On June 29, 2024 Aslıhan was in HK at M+ for the opening talk of IM Pei’s singular comprehensive exhibition ‘Architecture is Life: IM Pei’. The opening talk reflected on how Pei exercised his values on architecture, cities, and life through personal accounts of people who have worked closely with Pei. Exhibition co-curator Shirley Surya was joined by the architect Li Chung (Sandi) Pei, partner and founder of PEI Architects, Calvin Tsao, and Aslıhan Demirtaş—all of whom had contributed to the design of Pei’s major projects. You can watch the talkhere.
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Gathering has been and still is a steady and peaceful act which makes the world go round. In gathering, one practices the “arts of noticing”. It involves the noticing of seeds, roots, growth, transformations, decay, cycles, beginnings and ends, differences and diversity. A container, a bag, a vessel is made to hold everything together – entangled, assembled and collected.
In her essay “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” written in 1986, Ursula K. Le Guin references anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher’s claim that the first device made by human species was not the spear, but probably a recipient, a container to hold gathered products, and a carrier bag. In the temperate and tropical regions of the world, people mostly sustained themselves with plants and occasionally caught small animals and fish which required containers and nets to gather, catch and bring home. Hunting on the other hand required a spear, a different and durable object with which to stab and kill. Although less occurring, this event nevertheless made for an exciting story, with action and a hero. It is a story of domination, one which Ursula le Guin continues to state she has never felt part of, neither have I.
We will walk in the Snagov Forest while thinking about dispossession, earth, history, future, care and all the complexities the confluence of rivers forming the lake of Snagov presents. In a geography of oaks, pheasants and deer and in a context of problematic ecological management, we will collect and gather matter and thoughts in order to constellate new earthen imaginaries.
Carrier Bag Walks I Alfred Heilbronn Botanical Garden, Istanbul, 2017 II Kosutnjak Forest, Belgrade, WCSCD, 2022 III Snagov Forest, Bucharest, The Experimental Station for Research on Art and Life, 2023
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Workshop: Carrier Bag Walks II: Belgrade Forests Annual Lecture Series 2: ‘On constellations, earth & carrier bags’
In her essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction written in 1986, Ursula K. Le Guin references anthropologist Elizabeth Fisher’s claim that the first device made by the human species was not the spear but probably a recipient, a container to hold gathered products, and a carrier bag. In the temperate and tropical regions of the world, people mostly sustained themselves with plants and occasionally caught small animals and fish which required containers and nets to gather, catch and bring home. Hunting on the other hand required a spear, a different and durable object with which to stab and kill. Although less occurring, this event nevertheless made for an exciting story–with action and a hero. It is a story of domination and killing, one which Ursula le Guin continues to state she has never felt part of, neither have I. But “the trouble is, we’ve all let ourselves become part of the killer story, and so we may get finished along with it. Hence it is with a certain feeling of urgency that I seek the nature, subject, words of the other story, the untold one, the life story,” she adds.
Gathering has been and still is a steady and peaceful act which still makes the world go around. It gives me relief to think that the first invention of my own kind was one which held many different things together rather than kill and cut to pieces. In gathering, one practices the “arts of noticing”. It involves the noticing of seeds, roots, growth, transformations, decay, cycles, beginnings and ends, differences and diversity. A container, a bag, a vessel is made to hold everything together– entangled, assembled and collected. I will be coming to Belgrade from Istanbul where the lungs of the city are called Belgrade Forests–a toponym and place which emerged around the same time as the Great War Island–a former sandbank started to appear in maps around the 16th c. We will take walks while thinking about dispossession, earth, history, future, care and all the complexities the toponym and the former sandbank presents. While between the waters of great rivers, Sava and Danube, we will collect and gather matter and thoughts in order to reimagine new connections to earth. The imaginaries, which can be contemplated in diverse media such as prose, poetry, sculpture and drawings–to name a few, will be finally shared and ephemerally inscribed on an urban public space with water–a final performative ground calligraphy.
We have been collaborating with Lumbardhi Foundationsince 2016 on the transitioning of the cinema into a cultural venue and this year Europa Nostra has awarded the efforts to preserve this urban collective memory in the category of ‘Citizens Engagement and Awareness-raising’. For our practice, the process has been one of learning and experimenting, building solidarity and friendship. We have been priviliged to work with and be supported by CHWB Kosova and Dokufest among other institutions such as UNDP, EU and Swiss Development Cooperation. Below you can find an excerpt from the award announcement:
“This is an exemplary project for the entire region of the Western Balkans and has been supported by a diverse set of partners. These include the Ministry of Culture of Kosovo*, the Municipality of Prizren, the Foundation for Arts Initiatives and Swiss Development Cooperation, Goethe International Relief, the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the Raiffeisen Bank, the Prince Claus Fund and several other smaller partnerships. The European Union has also provided significant support and has pledged funding for future restoration work of the cinema.
The revival of the open-air cinema (Kino Bahce) was undertaken between 2019 and 2020. A detailed design for the full restoration of the cinema will begin to be implemented in the autumn of 2022. The strategic renovation was led by Aslihan Demirtas of Khora Office.”
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Congratulations to the winners and gratitudes to AKAA for extending us the privilege to contribute and be part of the meticulous selection process. You can find the winners of the 15th cycle here and the reports Aslıhan prepared for the two shortlisted projects she reviewed below:
“MİM”, Nevzat Sayın talks to Aslıhan Demirtaş, a thought-provoking architect who says, “The issue is not building a bridge, but crossing the water” and dealing with issues that no one else has deals with. MİM Aslıhan Demirtaş episode met the audience on TRT2 , September 20, 2021. Whole episode: MİM Aslıhan Demirtaş
“MİM” in 51. Bölümünde Nevzat Sayın, “Mesele köprü yapmak değil, suyun karşı tarafına geçmektir” diyen, kimsenin uğraşmadığı konularla da uğraşan bir düşünce kışkırtıcısı mimar olarak Aslıhan Demirtaş ile söyleşiyor. MİM Aslıhan Demirtaş bölümü 20 Eylül 2021 tarihinde TRT2 ‘ de izleyici ile buluştu. Tüm bölüm: MİM Aslıhan Demirtaş
Aslıhan Demirtaş, in collaboration with Evren Uzer, organized a talk on her upcoming book Graft–a book about dams, trees, graft, highways, court cases, Euphrates, mountain goats, and may be panic. GRAFT is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Grant and will be published online by SALT. This event is supported by Design Strategies at Parsons. Here is the website.
Contributors: Aslıhan Demirtaş, Ali Taptık, Hakan Topal, Evren Uzer
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
1:00pm – 3:00pm The Orozco Room, Alvin Johnson / JM Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th St A712 New York
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New Food as Urban Agent Conference, Harvard Mellon Initiative, GSD, Saturday February 4 2017
Click here for the entire conference schedule!
Defne Koryürek & Ali Taptık were the panelist in the session “Lettuce or Rubble?” organized and moderated by Aslıhan Demirtaş on Yedikule Urban Gardens.
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The exhibition of the 2015 IABA, ‘Thinking About the Future’ (Geleceği Düşünmek) was curated by Tansel Korkmaz. The exhibition installation built out of scaffolding was designed together with Ali Cindoruk, as one of our collaborative projects under newly named but nevertheless older collaboration setup Khora. (More soon re: Khora!)
You can find our article on the design process in the printed issue of XXI (Dec 2015-Jan 2016) and a conversation with the curator in digital format here.
Design and installation team:
Aslıhan Demirtaş & Ali Cindoruk
+ Sedat Arda, Dirim Dinçer
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