SEMINAR SERIES:
SPACES
IN COMMON, April 16th – June 11th
2016, Istanbul
Organizers: Güldem Baykal Büyüksaraç
(Istanbul
University), Derya Özkan (LMU University of Munich)
One
vast reservoir of common wealth is the metropolis itself. The
formation of modern
cities, as urban and architectural historians explain, was
closely linked to
the development of industrial capital. The geographical
concentration of
workers, the proximity of resources and other industries,
communication and
transport systems, and the other characteristics of urban life
are necessary elements for industrial
production. Throughout the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries the growth of cities and the
qualities of
urban space were determined by the industrial factory, its
needs, rhythms, and
forms of social organization. Today we are witnessing a shift,
however, from
the industrial to the biopolitical metropolis. And in the
biopolitical economy,
there is an increasingly intense and direct relation between the
production
process and the common that constitutes the city. The city, of
course, is not
just a built environment consisting of buildings and streets and
subways and
parks and waste systems and communications cables but also a
living dynamic of
cultural practices, intellectual circuits, affective networks,
and social
institutions. These elements of the common contained in the city
are not only
the prerequisite for biopolitical production but also its
result; the city is
the source of the common and the receptacle into which it flows.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (2011:
153-4)
This seminar series
has been
designed as a joint reflection process about the city, with a
particular focus
on the collectively produced and reproduced commons that sustain
urban
inhabitants’ livelihoods, affirming their communal instincts. We
embrace the concept
of “urban commons” for it offers an imagination of the city
marked by socio-spatial
relations and practices, and allows us to think beyond the
public-private and
state-market dichotomies. Viewed as such, urban space is where
cultures of
commoning emerge through its active and creative residents’
quotidian practices,
be they work, reproductive labor, or leisure and festivity. It
is these
practices that make our spaces
in common.
Urban common spaces
are
constantly subject to enclosure for capitalist profit. As a
generative force
for accumulation, enclosure entails dispossession in various
forms: expropriation,
evacuation, denying public access to a once common space,
etcetera. What equally
deserves consideration is cultural enclosures that work to
commodify the
complex systems of local knowledge and to capitalize (on)
collective
experiences of meaning-making, a subject that has so far been
less debated and
undertheorized.
Keeping such
processes in mind to
re-examine, we would like to discuss the emerging practices of
commoning in the
city mainly through the case of Istanbul. We treasure these
practices, for they
imply a radical will to remake not only our city but also
ourselves by way of
reorganizing our living spaces, redefining forms of production
and labor,
developing new means of livelihood, and in turn cultivating a
new ethos to teach
us every day that we all inhabit a common ‘life-world’.
Urban commons are
emancipatory to
the extent that they challenge capitalist social relationships.
It is particularly
this aspect of urban commons, and of the commoning practices
therein, that we
intend to explore throughout these seminars. We would like to
dwell on achievements
as well as incomplete or conflicting processes and
incompatibilities. Can the commons
inform the way we imagine an emancipatory future in urban life?
What can we
learn from comparable practices happening elsewhere in the
world? Are there any
alternative conceptions to better capture the significance of
commoning
practices for urban culture? What are the ways for incorporating
different sensibilities
and perspectives (feminist perspective in particular) into our
understanding of
urban commons?
Spaces in Common,
composed of six
bi-weekly seminar talks that will run from April 16th
to June 11th,
2016, has been planned as part of the DFG Emmy Noether Research
Project, ‘Cool Istanbul: From Oriental to the Cool’, hosted by
the University
of Munich.
We
have also organized four panels under the title of The Practices of Commoning in Istanbul (on April
30th at
Studio-X İstanbul and on May 14th at SALT Galata),
with parallel
sub-themes to those of the seminar talks. With these panels, we
hope to inquire
into the possibilities of dialogue and solidarity between
activists and
theorists, as well as among the local initiatives themselves. It
is our
intention here to examine to what extent and in what ways the
commons theory
explains actual experiences of commoning in Istanbul on the one
hand, and to
search for ways of imagining new forms of production,
consumption, exchange,
and socialization, on the other.
Spaces in Common
will be hosted by Ariel
Art Center, SALT Galata, and Studio-X Istanbul.
SEMINARS
(in
English)
Saturday, April 16, 11:00-13:00, STUDIO-X
Commoning
the City: The Right to not be
Excluded
Nicholas Blomley
Friday, April 29, 18:00-21:00, STUDIO-X
Production in
Common
Massimo de Angelis
Saturday, April 30, 16-18:00, STUDIO-X
The Challenges
and
Possibilities of Urban Horticulture
Elke Krasny
Saturday, May 14, 17-20:00, SALT Galata
Affective Labour
in
the City: From Dispossession to Commoning
Emma Dowling
Saturday, May 28, 17-19:00, ARIEL Sanat
Beyond the
Creative
City: Art, Politics and Public Life in the City of the 21st
Century
Pascal Gielen
(followed by book
launch starting at 19:00)
Saturday, June 11, 17-20:00, SALT Galata
Collective
Production,
Collective Ownership
Peter Linebaugh
PANELS: Practices of Commoning in
Istanbul (in Turkish)
Saturday,
April
30, STUDIO-X
11-13:00
Labor and Production in Solidarity
14-16:00
Horticulture, Food and Solidarity
Saturday,
May
14, SALT Galata
11-13:00
Domestic and Affective Labor
13:30-15:30
Urban Common Property
VENUES
ARIEL SANAT
Maçka
Caddesi 24, Narmanlı Apt. Kat: 2, Nişantaşı
34367
Istanbul
STUDIO-X
Meclis-i
Mebusan Caddesi 35A, Beyoğlu 34427 Istanbul
SALT
Galata
Bankalar
Caddesi 11, Beyoğlu 34420 Istanbul
Contact:
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