Title: Map is Affective Montage: Video Cartographies of “this is not a line”
Lecturer: Gökçen Erkılıç, The Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
Date & Time: Thursday 21 April & 17:30
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Abstract
“This is not a line” is a critical cartographic project to monitor urban geographies in flux by the human – environment relations. In 2019 it departed from a doctoral dissertation to read the urbanization process of Istanbul by the material shaping of its coastlines. It evolved into a video-cartographic narrative project in time, that still explores inter-media montage methodologies in urban research. It uses aerial photographs, Google Earth, maps, maritime charts, archive materials, news reports, found images and so on, to highlight eco-critical narratives of urban geography and controversies of its representations. This presentation will focus on theoretical underpins of using video as a mapping device and map’s surface as a place of affective montage. Drawing relations among materiality of space, mapping, affections, and opinions. It will discuss these in the light of “thought images” in reference to Ulus Baker’s “From Opinions to Images: Essays Towards a Sociology of Affects” and screen selected video-cartographies of “this is not a line”.
Biography:
Gökçen Erkılıç is an architect, cartographer and video maker. She works with forms of coastlines to narrate human and environment relations. She is currently a visiting researcher at Harvard University, Center for Middle Eastern Studies; and lecturer at Northeastern University, College of Arts, Media, and Design. She works with forms of geographic representation, political ecology and cartography; writes on post-human theory, materialism and media. She graduated from Middle East Technical University Department of Architecture (2010). She holds a master degree from Istanbul Bilgi University (2012) and a PhD from Istanbul Technical University (2019), and was a fellow in Istanbul Studies Center (2017). Her doctoral thesis was entitled “This is not a line”: Critical Delineation of the Coastline in Istanbul.” She regularly writes on mapping at Manifold.