Fuat und Murat Şahinler:
Minarette, 2004

installation
new interpretation of a minaret
metal construction, synthetic material
Fuat und Murat Şahinler, Courtesy ZKM

 
Fuat and Murat Şahinler often work together and mostly in collaboration with other artists, architects, composers, and writers. Fuat Şahinler, a dilettante of life and aesthetics, currently works as an independent architect and from time to time teaches part-time in universities. Murat Şahinler, having studied sculpture and furthered his studies in urban interior design, has also been involved in oil painting. His oeuvre reflecting the multitude of his background ranges from drawing to stage design for theatre.

Şahinler' work is a result of their daily practices and long joyous and fruitful nightly conversations focusing mostly on the cultural and architectural 'diseases', 'accidents' and 'wonders' of urbanism, especially of İstanbul. The axis of their research is based on the conflict between public and private space, and fragmentation and spatial continuity. They do not privilege any medium or material to another, but they facilitate all types of media and materials from a multi-lingual approach in accordance with what the project necessitates and also with the availabilities. They use photography, video, animation, drawing and sculpture to create diverse type of projects; installations, interiors, façade applications, etc.

Separately and together, having participated in various workshops and exhibitions, Şahinler produced several projects on urbanism and public space connected to each other. The Quay (2001), which was realized in collaboration with Ahmet Soysal, a philosopher, for the 7th International İstanbul Biennial, constitutes a solid example of their work. The project consists of billboards, a panel board in the exhibition venue, a film and an unrealised amphitheatre project for the boathouse in Dolmabahçe and unfolds the problems, especially, in the Dolmabahçe Palace area related to public and private space, relation between the land and the sea, and the coastline.

In the İstanbul Pedestrian Exhibitions I: Nişantaşı (2002), while Fuat Şahinler created an individual project, Murat Şahinler collaborated with younger artists and established a group under the name »Independent Fake Movement«. With their site-specific Park Cage (2002) project, the Independent Fake Movement (Murat Bayındır, Enis Özbek, Ertuğ Sönmez & Murat Şahinler) draws attention to the fragmentation of space. The project is composed of the mechanical sculptures they name »Silosonofil« placed on the border of the park and the space created by the opening up of the park’s border. Park Cage proposes the meeting of the green and the pavement by removing of the border wall and grids and unifying of the two public spaces that have been separated from each other. Furthermore, it anticipates including the Maçka Park, which constitutes one of the terraces of İstanbul, in the pedestrian panorama. Likewise, Fuat Şahinler’s Untitled(2002) is related to a rare situation that is stepping back of the private space to accommodate public space. With this project, veiling the space in front of a landmark building, the Milli Reasürans building's façade with a giant spider web, he at once points to the well-intended effort to create a public space by carving the buildin's façade and also underlines the paradox emerging from the exclusion of the building's ground floor from pedestrian motion.

Şahinlers participate in Call me ISTANBUL ist mein Name with a new proposal that they created specifically for the exhibition: Not To Be Or To Be (Bir Yokmuş, Bir Varmış)(2003-2004). Living in a city where the minarets occupy the skyline like a chorus made such a project inevitable for Şahinlers; especially, when we consider the impact of change in the whole panorama of the city only through intervening the form of minarets, the most frequent vertical elements in İstanbul.

İstanbul has been going through a series of transformations in almost every level including urbanism and architecture since 1980’s that marked the date of the oppressive coup d’etat but simultaneously adaptation of a liberal economic model, which fostered the process of the integration of Turkey into the global economy. Consequently, besides the shifts, relocations and restructuring certain zones and centres for different concentrations like business and finance, media and transportation, contemporary architectural complexes and forms like high-rise office buildings were initiated during this period. However, the traditional Islamic architectural forms have survived intact also throughout this transitional period. Although Islam in Turkey has been adapting itself to the newly emerging cultural, social, even technological formations and invents novel styles like initiating Turban (headscarf) instead of çarşaf (chador), electronic counter instead of classic tespih (prayer-beads), no one dares to interfere the traditional mosque format which is the Ottoman Classical period. Şahinlers enjoy the idea of marrying the traditional Islamic forms such as minaret with contemporary modes and technology, and create a minaret with a hydraulic elevator appearing only five times a day during the prayer times. It can also be read as a high-rise building for a single person, mocking the impersonalised scale of the towers, which disappears when it does not function. In the Call me ISTANBUL ist mein Name exhibition, they collaborate with Cevdet Erek, sound artist and one of the architects of the exhibition, to join the minaret with a sound project referring to the call to prayer (ezan). It will also serve to carry the audience up to 8 meters high to experience a prayer time at the Şerefe (minaret balcony) as well as to see the exhibition from a bird-eye view.

Text by: Fulya Erdemci