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The City viewing herself
Architecture of the City / Architecture of the Exhibition
The Puzzle, Istanbul
An architect simply sees two different modes at work in Istanbul. The first one is based on a comprehension of semantical bits, their relations and origins in history. An amalgam of tales, as much as building fragments and construction. The second is the dynamical generation of urban mass in constant revision, demolition and rebuilding, extending over a hundred kilometers. Micro-mechanisms governing the processes of expansion and construction have no say on the form of this city in the making, only on the method. If these mechanisms are seen as a grammar, there is a mutant vernacular at work, gone haywire. A city without proper limits, yet a landscape of confrontation: the city is always »there«, no matter how the viewer is situated.
The Pieces
A grammatical mode of operating is revived for this exhibition: architecture not as a semantical redistribution and rewiring, but as organization of perception.
The Wall as Interface
An interface is created as an embodiment of the act of facing the city of Istanbul. Istanbul is a city composed of numerous views of itself: a morphology of spaces formed by many hills, the Bosphorus, two seas and the Golden Horn, as well as the built masses of regular and arbitrary kinds of order. Yielding as well as forbidding, the wall mediates the two sides by supporting artworks, providing slits and openings, material changes, light / shadow exposure, structural exposure, filtering. It works the two sides by providing architectural layers, possibility for the creation of a place in a way that technically defies this possibility.
In this respect, the wall symbolizes the act of facing the city of Istanbul, not the city itself. The wall is a piece of infrastructure, an architectural device for viewing, observing, inspecting, making a decision and taking a step. It is a divider that connects two sides of your choice of binary opposition: an instigator of transformation.
Such a separation immediately maps the perceptual modes in space: outside is the optical gaze, occupying the position of visual inspection, processing, reflection, retrospection. Inside is the corporal existence of Istanbul, the tactile and physical.
Facing the Wall
Along with vision, hearing plays an important part in this open space that provides a vista, a diminishing perspective, a sense of confrontation and thus a self-actualization. The wall is furbished with a capacity to generate a sound field in this open space. The sonic layers are brought in interplay with the visual configuration over the timeline, both contradicting and reinforcing architectural statements. These layers feature a sampling and incorporation of elements from sonic statements already made, on the city and the exhibition.
What lies Behind the Wall
There are a series of works that draw their power from their immediacy to the senses. A physical manifestation of Istanbul. The stuff that gets generated as the city revolves. A principle of resonance is at work: a grammatical organization that resonates with the culture of space-making that produced Istanbul.
Simultaneous senses of salvage and salvation.
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