanbul had its share of painters to climb on the hilltops of the Golden Horn and along the Bosphorus, to find the exact vantage point to tell everyone else how magnificient the city was. Except a few residents, almost all were travelling painters from Europe, and most of them were connected to the Ottoman Court. In this way, the Ottoman ruling elite was not indifferent to that primary function of a painted scene, that is, to acknowledge the riches in possession. Complementary to the panopticon, the all-encompassing view of the terrain is the affirmation of power and domination. These days, what we receive from Mars to the cheers of the scientists confirm this.
The Siege:
When a historic megalopolis is in question, this may come to mean different things, both historical and contemporary. For Constantinople, »The Siege« was in 1453, shortly before the ultimate fall of Byzantium. Very well chronicled through eyewitness accounts (Frantzes and Barbaro), it was a grim period of roughly 50 days for the residents, entangled with complications in between Byzantines, Venetians and Genovese, and charged with the clash of opposite faith, the residents finally abandoned by their merciful god and doomed. The walls of the city are still mostly intact 1500 years after their construction and 550 years after the siege, and they still obstruct the view of the outside. In these terms, the occupier's gaze is not reciprocal and for the ones under siege, the space of consolidation is under the dome of heavens. The huddled mass in Hagia Sophia the night before the city fell saw their final prayers melt into thin air without a reply.
Meanwhile, when a contemporary mega-city is in consideration, the siege comes to mean a territorial battle of a different order. Istanbul saw its population increased tenfold in a mere 30 years since 1970’s, as manifest in a totally uncontrolled urban sprawl. The first wave of newcomers had fought their battle over the state owned land along the periphery and forcefully won their grasp of real estate. The second wave turned the inner city into slums, as to imitate the once industrial capitals of the world with a considerable delay. The third and the last phase also followed the well known pattern of gentrification, a kind of eviction (or containing in) of the underdog in favor of the global and local elite. When the idea of the »truly urbane« is completely blurred, the battles of territorial claim in Istanbul is fought in a number of different fronts.
The Archaeology:
We have previously discussed elsewhere that in between tradition and change, Istanbul leads a schizophrenic life of its own. While the city appears as an easy prey for the multinational capital, to be colonized as the scenic/historic/nostalgic site of international tourism and the global trade, the enterprise contradicts with the demands of local and feudal nodes of power. In between the corrupt state, the all-powerful military, the greedy venture capital, the local nationalist/mafioso organization, the Islamist mayors and other claimants of various caliber, big and small, the land is cannibalized. In a rather tight and claustrophobic space of the city, all involved parties have their own sphere of influence, a territorial/spatial claim somewhere in between a few square meters in front of the store or another floor on top of the apartment building, to the mega-hotel complexes built under purely illegal terms albeit under the auspices of the local government.
The »Archaeological Field Work« is what we termed xurban’s previous initiatives in order to bring out the objects of the uncharted, unwritten histories of the locales in this part of the world. When the urban land reclamation of Istanbul is considered, we are once more sure not to rely on the urban plans, land registers, building permits and other »enlisted/doctored« data of the official kind. Instead we focus on bits and pieces of property somehow let free to float in between the power struggles and territorial claims, waiting for their turn to be »developed«, and in the meantime lending themselves to a number of tasks.
THE PROJECT:
It is no coincidence that the photographic part of the proposed archaeology concentrates around the land walls of the historic city, whose limits enable a derelict buffer zone, and outside, the pillaging goes on. When the photographs offer a limited view of the derelict land and the reminiscence of the historic fall, the two video-panoramas view the sprawled mega-city from a number of chosen vantage points. They contrast with the cliché of the silhouettes attributed to Istanbul.
The aim of the project is to observe the membranes of the transitional zones.
Varied strata of the city show us that even when assuming the total control of the economic, political and military institutions over territory, there are always temporary spaces of neutrality. They are defined by insecure yet active crowds who use these temporary zones. That is what interests us; the sedimentation of momentary existence. We propose the incorporation of video/photo-graphic study of such locations with the flow of the text and perhaps with other forms of information.
Text by: xurban, 2004
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