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Kapitalist Kentleşme ve İklim Krizi bir Sınıf Meselesidir…

Kapitalist Kentleşme ve İklim Krizi bir Sınıf Meselesidir…

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Bugün 3,9 milyar insanın kentlerde yaşadığını biliyoruz. 2050 yılına kadar ise bu rakamın 6 milyara çıkacağı, yani gelecekte dünya nüfusunun yüzde 62’sinin kentlerde yaşayacağı tahmin ediliyor. Bu durumda kentleşmenin iklim değişikliği üzerindeki etkileri neler olabilir? İstatistikler bize küresel ölçekte çok önemli bir kırılmanın yaşandığını gösteriyor. Türkiye’deki yansımalarının ise ciddi ve büyük ölçekte olduğunu biliyoruz. Sorunuz … Continue reading →

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Why Praxis?

"The real individuals of our time are the martyrs who have gone through infernos of suffering and degradation in their resistance to conquest and oppression, not the inflated personalities of popular culture, the conventional dignitaries. These unsung heroes consciously exposed their existence as individuals to the terroristic annihilation that others undergo unconsciously through the social process. The anonymous martyrs of the concentration camps are the symbols of the humanity that is striving to be born. The task of philosophy is to translate what they have done into language that will be heard, even though their finite voices have been silenced by tyranny." [Max Horkheimer,"Rise and Decline of the Individual", Eclipse of Reason, Continuum: London and New York, 2004, p.109]

Devrİmcİ Praksİs SÜreklİdİr | Zamansızdır | Tarİhsİzdİr

Devrimci bir Bedenin Anısına: "Gece leylak ve tomurcuk kokuyor / Yaralı bir şahin olmuş yüregim / Uy anam anam / Haziranda ölmek zor / Çalışmışım onbeş saat / Tükenmişim onbeş saat / Yorulmuşum, acıkmışım, uykusamışım / Anama sövmüş patron / Sıkmışım dişlerimi / Islıkla söylemişim umutlarımı / Sıcak bir ev özlemişim / Sıcak bir yemek / Sıcacık bir yatakta unutturan öpücükler / Çıkmışım bir dalgadan, vurmuşum sokaklara / Sokakta tank paleti / Sokakta düdük sesi / Sarı sarı yapraklarla dallarda / İnsan iskeletleri / Gece leylak ve tomurcuk kokuyor / Uyarına gelirse tepemde bir de çınar' demiştin yıllar önce / Demek ki on yıl sonra / Demek ki sabah sabah / Demek ki manda gözü / Demek ki sile bezi / Bir de memedin yüzü / Bir de saman sarısı / Bir de özlem kırmızısı / Demek ki göçtü usta / Kaldı yürek sızısı / Yıllar var ter içinde taşıdım ben bu yükü / Bıraktım acının alkışlarına 3 /Haziran 63'ü / 3 Haziran 63'ü / Bir kırmızı gül dalı eğilmiş üstüne / Bir kırmızı gül dalı şimdi uzakta / Okşar yanan alnını / Nazım Ustanın / Bir kırmızı gül dalı eğilmiş üstüne / Bir kırmızı gül dalı şimdi uzakta / Yatıyor oralarda / Bir eski gömütlükte / Yatıyor usta / Gece leylak ve tomurcuk kokuyor / Geçsem de gölgesinden tankların tomsonların / Şuramda bir kuş ötüyor / Haziranda ölmek zor..." [Hasan Hüseyin Korkmazgil | 1977]

