Turkey 2023

Title: Ghost Stories: Carrier Bag Theory of Architecture
Commissioner: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV)
Curator: Sevince Bayrak, Oral Göktaş

The installation questions the accepted perceptions of unused buildings in order to discover more hopeful proposals for the future. In order to reconsider unused buildings across Turkey, the project looks at Elizabeth Fisher’s Carrier Bag Theory of Evolution. An approach argues that first hunting device used by humans was probably a bag used for transporting the vegetables gathered. Translated to the country’s built environment, this concept suggests listening to and understanding the stories of abandoned buildings, rather than focusing on those on pedestals.