Book launch with Işıl Eğrikavuk as part of the gardens & plots series, initiated by Annika Haas

Işıl Eğrikavuk presents her book and PhD thesis, which takes its initiation from the Gezi Protests that started in the respective central park in Istanbul in 2013 and spread in many different cities. It points to certain intersections between the protests and her ongoing research of community arts through the artistic research project “the other garden.” The book offers the reader to look into the intersections between the Gezi protests and community arts (socially engaged, dialogue-based art practices) as well as a hands-on collaborative arts project, which Eğrikavuk realized by working with six different arts and ecology collectives from Turkey.

The gardens & plots series brings together four artistic research projects at the Berlin University of the Arts that evolve from (urban) gardens and plots as sites of research and collaboration with both plants and humans. The projects draw attention to the plot as a site of conflict and resistance, and intervene in romantic imageries of the garden as a hermetic refuge and innocent “hortus conclusus.” The artists are dealing with struggles around land use and food sovereignty as well as with the oppressive heritage of cultivation techniques, botanical architectures, plant taxonomies, and the ways that humans relate to plants. Departing from different plots and gardens, the projects draw connections between agri- and horticultural ecosystems, environmental and political struggles, and related questions of community from various regions and times.

The series is part of the colloquium at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts and Sciences (BAS) of Berlin University of the Arts.