As Istanbul continues to grow, the city is and has been developing certain dialectical situations and conflicts, both physical and psychological, which live within the urban context and help shape the collective memory of the city. These oppositions form an invisible network of edges and thresholds within the urban fabric; lying dormant; perpetually haunting the city of Istanbul. As this latent condition lies continuously unchecked, the city continues to alienate itself from its own reality.
This does not necessarily produce a situation to be fixed, but instead presents a productive impetus and catalyst for the ‘new’; for the building up of this hidden network. These oppositions operate across ostensibly clear, inflexible edges; interfaces of exchange/obstruction. The same mechanisms that create the interface between opposing forces can simultaneously build up a unique occupation within those edges, rendering them as thick and occupiable thresholds. No longer are there simply conditions of A and B, but a new thickened threshold between; a new threshold that renews the collective memory of the city. The occupation of this invisible ‘other’, or ‘double’, is not governed by the same mechanisms as apparent space. This new threshold presents a non-hierarchical, non-linear system operating within interfaces of conflict.
The conflicts are represented by descriptive conditions of objects, and the interface of these conflicts is described by differences in these descriptive conditions. In realizing the ‘other’ or ‘double’ – the edge/threshold that is haunting Istanbul from within – these conditions are disconnected from the objects they describe and are renegotiated through autonomous interaction. No longer are the conditions of conflict effects describing existing space, but they are now productive; generating conditions that catalyze and strengthen new multi-occupation. Conflict shifts from being descriptive to productive; from negative to positive. This provides the opportunity for Istanbul to separate itself from its ostensible reality into the dormant reality where notions of the existing city are lost yet others are discovered within the underlying turbulence. Static conflict is reinvigorated into a productive force.
The separation of these conditions of conflict produces a non-linear, non-hierarchical system to generate a new occupation of space, one that is no longer associated with static representations of particular conditions. As these conditions become independent, they begin to migrate throughout the existing fabric; different conditions in different parts of the city are allowed to affect each other. In this way the system begins to ‘crawl’ through Istanbul, leaving traces in its wake. Individual interaction, understanding and interpretation determine multi-occupation of the system, and this produces a perpetual renegotiation of conditions and [re]description of Istanbul through combinations and transformations of those conditions.
Double Meaning_
Internal splitting; bifurcation; phase change
Assimilation_
Growth; graft; interface
Conflict
Repetition; critical mass; juxtaposition; fissure
Dream/Collective Memory
Mask; double
