Curating urban memories in connecting communities

Tuba Doğu; Sevcan Sönmez

doi:10.25765/sauc.v3i1.66

Tuba Doğu Izmir Institute of Technology, PhD Program in Architecture, PhD Candidate
Sevcan Sönmez Yaşar University, Art and Design Faculty, Department of Film Design, Assistant Prof.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25765/sauc.v3i1.66

Keywords: Urban memory, Collective memory, Curating memory, Civic action

Abstract

There is a worldwide growing attention on user participation in shaping urban environments in recent years. With the involvement of local authorities, civil initiatives and neighborhood organizations, it is possible to observe a similar attention in the formation of urban spaces in Turkey. Driven from this approach, this study examines the bottom-up transformation of a cultural space existing since 1960s in Izmir, Güzelyalı. To reveal the process of how civic empowerment operated, we simulate a remembering process and curate the process in order to make things visible. The process examines an urban installation to reveal narratives behind collective action through reading collective memory. The scope is to re-read the past in the present in order to generate new processes of civic engagement, and thus actions, in urban spaces.