New City Reader [03 - Puzzle] -Terra Incognita is out on the streets of Istanbul! Terra Incognita is a game written by Demilit with precedent research and commentary by Rob Greco/Grecolaborativo.

Introduction: THE GAME
Puzzles begin with placing the first piece. Take the plunge. Play this game: Terra Incognita. Start an infinite geographical puzzle. Enter your routine world in a way you wouldn’t even recognize. Study your city to discover something you had never imagined. Every piece of Terra Incognita you create can be the seed for a new puzzle or the newest addition to an expanding one.

TERRA INCOGNITA (TI) is played to cipher and decipher a city.
In TI, players map a collective incompleteness—a group hallucination of an imagined terrain. By building and interacting with their puzzle, players identify conflicts and fissures in their towns, explore unknown neighborhoods, play entertaining games, solve evolving mysteries, and fantasize about hidden geographies. TI can be a combined activist tool, an art piece and a discussion catalyst all in one.

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NCR-03, Terra Incognita
List of New City Reader locations: Bilgi University Communications Faculty, Yeditepe University Communications Faculty, Doğuş University Art and Design Faculty, Aydın University Fine Arts Faculty, Maltepe University Architecture and Fine Arts Faculties, Kadir Has University Fine Arts Faculty, Mimar Sinan University Fine Arts Faculty, Işık University Fine Arts Faculty, Yıldız Technical University Architecture Faculty, Yıldız Technical University Art and Design Faculty, İstanbul Technical University, Mechanical Engineering Faculty, Marmara University Fine Arts Faculty, Urban Cafe, DEPO / Tütün Deposu, ODA Kule, İKSV Building, İstanbul Modern Libraty, Salt Galata, Salt Beyoğlu, French Culture Center, İstanbul Moda Academy, TMMOB İstanbul Chamber of Architects, Galata Bridge, Taksim Gezi Park, Kamondo Stairs, Walls of Asmalı Mescit

A text by Ulus Atayurt, NCR02 – ” Thresholds”

Let us approach the question “For whose utilization is Beyoğlu being served in the near future?” in terms of social class and from a viewpoint of Pierre Bourdieu’s observation: “Each agent may be characterized by the place where he or she is situated more or less permanently, that is, by her place of residence… It is also characterized by the place it legally occupies in space through properties (houses and apartments or offices, land for cultivation or residential development etc.) which are more less congesting or, as we sometimes say, “consuming of space” (the ostentation of appropriated space being one of the form par excellence of the ostentation of power). It follows that the locus and the place occupied by an agent in appropriated social space are excellent indicators of his or her position in social space.” (Physical Space, Social Space and Habitus, 1996).

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NCR-02, a text by Can Firuze: Cross street, temporary/selective memory and male herois

İstiklal Caddesi Topçekerler Sokak No:12
A Play in 3 Acts

Act 1: May 2007: Discovery of cross history

The location of the building where Ben Gurion, the main founder of the State of Israel, is rumoured to have stayed between 1912 and 1914; number 12. Coincidentally, the old blue and the new red door number plates both display the same number. It is located in one of the islands that look as if they are subsiding whilst compressed between İstiklal Avenue and Tarlabaşı Boulevard – an area that is now being swiped by the “Urban Transformation” project. The street is called Topçekerler Sokak. A street that has been in much demand until the 1950’s or even 1986. A discreet street that connects Balo to Kamer Hatun. Running on a right angle to Çekül Foundation and behind Ghetto, a club that is dished out as a “famous joint” in the recent months. Finally, it is a street most probably known to İlhan Berk and a spot that still remeains unconquered by İspark to this day.

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From the pages of NCR-02 comes a text by Stavros Stavrides (Athens)

In contemporary urban theory the city of enclaves represents a concrete tendency of partitioning urban space (Marcuse 1995 and Marcuse and Van Kempen 2002). It is not only differentiations in terms of culture, race or ethnicity that are regulated and spatially imposed in the city of enclaves. It is also differences in income and status (and therefore power), that are made effective. Space does not simply express these differentiations. Space co-produces them by giving ground to situated experiences of displacement, of secure sheltering in fortified enclaves, of regulated movement, of limited accessibility and so on. Space regulates and instructs people, enforcing an experienced taxonomy of power.

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From the pages of NCR-02, a conversation between architect Aslı Kıyak İngin and craftsmen/designer Artin Usta.

The specific and local craft and design practice has always been knitted with local community and everyday life practices in Galata. The conversation between architect Aslı Kıyak İngin and craftsmen/designer Artin Usta reveals an archeology of local network production, memory and projects the now, future of urban thresholds.

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From the pages of NCR-02 comes a text from Adhocracy curatorial team member Pelin Tan.

How is the knowledge of threshold possible in urban space? The urban localities present a heterogeneous body that co-exists and which is bound together. Actual territories exist either at the periphery or in-between spaces in several different cities as spaces of threshold. Researching and engaging in an organic way into actual territories demands also to take part in the spatial resistance of it thus its experience. Experiencing such places as the artists, architects and urbanists encountered, demands an active understanding of the dynamics of the place. As Lang explains: “To interact with a place means understanding the dynamics that sustain it, including a sensitivity towards how such environments are entered and traversed”.[i] However, in such practices in which community engagement is immanent a radical experience of space is required.Not only engaging but creating a new practice of locality -that is connected to the future of a coming community and its current spatial practices- has the potential for new knowledge of urban threshold.

[i] Lang, Peter T., Stalker on location, chapter 10, p.198
in Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life
Edited by Karen A. Franck and Quentin Stevens
Routledge, November 2006

NCR 02 “Urban Thresholds” is out on the streets of Istanbul! Edited by Pelin Tan with contributions by Stavros Stavrides, Ulus Atayurt, Can Firuze, Aslı K.İngin + Artin Usta, and Sevgi Ortaç. Check the map to the right for locations or enter the article for a list of locations.

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