“This is not a line: Flat Land / Landfill / Whirlpool” 2021

07’35’’ mixed media video art for Burası/This Place Exhibition, Curated by Kevser Güler Yapı Kredi Culture and Arts Center. 2021, Istanbul.

Research and video: Gökçen Erkılıç

Sound design: Ahmet Ünveren, Gökçen Erkılıç

Did you recognize that the coastline is slowly changing in Istanbul? If you pay attention to the line dividing the land and water, you can see the displacements of the solid and the aqueous. This is not a line, is a coastline research that departs form the idea “Heaven is on the map, so is hell” and produces a video cartography assembled with aerial photographs, maps and news on the material shaping of the coastline in Istanbul. It focuses on three stories from northern Istanbul Airport (2000-2020), Yenikapı landfill (1945-2014) and Marmara mucilage (2015-2021) as the coastlines disappear, re-appear in forms of flatlands, landfills and whirlpools. The coastline thereafter defines a new border condition to the human presence; a planetary common shaped by human and natural agencies; and a critical form of delineation overlooking the shaping of geography in time.