Venue: Student square no 5
Date: November 30th 2022 18:00
On constellations and earth
Aslıhan Demirtaş
“I wait for those lights, I know some of you do too, wherever you are, I mean when you are standing by an ocean, alone, within the calmness of your spirit. Be planetary.”
Shifting the Silence, Etel Adnan
A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. Ever since prehistory, constellations were woven into stories, beliefs, experiences for mythologies. Each star is distant, distinct and unique in the way they move, in their physical qualities, age and are connected only through a fixed point of view–in our case our planet Earth.
As an alternative imaginary to the concepts of community, collectivity and perhaps even the definition of the commons, this lecture will be a contemplation on the concept of constellations articulated with architectural and artistic works made with and about earth–connected and positioned together with related people and places.
About Speaker:
Aslıhan Demirtaş is a practicing architect, artist, writer and educator. Her practice is situated on and around the boundaries of disciplines engaged in making, often in the forms of buildings, gardens and art projects, while searching for a revised mode of existence and practice on our planet. Aslıhan has an undergraduate degree from METU and a graduate degree from MIT. Prior to establishing her own practice in New York, she worked for Pritzker Laureate I.M. Pei as the lead designer for the Museum of Islamic Arts in Doha, Qatar and the Miho Chapel in Japan. She is the recipient of Graham Foundation Grant for her e-book Graft to be published by SALT and is an active member of the Initiative for the Protection of the Historical Yedikule Urban Gardens. Most recently she has designed the Winter Garden at SALT, Istanbul, a rammed earth space bordered by plants and has been working with Lumbardhi Foundation on the conversion of Kino Lumbardhi, Prizren. She lives in Istanbul and together with Ali Cindoruk runs KHORA Office, a climate for design, making and thinking.
The event is free and open to the public.
The WCSCD educational program and series of public lectures have been initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric.
The lecture by Aslıhan Demirtaş is organized in collaboration with Grupa Arhitekata
Project Partners:
We thank following partners for supporting selected participants for 2022 program:
Romanian Cultural Institute. Artcom platform , Kadist Foundation, William Demant Foundation
For more information about the program, please refer to www.old.wcscd.com
Project contacts: what.could.curating.do@gmail.com
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