Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

This paper will discuss how the GoPro camera generates a unique representation of diverse territories when used as a spatial research tool. Initially, it will focus on the video of a walk taken in northern Istanbul in 2017 as part of a doctoral research exploring the ongoing mega-scaled and state-led neoliberal urbanisation processes. Following this, it will target the video of another walk performed with a shepherd and his herd in southern Albania in January 2020. The paper claims that walking with a GoPro camera attached to the researcher’s body as a prosthetic device (Tümerdem & Medarić, 2022) and producing filmic representations enables the creation of new knowledge. Referring to Dziga Vertov’s notion of the kino-eye, a film technique intended to capture things inaccessible to the human eye with the camera, the paper propounds the concept of walk’s eye. The GoPro camera records the walking experience with its own agency, through its own particular lens, during the walk itself. Furthermore, the subsequent videomaking process formulates a meaningful audiovisual walk narrative. Both procedures contribute to the production of the walk’s eye. By recounting how the filmic production of the walk done with the shepherd was shared with design studio students who could not travel to Albania due to the Covid restrictions in lieu of taking part in the walk, the paper will ultimately suggest that these kine-collages prompts an empathetic participation to those who were for various reasons absent during the act of walking.