Notes From Diyarbakir: Walking half the walls, the Gecekondu

From Wikipedia: In Turkish gece means "at night" and kondu means "placed" (from the verb konmak, "to settle" or "to be placed"); thus the term gecekondu comes to mean "placed (built) overnight". And bölge means a "zone", "district" or even "region", so a gecekondu bölgesi is a "suddenly built-up shanty-neighborhood"

These photographs are kept in sequence because the spaces are contiguous, and yet the walls and the gecekondu are rarely imaged together - indeed it is a challenge to frame both.

There are also (removed by day?) ghost rooms that made way for the park flanking the inner walls. If I had time I would like to learn more about the clearances and re-housing of the former residents of these traces.

Bio

Cressida Kocienski holds an MA in New Media Production from LJMU and an MFA in Art Writing from Goldsmiths, London. Working between video, performance and text, her research concerns spatial research and modes of narration. In October 2013 she will begin practice-based PhD research in the School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield to examine modes of spatial narration in contemporary film practice. She has worked collaboratively with antepress within Art on the Underground, James Taylor Gallery, ICA (London) and Resonance FM. Her films have screened at Benaki Museum (Athens), FormContent (London), Pleasure Dome and TSV (Toronto). In 2011 she was Filmmaker in Residence with DAAR in Beit Sahour, Palestine. She is Co-Editor of The Institute of Immaterialism, and works collaboratively with architects O[S]R (Toronto) and OPENkhana (London and Sheffield).