Devrİmcİ Praksİs SÜreklİdİr | Zamansızdır | Tarİhsİzdİr

Devrimci Bir Kadının Anısına: "Dağlarda gördüm onları yollarda gördüm / Bir yokuşu çıkıyordu tilki oğlu tilki / Kediler bütün gün ağaçlarda / Nedir yelle ilintisi kaplumbağanın / Domuzlar gerinip güne karşı / Gergedan inişte / Zındancıbaşılar zındancıbaşılar / Bağlamışlar tayları / Ceylanlar bukağıda / Bir bayırda apansız / Yollarımı kesen sarı çiğdem / Alsam koğuşlara götürsem / Götürsem götüremem / Ellerim telörgüde / Telörgüde boynu bükük / Bir sarı bir küçük bir serin çiğdem / Canımın parçası öte gecede / Bedeninde yarı ışık yarı gölge / Beton avlulardan duvarlardan doğru / Gün vurur gözümün gözümün içine / Bir o beni görür bir ben onu görürüm / Alırım sesini sesini sesini / Düşürürüm ardıma / Bahar sellerinden geçiririm / Yolaksız dağlardan aşırırım / Zındancılarbaşı zındancılarbaşı / Gelimli gidimli dünya / İlle de ölümlü dünya / Senin gücün yetse yetse bana yeter / Suya çavmış güz güneşi / Ah demem çün bilirim / Ne gelir ardından gecelerin / Çözülür, çözülmez sandığın kördüğüm / Unufak olur bukağı / Ah demem / Ah demez canımın parçası" [Gülten Akın | 1933-2015, Yozgat]

Devrİmcİ Praksİs Kolektİf Bİr Yarıştır

Bizim Deniz – Mare Nostrum: En uzun koşuysa elbet / Türkiye’de de Devrim / O, onun en güzel yüz metresini koştu / En sekmez luverin namlusundan fırlayarak … / En hızlısıydı hepimizin, / En önce göğüsledi ipi… / Acıyorsam sana anam avradım olsun / Ama aşk olsun sana çocuk, Aşk olsun… [Can Yücel]

The Reading Group | METU Department of Architecture [Arch613 Critical Theories on Urban Architecture | Spring 2019-2020]

[Neil Smith, Uneven Development; Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space, The University of Georgia Press | Athens and London, 2008]

Devrİmcİ Praksİs Toplumsal bir Olgudur

Canımda damıttım seni ey zulüm, / Sancısını / İnceden / Kum gibi taşıdığım. / Kasığımda Amerikan kemendi / Bağıra bağıra geceler boyu / Kaskatı kesilip / Kan işediğim. / Uzmandı cellatlar / Ve hinoğlu hin. / Akım kabloları, kıskaçlarıyla / Bilenmiş azıları ve hınçlarıyla / Buyruğunda gangster emperyalizmin. / Gene de yıkamadılar, sökemediler / Ve bozguna uğradılar sonunda / Karşısında çırılçıplak yüreğin. (Ahmed Arif, Hasretinden Prangalar Eskittim, Metis Yayınları: İstanbul, 2011: 141.)

Devrİmcİ Praksİs Neden Gereklİdİr

Praksis, salt yapmaya/inşa etmeye indirgenemez; dolayısıyla düz anlamıyla eylemden ya da pratikten kolayca ayrışır. Öte yandan praksis, soyut bir düzleme sıkıştırılamaması, gerçek ve cismanî olabilmesi nedeniyle de, zihinsel olandan/teoriden farklı bir içerik kazanır. Kısacası, hem soyut hem de somut olanın bileşenidir; burada söz konusu olan, bilgi ve becerinin, kapsamlı bakma biçimleri – meta-kuramlar, meta-diller – aracılığıyla kullanılması ve uygulanabilmesidir – daha da ötesi, burada kullanılıp uygulanmaya yeltenilen “şey”, amaçlı bir tasarının sonucudur. Yukarıda zikrettiğimiz tanımın sol gelenekten, eleştirel teoriden geldiğini biliyoruz; dolayısıyla burada Karl Marks’ın ruhunu özellikle yad etmek iyi olur. Marks’a göre praksis, politik ancak yaratıcı bir eylemselliği kapsar ve sosyal aktörlerin ürettikleriyle, toplumsal etkileşimlerin bütününü anlatır – bu bütüncül yapıda, eleştirel düşünme, öznenin özünü oluşturur ve eylemin amacını yapar/kurar/üretir. Kısacası, praksis amaçlı bir eylemselliktir; devrimci güdülerle uzun-erimli amaçlar tasarlar. İkincisi, sıradanlığın aksine praksis, yaratıcı, dönüştürücü bir eylemselliği talep eder ve dolayısıyla sosyal aktörlerin politik angajmanını öncelikli kılar. Üçüncüsü, bütün bu süreçlerin asli unsuru eleştirel teorinin kendisidir. Dolayısıyla eleştirel düşünceden, sorgulamaya, soyut bir düzlemden, yapmaya kadar uzanan, etkin, amaçlı ve yaratıcı bir sürece/olguya karşılık gelir, praksis.

