Conversation | Who Cares? by Nishat Awan and Merve Bedir

Saturday, October 26th, 2019 | 11:00am at Monnot Theater

Beginning with brief presentations on two cases, Gwadar in Pakistan (Nishat Awan) and Gaziantep in Turkey (Merve Bedir), this conversation focuses on the idea of worlding, framing it both as an authoritarian blueprint articulated in different national contexts, and as the imagination of other futures in translocal realities. Not to be seen as oracles, but more as part of an effort to prepare for possibilities yet-to-come, this conversation covers issues pertaining to bodily presence versus commitments to places out of bound or at a distance and the choice of invisibility in contexts of technological control and surveillance, as well as explore notions of collective care and politics of refusal.

Nishat Awan is Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, based at the Centre for Research Architecture. An architect by training, Awan’s work focuses on the intersection of geopolitics and space, including questions related to diasporas, migration, and border regimes. She is interested in modes of visual and spatial representation as well as ethical forms of engagements with places at a distance.

Merve Bedir studied architecture at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, and the Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands. Her work relates to the human and nonhuman agencies of labour, migration, commons, and their spatial aspects. She is the co-founder of Rotterdam and Hong Kong based research and design office Land and Civilization Compositions, and Aformal Academy, an experimental design school in Hong Kong. Bedir is a founding member of an all-women collective, “Kitchen", in Gaziantep, and the Center for Spatial Justice, in Istanbul. She is adjunct assistant professor at the Department of Architecture at Hong Kong University. Bedir curated Uncommon River (Maritsa River, Plovdiv, 2014), Vocabulary of Hospitality (Istanbul, 2015), and Automated Landscapes (Shenzhen, 2018). Her work was featured at Venice Architecture Biennale (2012); Shenzhen Biennale, UABB (2013 and 2015); Oslo Triennale (2016); and Istanbul Design Biennial (2016 and 2018). She wrote in Harvard Design Magazine, Thresholds, AD Magazine, and The Funambulist, among others. Her work was reviewed in The Guardian and Avery Review. 

This event is part of Home Works 8: A Forum on Cultural Practices.