In an article that appeared in 1997, Cem Akaş expressed his predictions about the relationship people create with a city:
„As we approach the threshold of a new era, if transformation is to succeed, it will take the City as its focus, and power will be shaken. Those who are chosen will flee from the centre – this is the first time this will truly be possible – and the city will be left to the „quasi-fares“: Modernity’s legacy will be the new proletariat. The violence, foreignness, and fear within the centre will pulse through the people; and they will continue to think that the city, and themselves, are alive. For those outside, exploration and discovery will be realised at a speed not seen since the beginning of modernity – aimed at oneself and at nature.“
In the wake of these predictions, within approximately the last 20 years we have witnessed many events in which we have directly experienced how the city’s transformation has affected our lifestyle and freedoms – especially in Istanbul. In fact, perhaps to an extent never before seen, the issue of how the city will be viewed and formed in history, has began to become an issue about the very nature of individual or human existence itself.
Gabriele Boretti, many of whose works deal with architecture and design, prepared the images below within the scope of the Venice Biennale. Through these images, which enable us to think about all of these issues anew, Boretti imagines what type of city or dystopia will await us fifty years from now. This situation, which has been created though a gradually rising tempo of continuous urban development, has caused us to imagine the city through its own internal dynamics – many of which are new and open to debate. Istanbul, where civil engineering has begun to pave the way for devastation that surpasses the limits of our imagination, is host to Boretti’s new absurd landscapes, whose conceptual designs surpass even the strange reality of our age.
To return to Cem Akaş’ comments:
“Everything depends on what the City will become. If it doesn’t change its way of connecting with the life world, meaning; if both the Lebenswelt (life world) becomes full of inanimate objects and atmospheres, and the tangled relationships they impose, and the city continues to grow and polish its potency, the open longing for tangible magic will remain a longing – ambiguous, fruitless refulgent.”
Originally published on Bon Pur Loryan on 20 June 2015.
Text: Bon Pur Loryan
Images: Gabriele Boretti from the collection Fundamentals – Postcards from the Future, Istanbul (2014-2064)
