In Black Book (Orhan Pamuk) a foreign TV channel coming for an interview with the anti-hero Celal Salik, keeps him waiting for days and decides to do the interview with Galip, believing that he can explain matters better than Celal. There is a mention on "pornographic" Istanbul taken before the interview with Galip. So, this issue of "pornographic" Istanbul haunted me. How can places be pornographic? It reminds me of the museum walls, the columns Andrea Fraser rubs herself against, masturbates with. So, is it possible that Istanbul serves a pornographic function?
In recent months, I showed 6 young photographers from the Gulf Region around for a Crossway Foundation project based in London, which covered Istanbul-Cappadocia-Ankara as a 10 day tour. During this tour intended for education and artistic production, one of the "biggest" problems was to make people experience things despite the seductive images of Turkey. In other words, trying to achieve something despite Turkey, especially Istanbul. Is it possible to achieve something despite the city's tabloid image as old and new, as the synthesis of East and West, with giant Turkish flags, minarets irregularly scattered throughout, other than recording "documents" or pointing a finger at?
I think of the representation of cities in James Bond movies. The motors driving at full speed in Venice canals, bad guys jumping from rooftop to rooftop in the streets of Morocco are some scenes I remember. What comes to my mind from the parts shot in Istanbul is the city seen from above the Golden Horn, Sinan's mosques and the Maiden's Tower.
Then Kız Kulesi Aşıkları (1) the movie we saw as our adolescent dreams in the early 90's occurs to my mind. The premise of pleasure embedded in the image of the Maiden's Tower drawing one's attention as much as the nude bodies we see in the underwater shots. Recently, in the TV series Kördüğüm (2) the fact that Ali Nejat proposed to Naz by hiring out the whole Maiden's Tower, rises this private fantasy which is shared secretly by us as the inhabitants of the city to the surface.
One of the greatest functions of the mosque, whose construction continues at full speed in Çamlıca, apart from hosting 50.000 people at once, is its function as a supplement to the silhouette of the city. The fact that even people who will frequent the mosque to worship can also see it from every place where one can see the city's landscape, can be read as a intervention. Through the relation established with history giving the notion of külliye (3) a prominence, the mosque project is a step towards building a new city by blending specific parts of what is historical with neo-Islam. Elias Canetti argues in "Crowds and Power" that the whole city assumes a performative role in establishing the domestic history; and the inhabitants of the city become spectators of this performance. In other words, the city becomes the stage of the performance rather than being a collective place. Can one think of a better stage than Çamlıca Mosque harboring its 50.000 spectators as a permanent potential? A structure which defines the transformation of the city as a condition on the brink of becoming, a structure dominating every moment from the top, becomes in fact a point of orientation, not to mention exposing the focal points of the political power.
The issue of memory of the city and when and how and by whom it will be possessed, came to the fore when Doğuş Group bought the photography archive of Ara Güler when the artist is alive, is in fact exemplary of the situation. I wonder if the city doesn't change with that much pornographic distinctiveness, would this archive be that important? Why it is the image of the city we try to hold on to? Do we only feel some sense of belonging in the places we cannot protect through photography? Is it the city that is becoming pornographic or is it the city we desire it to be or is it the very blues after all the transformations taken place right under our very noses?
While these questions are colliding with each other, I think about Halil Altındere's "Wonderland" (2013) as the most dreadful point regarding the city's pornographic image. The work which aestheticizes the gentrification of the city with helicopter footages, where young members of Tahribad-ı İsyan (4) are running on the walls of the city, and showing the feeling of incarceration always transforming into struggle, this work exemplifies how it hurts when the artist's aesthetical concerns turns into pornografication of the city. The music video edited as a video work in 2013 Istanbul Biennial in Antrepo which is demolished for now within the scope of Galata Port project, made me feel "dirty" as an art viewer by commodifying Tahribad-ı İsyan, Sulukule and Istanbul's filthy side. It was right after Gezi, most of us were still baffled by what was happening around the city, trying somehow to internalize some stuff and open ourselves some space. And this music video was like a pill that was offered to us; a bit Prozac a bit Viagra. It got us to watch slobberingly the city and its inhabitants we don't know about, cos it was good. In this context, I want to open another discussion and think about what happens when the artist depoliticizes his/her own pornographic abilities.
To be continued in the next update.
(1) Maiden's Tower Lover
(2) The Tangle
(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BClliye
(4) A rap band established during the urban renewal project in the Istanbul neighborhood, Sulukule.