Books | Timely

[The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Mieville, Verso Books: London and New York, 2018]

Books | Timely

[Visualizing Secularism and Religion; Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, India, Edt. Alev Çinar, Srirupa Roy, and Maha Yahya, The University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor, 2012]

“Over the past two decades secular polities across the globe have witnessed an increasing turn to religion-based political movements, such as the rise of political Islam and Hindu nationalism, which have been fueling new and alternative notions of nationhood and national ideologies. The rise of such movements has initiated widespread debates over the meaning, efficacy, and normative worth of secularism. Visualizing Secularism and Religion examines the constitutive role of religion in the formation of secular-national public spheres in the Middle East and South Asia, arguing that in order to establish secularism as the dominant national ideology of countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, and India, the discourses, practices, and institutions of secular nation-building include rather than exclude religion as a presence within the public sphere. The contributors examine three fields—urban space and architecture, media, and public rituals such as parades, processions, and commemorative festivals—with a view to exploring how the relation between secularism, religion, and nationalism is displayed and performed. This approach demands a reconceptualization of secularism as an array of contextually specific practices, ideologies, subjectivities, and “performances” rather than as simply an abstract legal bundle of rights and policies.”

Names to Remember!

"City That Does Not Sleep," Federico García Lorca, 1898 - 1936. " In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins. The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream, and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the stars. Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. In a graveyard far off there is a corpse who has moaned for three years because of a dry countryside on his knee; and that boy they buried this morning cried so much it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet. Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful! We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead dahlias. But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist; flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths in a thicket of new veins, and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders. One day the horses will live in the saloons and the enraged ants will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cows. Another day we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue. Careful! Be careful! Be careful! The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm, and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention of the bridge, or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe, we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes are waiting, where the bear’s teeth are waiting, where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting, and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder. Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is sleeping. If someone does close his eyes, a whip, boys, a whip! Let there be a landscape of open eyes and bitter wounds on fire. No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one. I have said it before. No one is sleeping. But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the night, open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theatres." By Federico García Lorca, translated and edited by Robert Bly, and published by Beacon Press in Selected Poems: Lorca and Jiménez. © 1973 by Robert Bly.

Praxis as Revolution

"Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question... The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice... All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice... The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it." [Karl Marx: Theses on Feurbach: II, III, VIII, XI) "The average worker has a practical activity but has no clear theoretical consciousness of his activity in and understanding of the world; indeed, his theoretical consciousness can be “historically” in conflict with his activity. In other words, he will have two theoretical consciousnesses: one that is implicit in his activity and that really unites him with all his fellow workers in the practical transformation of the world and a superficial, “explicit” one that he has inherited from the past. The practical-theoretical position, in this case, cannot help becoming “political”—that is, a question of “hegemony.” [Antonio Gramsci: The Prison Notebooks, Vol.3]

Praxis as Class Struggle | Action in the Present

The Philosophy of Marx by Etienne Balibar: The general idea of this little book is to understand and explain why Marx will still be read in the twenty-first century, not only as a monument of the past, but as a contemporary author -- contemporary both because of the questions he poses for philosophy and because of the concepts he offers it. Limiting myself to what seems to me essentials, I would like to give readers a means of finding their bearings in Marx's writings and introduce them to the debates which they have prompted. I would also like to defend a somewhat paradoxical thesis: whatever may have been though in the past, there is no Marxist philosophy and never will be; on the other hand, Marx is more important for philosophy than ever before. (Etienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, Verso - Radical Thinkers: London and New York, 2014, p.1)

