Thursday 5 July, 6-7.30pm, 43 Gordon Square B04, book here

Ipek Tureli (McGill University) will introduce her new book  Istanbul Open City (Routledge, 2018).

Taking departure from the popular exhibitionary site of the war panorama in Istanbul, this talk will discuss the interconnections between Turkey’s foreign policy, the neoliberal re-conquest of the city, and the ongoing modernist belief in the educational effect of culture. It will investigate the appeal of this “old” medium in the age of New Media.

Gabriel Koureas and Güneş Tavmen (Birkbeck) will offer a response.

Ipek Tureli is Canada Research Chair in Architectures of Spatial Justice and Assistant Professor of Architecture at McGill University. She is the co-editor of Orienting Istanbul (2010), Istanbul Nereye? (2011); and guest editor International Journal of Islamic Architecture’s special issue on “Streets of Protest” (March 2013), and the author of Istanbul Open City (2018).

Gabriel Koureas is senior lecturer in modern and contemporary visual culture in the department of History of Art, Birkbeck. He recently completed the AHRC networking grant: ‘Ottoman Pasts, Present Cities: Cosmopolitanism and Transcultural Memories’ and is preparing a special issue of the Journal of Memory Studies (2019) on Ottoman Transcultural Memories. His other publications  include: ‘Orhan Pamuk’s Melancholic Narrative and Fragmented Photographic Framing. Istanbul: Memories of a City (2005)’, in P. Di Bello, C. Wilson, S. Zamir (eds), The Photobook, (London: IB Tauris, 2012) and ‘Nicosia / Istanbul: Ruins, Memory and Photography’, Kunapipi: Journal of Postcolonial Writing & Culture, Vol. XXXIII No. 1-2, 2012.