Digital Twin

Installation, Tarabya, 2020 ongoing

The 3d environment rebuilds the German embassy ground in Tarabya, Istanbul that is currently used as a residence for artists based in Germany. Started during the pandemic, the interactive model aimed to respond to the situation in isolation and to attempt a virtual escape. It turns into a phantom-like doppelganger addressing Tarabya's colonial history and present, its relationship to the current city, its borders, as well as its potentials.

The digital model can be visited and explored through an avatar, similar to a computer game. It is open source and accessible online and it will keep on evolving. In the current state, it includes contributions by ten artists, activists, and cultural workers based in Turkey. Visitors are invited to move through the environment and intervene while sketching, commenting, or placing objects.

The collective work takes place at the intersection of art, architecture, and activism, as it reflects how practices, institutions, histories, and the present materialize in the (built) environment. The residence in Tarabya is a particularly interesting place, behind a wall in an affluent neighborhood, with a well-tended garden adjoined by a forest. The wooden buildings are bright white showing traces of political conflicts, eclectic architecture, and ornamentation from colonial times, overlapping with current representational and security requirements of an embassy site. In the past, all major European colonial powers had residences in Tarabya. Today, Erdogan owns a heavily secured summer palace nearby. The view of the Bosporus disrupts this context aesthetically as well as logistically.

Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin, September 3 – October 31 2021

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