Digital Twin

Type	Interactive 3D environment
Year	2020–ongoing
Venue	Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin
Dates	3 September – 31 October 2021
Contributors	10 artists, activists, and cultural workers based in Turkey

Digital Twin (2020–ongoing) is an interactive 3D environment by Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest that rebuilds the German embassy grounds in Tarabya, Istanbul — currently used as a residence for artists based in Germany.

Description

Started during the pandemic, the interactive model aimed to respond to the situation of 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 evolving. In its 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 — sketching, commenting, or placing objects.

The collective work takes place at the intersection of art, architecture, and activism, reflecting 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 the current representational and security requirements of an embassy site. In the past, all major European colonial powers had residences in Tarabya; today, Erdoğan owns a heavily secured summer palace nearby. The view of the Bosporus disrupts this context both aesthetically and logistically.

Exhibition history

• Kunstraum Kreuzberg, Berlin — 3 September – 31 October 2021

Gallery

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  Digital Twin, Tarabya
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