Praxis as Emancipation

Under what conditions does this sale of the labor of the proletarians to the bourgeoisie take place? Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition – as we shall see, the two come to the same thing – the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor. But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life. However, since business is sometimes better and sometimes worse, it follows that the worker sometimes gets more and sometimes gets less for his commodities. But, again, just as the industrialist, on the average of good times and bad, gets no more and no less for his commodities than what they cost, similarly on the average the worker gets no more and no less than his minimum. This economic law of wages operates the more strictly the greater the degree to which big industry has taken possession of all branches of production." Friedrich Engels, The Principles of Communism, 1847:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm

Why Spatial Utopias?

"Smooth space and striated space--nomad space and sedentary space--the space in which the war machine develops and the space instituted by the State apparatus--are not of the same nature... [the] two spaces in fact exist only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated , transversed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space. In the first case, one organises even the desert; in the second the desert gains and grows; and the two can happen simultaneously." [Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "14. 1440: The Smooth and the Striated", A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis and London, 2011, p.474-475] "These are all examples of what I will call "real utopias." This may seem like a contradiction in terms. Utopias are fantasies, morally inspired designs for a humane world of peace and harmony unconstrained by realistic considerations of human psychology and social feasibility. Realists eschew such fantasies. What we need are hard-nosed proposals for programatically improving our institutions. Instead of Indulging in utopian dreams we must accommodate ourselves to practical realities. The idea of "real utopias" embraces this tension between dreams and practice. It is grounded in the belief that what is pragmatically possible is not fixed independently of our imaginations , but it itself shaped by our visions." [Erik Olin Wright, "Introduction: Why Real Utopias?", Envisioning Real Utopias, Verso: London and New York, 2010, p.5-6.]

Article to Read: Marx, Architecture and Modernity

By David Cunningham, Jon Goodbun School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Languages/ WAG Architecture; School of Architecture and Built Environment; University of Westminster, London, UK. This paper reviews some current manifestations of Marxist thought within and around architectural discourse, building on papers presented at a symposium held at the University of Westminster in May, 2004. | The Journal of Architecture, Volume 11, Number 2 | For accessing the full text, please click the image or visit: https://gasmekan.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/marxarchitecturemodernity-1.pdf

From Archives | Books

It is an unceasing inquiry to decipher and fully understand the on-going intellectual debate between "first and second nature". In this very regard, this edited book revolves around a primary question on how and in what forms the notion of first nature turns/transforms into second nature, in Marxian terminology; and in the end, to what extent the dichotomy between nature and space come into a mutual and yet contradictory existence. Giving a full reference to the intricate disciplinary/interdisciplinary issues as such urban planning/design, architecture, landscape, representation it rather seeks for an alternative readings that of first and second nature within a larger array of intellectual streams in accordance with the primary contours of critical social theory and/or cultural studies. Güven Arif Sargın (Edt), Nature as Space : (re)Understanding Nature and Natural Environments, (Int. Mark Bassin), METU Faculty of Architecture Press: Ankara, 2003. (Cover Design and Photograph by Fatih C. Öz) Please click the image/cover for further reading the table of content, the editor's note as well as the list of contributors in pdf format.

