Public in the Making is a conference-gathering that will take place in Istanbul from 18-20 October, 2018. This event is part of the “trans-making” (https://trans-making.eu/) project, which is supported by the EU’s Horizon 2020 program and constituted by 20 institutions and some 150 individuals from 14 countries. The project’s Turkish partners Istanbul Technical University, Izmir University of Economics and BIS coordinated it in close collaboration with Istanbul Bilgi University. Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Design Atelier Kadıköy (TAK), European Cultural Association, AICA, Architecture for All, PASAJ, Street Belongs to Us Association, City and Children and Komsu (Neighbour) Cafe Collective. BIS is in charge of the general coordination. The three day event will cast a multi-disciplinary glance at a most confusing and problematic sociopolitical concept, the public/public sphere through the spyglass of the act of “making”. Public in the Making includes the perspectives of disciplines ranging from art and design to philosophy and architecture and urban planning and aims to pursue and construct in practice a genuine approach that seeks mutual creation and genuine knowledge, true to the true spirit of the word Public.
This gathering invites all those who want to become part of it to rethink and research the notion of the public theoretically practically artistically and culturally. It offers reflections on migration and memory under conditions of war, oral cultural history, the participatory strategies of art institutions, intellectual commons, urban agricultural and eating practices. It thus seeks to invite the discussion of the possibilities of a public sphere we have not yet built but may well do.
Public in the Making includes 13 panels, 3 keynotes, 2 walks and 5 workshops and institutional presentations. Artists, curators, designers, urban planners, NGOs and academics who met in response to the call made in May and June have deliberated and decided the program. Asu Aksoy, Peter Klepec and Renata Salecl will give thematic presentations of the state of the public sphere
whereas Mahir Namur, Zeynep Kadirbeyoglu, Yeliz Kahya, Na#iz Aksehirli, Çigdem Kaya, Ezgi Tuncer, RCE, Zeynep Arda, Mustafa Avcı, Zeynep Günay and Architecture for All will act as panel moderators.
More than 75 international actors, all experts in their fields, participate in the event and the busy program is further enriched by a open-to-all dinner and on-site visits. Furthermore the participants will be able to participate in workshops and work on topics such as the sharing of urban experiences via digital storytelling, the documentation of publicness with visual, textual and mapping techniques, new concepts of the public sphere and alternative narrative techniques in today’s world of data.
amberPlatform will also present its new publication series aTXT. “trans-making” will be the first book in this series and the presentation will feature this books initial fascicules. Panels and workshops will take place at ITU’s Taskısla campus, santralistanbul (Bilgi University), Design Atelier Kadıköy (TAK) and Mimar Sinan Arts University Fındıklı campus. The event will conclude with a visit to the Roma Garden in Cihangir on the evening of 20 October 2018.