The Panorama:
Every great city of the world offers a grand panoramic
view for the delight of its viewers, and Istanbul or New
York is no exception. But very few cities 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. New York has its tall buildings, which
creates a different topographic outline; in this case geological
formations (hills) are replaced by the concrete and steel
blocks distributed along the island according to the intensified
artificial sedimentation.
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 magnificent the city was. Except a few residents,
almost all were traveling 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.
The Siege:
When a historic megalopolis, like Istanbul,
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. For instance, Istanbul saw
its population increased tenfold to 11 million 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
are fought in a number of different fronts.
We have discussed in our previous projects 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.
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 (Istanbul) and the modern
city (New York, and part of Istanbul), whose limits enable
a derelict buffer zone, and outside, the pillaging goes
on. When the photographs from Istanbul offer a limited
view of the derelict land and the reminiscence of the
historic fall. They contrast with the cliché of
the silhouettes attributed to Istanbul.
Comparative visual analysis (not social-scientific but
an artistic one) provides us clues to engage with certain
differences as well as similarities of the capitals of
the two Empires. One can see these similarities as part
of flow and accumulation of capital, which define the rise
and the decline of these two dominant powers, based on
the political/military/financial conditions. High rise
financial buildings, shopping malls, theaters, chain restaurants
follows the same architectural schemas as the new fortresses
of 21st century.
As the security becomes the primary concern
due to the recent events both in New York and Istanbul,
militarization of urban life works with these new architectural
layouts, in which security gates, cameras, guards, police,
x-ray detectors become the primary parts.
(Wall Street, for instance, is undergoing this kind of
intense fortification, while the artworks from famous
corporate/gallery artists are decorating this military
activity within that large scale corporate setup)
The aim of our 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. These spaces
are defined by insecure yet active crowds who use these
temporary zones. What interests us is the sedimentation
of momentary existence of non-defined spaces.
With this respect, for us, there are
crucial differences between the legal and legitimate
boundaries of this type of temporarility. While legality
is kept and controlled by the systems of law, which secure
and protect the ownership of the land, active /progressive
social forces define what is legitimate and what is not.
For instance, a squat could be illegal according to the
code of law , yet it might be totally legitimate for
people who create temporary shelters for themselves (This
is the basic human need after all). On the other hand
corporate tactics to gain control over the territory
could be legal (thanks to talented corporate lawyers),
yet, for us, it should be considered as an unlegitimate
game of capitalist democracy. That is why, with active
public engagement , we need to re-define the territorial
conditions (for truly civic understanding of democracy),
and without falling into a nostalgic dream, we need to
seek new possibilities within the impossible conditions.
xurban_collective : haci, imam, pagan,
pope, ta^bi
June 2004