Galata’s Everyday Acoustic Palimpsests
December 2023 - November 2024
ISTANBUL
The artist/researcher focuses on the sonic experience of daily life in the public realm and in such context, his studies for creation of academic knowledge in the doctoral program of urbanism are conducted as practice-oriented research studies. This research practice strengthens the relationality of artistic interaction between space, public and academia, thereby helping to create a collaborative process in the format of workshops with methods and actions such as listening, walking, sound walking, (sound) mapping, performance and placements. In practice, it creates a common space that includes different actors/subjectivities of everyday life for open discussions and collective participation with critical spatial practice and artistic creation, and brings multiplicity to the public realm discussion, as it should be.
The project takes place in Galata, where urban tension is increasing as a result of mega projects, and public space accessibility is increasingly restricted with gentrification, displacement, and privatizations. Pilot studies started in 2021 on the route determined between the Golden Horn and Galata Tower - where walkable bodies can be included -, which takes cross sections from different urban morphologies, demographics, architectures and geographies. In the practice of listening and walking on the route of this public realm which drew attention in the first findings, women and LGBTQ+ individuals revealed their embodied public realm experiences with both auditory and physical experiences and sharings that they both were and were not aware of themselves. In such context, these two groups will be prioritized in the new workshops to be established and will come together through communication and open invitation to be established with rights-based (urban right will be discussed in this context) non-governmental organizations.
The workshops will be carried out in collaboration with academic knowledge creation and artistic creation, and the online sound-map platform soundinbetweenness.org will be improved as a result of the project, aiming to enable different questions and research about sound-body-space and city.