From Archives | Books II

This graduate studio book is an intellectual array of alternative readings on urban space; the selected essays by the studio instructors as well as the conceptual proposals by the studio participants specifically aim at how urban space could be deciphered and thus analysed not as a final material entity, an answer to the given problematique, but rather a set of complex layerings of social, political and economic embodiments as well, all multi-relational in structure. In this respect, the primary objective for each participant of the studio work is to design not quite typical and/or orthodox design procedures through which tools of alternative analytical approaches could now be possible for further design methodologies into the city of Pogradeç, Albania. Of many speculative concepts, methodic tools and theoretical incentives, the term "Dialectical Urbanism" is regarded as one operational as well as a methodic instrument in order to understand the complexity of city-scape into urban and architectural design. Güven Arif Sargın (Edt), Hybrid Spaces, METU Faculty of Architecture Press: Ankara, 2004. (Visual Editor and Graphic Design by Fatih. C. Öz) Please click the image for further reading the main text in pdf format. For reaching out each file separately, please also go through: https://gasmekan.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/1_gasargin-intro1.pdf https://gasmekan.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/2_gasargin-article.pdf

Book to Read!

"Metropolisarchitecture (Großstadtarchitektur) is a new type of architecture with its own forms and laws" -- Ludwig Hilberseimer, Metropolis-architecture and Selected Essays, Columbia University GSAPP Sourcebook: New York, 2013. "In the 1920s, the urban theory of Ludwig Hilberseimer (1885-1967) redefined architecture's relationship to the city. His proposal for a high-rise city, where leisure, labor and circulation would be vertically integrated, both frightened his contemporaries and offered a trenchant critique of the dynamics of the capitalist metropolis. Hilberseimer's Groszstadtarchitektur (Metropolisarchitecture) is presented here for the first time in English translation. Two additional essays frame this international cross-section of metropolitan architecture: "Der Wille zur Architektur" (The Will to Architecture) and "Vorschlag zur City-Bebauung" (Proposal for City-Center Development). The propositions assembled here encourage us to reconsider mobility, concentration and the scale of architectural intervention in our own era of urban expansion." (From the Cover)

Gallery

Kentlerimizin hal-i pür melali'ni doğru resmeden bir sanat nesnesine göz gezdirmek isterseniz eğer, Murat Germen'in nesnel gerçekliği bükerek tekinsizleştirdiği fotoğraflarına söz hakkı tanımak yeterli olacaktır. Kaynak: "Murat Germen fotoğrafı bir ifade / araştırma aracı olarak kullanan bir sanatçı. Fulbright burslusu olarak gittiği Massachusetts Institute of Technology’den (MIT) Mimarlık yüksek lisans derecesini Amerikan Mimarlar Birliği (AIA) Altın Madalyası ile aldı. Sabancı Üniversitesi Sanat ve Sosyal Bilimler Fakültesi’nde fotoğraf, sanat ve yeni medya dersleri vermekte. Fotograf, mimarlık, mültimedya tasarımı, kent planlaması, sanat ve bilgisayar destekli tasarım konularında birçok basılı / çevrimiçi yayını olan Germen, aynı konular üzerinde üniversitelerde ve SIGGRAPH, ISEA, Towards a Science of Consciousness, CAe, CAC2, EVA-London, eCAADe, ASCAAD gibi sempozyum / konferanslarda çalışmalarını sundu. Türkiye, Amerika, İtalya, Almanya, İngiltere, Meksika, Portekiz, Özbekistan, Yunanistan, Japonya, Rusya, İran, Hindistan, Fransa, Kanada, Bahreyn, Kore gibi ülkeler olmak üzere ellinin üzerinde kişisel / karma sergiye katkıda bulundu. Sanatçı ve eserleri Türkiye’de C.A.M. Galeri, Hollanda-Belçika’da ARTITLED! Contemporary Art ve San Francisco’da Rosier Gallery tarafından temsil edilmekte. Sanatçının farklı eserlerine ait 300’den fazla edisyon, yurtiçi / yurtdışındaki kişisel koleksiyonlara ve Istanbul Modern ile Proje 4L Elgiz Çağdaş Sanat Müzesi’nin koleksiyonlarına dahil edildi." http://muratgermen.com/

Gallery

Urban Slum, Life and Everyday Practice | Neighbourhood Boys by Wallace Kirkland

Gallery

Kent/Kentli Hakkı | Capitalism is not Working; Another World is Possible!

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