Going Public 2006 / Atlante Mediterrano
Claudia Zanfi Silvana Editoriale 2006
Most of Istanbul’s art and cultural institutions are located on and around the avenue between Taksim and Tünel. The avenue’s original name was Grande Rue de Pera, later changed to “Avenue of Independence” after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. The nostalgia for Pera in the late 19th century endured for decades with remarkably similar nuances. A mere phantom of the mercantile culture of the late 19th” century colonial Istanbul, Pera, despite its ever-decreasing non-Muslim populations, with its architectural and spatial residue, was a place where “Europeanness” could be experienced. Since the “pedestrianization” of the Avenue at the end of the 1980s, “Pera Nostalgia” has increasingly become a tool in the service of the high-end business.
Neither the turning over of the Aksanat’s street-level gallery to an electronic store nor the closing of the Borusan Gallery in 2006 came as a surprise. Both were not-for-profit contemporary art outlets of big companies, and the public sphere need not have been consulted. While their public was in a fury, I would rather look at the context of the closures part of the process of the transformation of the Avenue.
The restyling of some building facades on the Avenue – initially, through the usage of glass and aluminum â la 80s and then through a second re-dressing in generic “historical” styles were the initial forays of theme-parking the place. The Aksanat Building bears witness to this, as does the Beyoğlu Business Center. All but a memory of the Mittel-Euro pean elegance, a fiction from poems and nostalgia literature, the Markiz Patisserie that had been closed for some twenty-five years opened anew in 2004 with pomp and romp plus a mini-mall of high-end lifestyle shops in the back. This “shop window Pera-izm” utilizes historical styles and nostalgia as a means to sublimate the pathetic desire to acquire class not only in Pera but also in the so-called restoration programs on the historical peninsula. This is most evident in the Süleymaniye area, where an invented “High Ottoman” architectural style is applied to the surface of concrete buildings. The same style requires that the poor, undesirable communities are kicked out and replaced by those who “deserve” and appreciate “Hauttomania.” The Capital and agencies of the city government have donned their velvet gloves and are busy arranging the city ready for the big sale. The city’s master plan provides full service to the private sector and its business interests.
A barrier runs between the two sides of Tarlabasi Avenue. The barrier was set when the mayor of Istanbul sent bulldozers through to wedge open a small street into a large avenue connecting the Taksim center to the old city. The Avenue severed a community in two. On one side stood the prospering, traffic-free Pera, and on the other, the ever-debilitating, unsustainable Tarlabasi with its poor Kurdish and Nigerian immigrant communities, bachelor dorms, Romans, and the like. Fifteen years of “forced” under-development is now replaced by a rehabilitation program to displace the undesirables by violent gentrification with new business and residency.
Two years ago, I predicted that art centers endorsed as public spaces – even though they may have been privately supported – would be displaced from the Avenue (the Pera zone) and replaced by glittery commercial galleries and showroom-like cultural centers. Despite that, real estate values have increased so much that the area is now undergoing massive gentrification, thereby eliminating the possibility of cultural centers.
One by one, the area’s seedy casinos, brothels, and nightclubs are being relocated to another non-Muslim district —namely, the Pangaltı/Kurtuluş area, while a clean and stylish entertainment industry, featuring valet parking and gatekeepers, replaces them.
“Pera” is becoming a massive shopping mall, a “zero-friction” zone, and we can safely assume that, while the economic value skyrockets, the side streets will transform themselves into high-end as the clientele changes; no more shall we see young girls pulling up their skirts a couple of centimeters while entering “Pera.” The punks, the heavy metal boys, the Goth girls, the junkies, and the runaway school kids, anyone who comes here to do or wear what they can not do or wear in their neighborhoods will shy away. From the transvestites, to the Istanbul Bar Association, from the Maoists and the PKK, the freedom of speech that was so associated with the Avenue is now being handed over to the megaphones of flagship companies of multi-national brands. Protests and marches are getting scarcer. It has been three years since the “Saturday Mothers” have gone.
“Pera” has been a much more extreme public space than the centers of Bakırköy, Kadıköy, and Beşiktaş. It has been the hangout of the undesirables of difference. Nowhere else on earth can one encounter such an intense and concentrated scale of cultural institutions and economic diversification on a traffic-free street. It was once a place where economic systems were radically diverse. Yet, each day, a draper, a photographic studio, a jobbing tailor, a funeral undertaker, or a small printing house leave as shopping centers or department stores of multi-national brands settle in. This also transforms the profile of the Avenue’s on-goers. Next to this change, a radical transformation has come about with regard to the function of the existing extroverted art institutions whose audience is mainly composed by non-professionals. Few art Institutions in the world enjoy working with such a mixed-profile audience that does not rely on a bourgeois public. Yet this was the very potential the Avenue offered.
As far as I am concerned, running Platform Garanti, a street-level institution, it was critical to keep the guards in plain clothes and eliminate camera surveillance and security gates. Since the audience came from all walks of life, unaware of the contemporary art debate, we did our best to eliminate the tension between the inside and outside. After five years of attendance levels at approximately 100,000 visitors per year, we will also shift our program to cater to a fragmented public as our core audience if we are not mindful of it. The decision to move to a larger space was not taken based on the internal logic or necessity of the institution but on the overall corporatization of the cultural sector in Istanbul.
Looking at things from another angle, one could say that social engineering has perhaps never been so successful in utilizing the single national denominator of populism presented as democracy. We can now choose the style of our next city transportation boats online and enjoy art by Picasso or another renowned artist at the museums! Art and culture have taken over giant, sponsored billboards. Customers are corporate. Audiences are substituted by its phantom representation on screens and billboards. The historical peninsula, which is transforming into a theme park at an ever-increasing rate, is now connected to Pera due to the Avenue’s entertainment and shopping potential.
From the galleries of the 1980s and the cultural centers of the 1990s to the museums of the 2000s, the private sector has increasingly reinvented itself as a mass-media-oriented institution while self-selecting its audience. Should the public sector not step in and these institutions not interface with potential audiences, the corporatization of the cultural sector will be completed.
vasıf kortun 