Description of the panel:
In this panel, we discuss the various performative methods we utilize to activate imagining in others. Through the performative actions of mapping, writing, touring, and storytelling our projects developed processes that represent imaginative potentials in individuals.
Nowadays people have seemed to stop imagining in public space. Our artistic research projects come together with the shared questions: What does imagining mean for us as artists? How can we share our practices of imagining with others? How can we develop those practices in others to challenge or change their perspectives? What are the socio-political possibilities of imagining with others in public spaces?
In the end, what we imagine can only live outside ourselves once it is shared through connecting or transforming.
The city is not simply a physical space but also a cultural and social space that is continually being constructed and reconstructed by its inhabitants. Unlike a fixed city image, mapping practice represents a temporary city that is open to change from an individual’ perspective. In that sense, I try to explore new ways of seeing the city through the social imaginaries of people from different cultures by co-creating with international student. As a tactical field, public space is an imaginary space that resists one dominant image of the city where participants produce meaning continually through observing and following their emotions in the urban environment.
Aiming to understand how international students create meaning and how the city of Tilburg is constructed through multiple ways of mapping in three areas -Dwaalgebied, Winkelgebied, and Veemarktkwartier-, I focus on the performative aspects of mapping and challenge traditional mapping practices through psychogeographical and experimental video mapping.
Nazlı Meriç Çukurova (1997) is a performance-based artist and visual designer from Istanbul, Turkey. She graduated from Istanbul Technical University Faculty of Architecture in the department of Industrial Design in 2021. During her studies, she followed various dance classes and workshops such as contemporary technique and movement improvisation, which inspired her to explore her environment through body and space practices. Presenting herself as a foreign identity and object, she tries to build relations and tensions within her surroundings. Currently pursuing Master Performing Public Space program at Fontys Fine and Performing Arts, she conducts her practice-led artistic research in public spaces, exploring co-creating with others in the socio-political context. In her project in Tilburg, she is using participatory methodologies and experimental video making to uncover the multiplicity of the city's identity.
Juxtaposition of City Identities through Performative Mapping
Nazlı Meriç Çukurova
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1736526/1854807
This project is exploring viewpoints - the "must-see" tourist destinations and the personal perspectives experienced by those who travel to them. Viewpoints are unique liminal spaces, frequented by travelers, that have a number of effects on our perceptions. From feeling like a giant, as if you could reach out and pick up buildings, to feeling like a tiny particle, and comprehending how very small you are in comparison with the world. At viewpoints, we are not looking down or looking up to anyone or anything in particular. We are looking out - at and for each other. They can become a truly democratizing space where different perspectives (viewpoints) can be shared and discussed.
Phuket Thailand has many viewpoints but none are as iconic as the Big Buddha. This project, through chance encounters with magical realist methodologies of writing, touring, imagining, and sharing stories, aims to develop and encourage more intimate tourist practices at the Big Buddha Viewpoint. Participants tour, detour and re-tour the viewpoint, "getting there" and "getting lost" in writing exercises, sharing magical realist stories and challenging themselves, in a playful and imaginative way, to do some critical thinking and share their own unique story and view/point.
