Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe?
An Interdisciplinary Conference

Location: With the exception of Marshall Berman's talk on September 26 (112 Wurster Hall), all conference sessions will take place in the Geballe Room, The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities, 220 Stephens Hall, UC Berkeley. All events are free and open to the general public.

Istanbul is one of many world cities that turn to culture to establish a place on the world map. It is also the site of a unique debate on European integration entwined with the memory of earlier Orientalist representations. The selection of Istanbul as one of the Cultural Capitals of Europe in 2010 highlights the social and spatial tensions of staging cities and imagining citizens as consumers of culture. Taking this spectacle in the making as a departure point, this conference brings new research on technologies of government, carried out in the disciplines of architecture, planning, sociology, geography, and anthropology, together with humanistic studies on the production and consumption of literature, art, and film. The panels focus on Architectures of Exclusion, Spaces of Nostalgia, the Cinematic City, Art in the City, and Cultures of Spectacle. Invited speakers include Marshall Berman, Feride Çiçekoğlu, Jale Erzen, and Hou Hanru.

Invited Talk:

Marshall Berman, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, City College of New York
Don’t Be Afraid; These People are Modern’: Pamuk and the Fear of Modernity
Friday, September 26
4-5:30 p.m.
112 Wurster Hall

Orienting Istanbul Exhibition
September 24-28, 2008
Wurster Hall Foyer

“Istanbul-Berkeley”
A selection of video works from the 10th Istanbul Biennial, curated by Hou Hanru, featuring works by Emre Huner, Wong Hoy-Cheong, Map Office, Allora Calzadilla.

“Sounds of the City”
by Gokce Kinayoglu and Wenhua Shi.
An installation commissioned for Orienting Istanbul.

For more information as it becomes available, please visit the Orienting Istanbul conference website.

Organizers

Deniz Göktürk, Department of German, UC Berkeley, USA
İpek Türeli, Department of Architecture, UC Berkeley, USA
Levent Soysal, Department of Radio, Television, and Cinema, Kadir Has University, Turkey

Conference Sponsors

University of California, Berkeley:
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
in collaboration with
The Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities
Institute of European Studies
Department of German
Department of Architecture
Berkeley Center for New Media
Pacific Film Archive

Kadir Has University, Istanbul
The Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency
World Affairs Council of Northern California
Turkish Airlines