Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures
Abstract
This article, oscillating between subjective and collective making and knowing, explores essayistic filmmaking as a way of critical spatial research. Essayistic making interweaves “the transitional, unauthorised and relatively formless shape of subjectivity” with the curious investigations and active observations of the filmmaker (Alter and Corrigan, 2017). Embodying the characteristics of time-based media and the essayistic form as reflectivity and openness (Rascaroli, 2021), architectural essay film as practice discussed by Haralambidou (2015) enables a reciprocal mode of filmmaking, architectural design and theory research. The paper explores this peculiar mode of essayistic making to multiply and situate critical spatial wanderings through negotiations on two individually produced essay films and proceeds with a third film produced collectively. Placeholder (2022) considers home as void and traces its layered meanings through taking the inventory of personal domestic objects that are circulating between houses lived in at different times, together with the rituals and memories entailed to these objects. Nothing Happens (2022) explores and redefines home from the individual position of the author by investigating the daily routine of working, studying and filming from the kitchen table with references to the prominent attempts of feminist practitioners. The gestures and wanderings of the two films initialise the third one in search of memory, void, rituals, and the mundane at another homely place constructed by the collective spatial imaginations. In Peeling Off (2022) three researchers work collectively to unveil the interstices of the void of Casa Botter, an old dilapidated art nouveau apartment in Istanbul. This research enables the authors to wander around their individual, collective and critical positions simultaneously by discussing, making, viewing, and reflecting; questioning the possibilities of spatial research within the threshold of the essayistic.
I am a postgraduate student at ITU Architectural Design Master Program and currently working on my thesis titled “Dream Topographies: A Look at Space and Narrative Generating Practices”. I have two bachelor’s degrees in Architecture and in Interior Design from ITU. I also studied at Università IUAV di Venezia as an exchange student for a semester. I worked in exhibition design for the exhibitions in Ara Güler Museum, Yapı Kredi Museum, CerModern Arts Center, and varied art galleries. My research interests revolve around spatial memory, imagination, reproduction, and representation.
I am a postgraduate student at Istanbul Technical University’s Architectural Design Master Program and currently working on my thesis entitled “Interior and Non-Interior: Unmaking Gender Norms in Domestic Space through Filmmaking Practices”. I am a research assistant at Istanbul Bilgi University. I studied Architecture as bachelor and Industrial Product Design as minor degree at ITU. During my education, I also visited Università Iuav di Venezia (2016) and KU Leuven Sint-Lucas Faculteit Architectuur (2021) as an Erasmus exchange student. My research interests mainly focus on architectural theories, critical spatial practices, gender studies, cinematography and filmmaking practices. ;
I am a designer/researcher of architecture in the other and of the weird. And my research mainly focuses on tactics for peculiar creativities to trespass to the wilder realms of architecture to seek existentially clumsy formations. My work consists of drawings; architectural things – games, gadgets, devices; architectural essay films. These are exhibited internationally in festivals, curated exhibitions and conferences. Recently, I was selected as one of the Young Architects under 40 in Turkey, by The Circle O. I am a design tutor and a lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Istanbul Technical University (ITU), Istanbul, Turkey. I received my PhD degree in Architectural Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, with my thesis titled: Designing in a State of Distraction: The Wild Fields of Architecture. I have a MSc from ITU in Architectural Design, with my thesis titled: Folding of Places. I am a BArch graduate from ITU.
2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Thursday 1st December, 2022