Six projects receive
SALT Research Funds in 2013

Initiated to further the institution’s commitment to experimental thought, intradisciplinary research, and studies on social change and transformation from diverse perspectives, a total of 60,000 TL was granted to six research projects engaged in issues of the built environment, questions of modernism, politics of memory and overlooked histories.

The 140 submitted applications were reviewed and assessed by a committee of five professionals, two from SALT, and three from different academic programs.The committee comprised Cengiz Kırlı, Meriç Öner (SALT), Zeynep Sayın, Lorans Tanatar Baruh (SALT), and Bülent Tanju. The selected projects for 2013 are:

Bengü Aydın
A Glance at the Discussions of Modernity and “National Art” in Turkey Through the Case of Painters
A research project that aims to comprehend how cultural policies, pursued between 1923-1950, affected the milieu of painters.

Ege Berensel
Dinamo Mesken
A research project for a multi-screen video installation that will tell the story of the only football club in the history the sport in Turkey closed down due to its name; “Dinamo Mesken.” The team was founded in a leftist suburb of Bursa in 1971 and its players were subject to investigation, prosecution and torture.

Eray Çaylı
“The Present Past” and Cultural Heritage: Site, Memory, Representation
A research project focusing on three sites: the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul, the Ulucanlar Prison Museum in Ankara, and a group of buildings in the Diyarbakır Citadel. All three sites are, at once, both “conventional” and “difficult” heritage, and the project investigates the ways in which the dynamics between these two forms of heritage affect people’s relationship to the past.

İdil Çetin
State and its Imagery: Remembering the Past in the Photographs of Turkey
A semiotic and sociological reading of Turkish history that looks at the representation of the State through photographs and their reception.

Özge Sade Mete
A Fragmented Memory Project: Archaeological and Ethnographic Museums in Turkey, 1960-1980
An analysis of the archaeological and ethnographic museums that were built throughout Turkey between 1960 and 1980 with respect to architectural theories and politics of remembrance.

Özge Serin & Brian Karl
Animating an Archive of Stone: Non-Muslim Cemeteries in Istanbul
Research for a documentary project, which will disclose the place of non-Muslim cemeteries within social, economic and cultural exchange, and question the seemingly impassible borders between religious and ethnic communities – acknowledging that these borders are already, always being crossed.