“This Is Not a Line”: A Cartography on Istanbul’s Coastline Ecotone

The video was shown within the scope of the 29.9 km program organized by birbuçuk as part of the Istanbul Unbound, 2021 conference.

Did you recognize that the coastline of Istanbul is slowly changing? There is an ongoing disposition between water and earth. “This is not a Line” experiments with a way of looking at the city by the changing lines between water and land, shaped by humans; through the spaces of solid and fluid; the dry and wet. Different terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems intersect and often compete along the shorelines. Hydrologists call those spaces of intersection “ecotone.” Ecotones address the conflicts of material displacements at the making of the coastal geography in Istanbul. Critical delineation of the coastline follows the alteration of the coastal strip and brings together geographic, architectural, and journalistic representations. Spread over the history of the past hundred years of visual colonization via aerial photography, maps, and satellite images are disassembled, blown up, and reframed in multiple montages. Coastal stories from the news are brought together with the images to follow the displacement of water bodies and urban debris. Results of the inspection show that the coastline has changed in the past ten years more than it did in the past hundred. “This is Not a Line” looks for a way of seeing the stratification of the coastal urban edge which equally becomes a political zone and a planetary common.