Ulus in Memory
workshop + exhibition│ 2018 -2019
Chamber of Urban Planners, Ankara, Turkey
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Ankara is the designated capital city of the new Turkish Republic and, Ulus district has been the city centre for centuries. Ulus would hold this position until the construction of a new city centre called YeniÅŸehir (trans. New City). Even though, Ulus started to lose its position as the political, social, ideological, economical centre of the city and the nation, its significance in the memory of its people remained. Today, Ulus is under the threat of demolition and urban transformation due to land speculation and neo-Ottoman ideology of the government which is in conflict with the ideals of the early republic, aiming to erase its significance from the collective memory of the society.
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Within this framework, the interdisciplinary workshop take part within broader workshop series. The outputs of the workshops presented in an exhibition called “Unknown Ulus” curated by the Ankara Branch of the Chamber of City Planners which addressed this issue by registering the “unheard, unseen, unmentioned” aspects of Ulus and make visible the images and memories of this place and their significance. The exhibition was held between February, 5-18th 2019 in Çankaya Municipality, Contemporary Arts Centre, Ankara. The particular section of the exhibition, which is named “Ulus in Memory,” was created through a workshop, focused on childhood memories of people who have been inhabited and/or experienced the district. These memories were documented through oral history methods with interviews and collecting the personal archives during the workshop.
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Project Coordinators│ÇiÄŸdem Yönder, Özlem Yalçınkaya, Seda Åžen
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Participants │
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Memory Owners │
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Gençlik Parkı, from the personal archive of Yıldız Aktan
Places and intersections:
The study revealed that four historical events and eight places were common in childhood images of Ulus. These places and events in Ulus were recreated/reimagined by interdisciplinary work which contained/involved collages, video art, and creative fiction. During the exhibition, the visitors were also asked to participate in this creative process by pinning their own narratives to a designated wall of memories. Thus, the study has revealed that a creative process of reinventing individual memories may be used to voice and to make visible the threats related to the loss of collective memory, architectural heritage and the public space(s) of Ulus.
Memory Wall:
During the exhibition, participants were asked to share their own memories by pinning them to the memory wall.
