VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)
Abstract
Heritage is not only preserved; it is performed as a living framework for negotiating cultural pasts, social identities, and urban futures. Drawing on UNESCO’s understanding of heritage as both tangible and intangible, this proposal examines how public space mediates layered and contested histories through design, use, and collective practice. Using New York City as a comparative field case, the project presents three case studies to examine heritage as a layered and contested urban topography: Bowling Green and Battery Park as past, the former St. Vincent’s Hospital campus and the New York City AIDS Memorial as present, and Union Square as future. The first case study examines Bowling Green and Battery Park, where colonial monuments, revolutionary acts including the destruction of King George III’s statue, and contemporary civic institutions coexist within a landscape shaped by empire, Indigenous displacement, and national memory. The second focuses on St. Vincent’s Hospital and the NYC AIDS Memorial, introducing the concept of lesbian geographies of care to foreground the gendered and queer caregiving labor that sustained the AIDS crisis yet remains largely absent from official heritage narratives. The third analyzes Union Square’s shift from a site of protest and labor organizing to a surveilled civic commons, showing how spatial redesign and cultural programming obscure radical histories while maintaining an appearance of unity. Together, these sites reveal the city as a spatial palimpsest in which histories are overwritten but never erased. By reading monuments, memorials, markets, and everyday use as forms of heritage performance, the study asks how public space can support plurality without reproducing exclusion or symbolic ownership. Resonant with cities shaped by layered imperial and civic histories, including Istanbul, the project offers a transferable framework for understanding heritage as shared, contested, and continually remade.
Andrea L. Fernández is an art historian, designer, and media studies researcher specializing in Global South visual cultures, feminist and queer heritage, and public memory. They hold a PhD in Latin American and Iberian Studies and are a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History and Design History in New York City. Their research examines AIDS cultural production, gendered care labor, and contested urban heritage. They are the founder of I Am Matriarch, an ethical AI platform for cross museum storytelling centered on women and marginalized communities.
Emily J. Bauman is an art historian specializing in Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture, with a focus on performance, new media, and socio politically engaged artwork. She holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. She teaches courses on the history of photography, diasporic representation, performance, and public art at Pratt Institute, Queens College, and other institutions in New York City. Her research investigates public art, collective memory, memorial building, and the social nature of performance in the public sphere.
Eric Moed’s practice exists at the intersection of architecture and public art, examining the relationship between memory, narrative, and society. He holds a Master of Design Studies from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design with a concentration in Art, Design, and the Public Domain. Previously, Eric was a founding member of the MIT Media Lab’s Poetic Justice Group and a member of the New Museum’s cultural incubator NEW INC. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Architecture. In 2020, he founded the design studio Office of Open Practice.
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Monday 6th July, 2026