The Misuse value of space : spatial practices and the production of space in Istanbul

Abstract

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Dept. of Art and Art History, 2008.This dissertation is an interdisciplinary investigation of the indeterminate political role played by the inhabitants’ spatial practices of misuse in the social production of urban space in contemporary Istanbul. My argument is that both established and emerging hegemonic representations of the city of Istanbul presume a normative definition of the capitalist production of urban space based only on the use and exchange values of space; and they fail to consider what I propose to call “the misuse value of space.” I define the misuse value of space as a potential value that is activated by the spatial practices of misusers. Considering the ways in which the normative definition of the production of space in Istanbul is complicated by the inhabitants of the city through their spatial practices of misuse, I find that the inhabitants are not merely passive consumers of the spaces of the metropolis but they have an active and constitutive role in molding the shape of urban social space. This entails a discussion on spatial authorship, which is normatively supposed to belong to the authorities including urban designers, real estate developers and the state. To show how the spatial practices of misusers are also implicated in the production of space in Istanbul, I turn to a set of vignettes, which I call ethnographies of spatial authorship. Finally, I focus on the art collective Oda Projesi and their public artworks which take inspiration from actual misuses in Istanbul. I explore the ways in which the public art of Oda Projesi rely on an activation of the misuse value of space. My dissertation closes with a demonstration of how Oda Projesi demonstrates the political possibilities that generate from this activation