2022 – Approximately 150*150 cm, Fabric
Hasköy Narrative Atlas is a part of CoAction Device: Hasköy; the third edition of İnci Eviner’s collaborative performative research project, CoAction Device.
While the Atlas, as a physical material, is a multilayered map of Hasköy, it is more importantly a process of research. Creating the pieces and assembling them on the map was not simply the gathering of the Atlas, but it was the basis for the process of meeting with locals, starting a conversation, and recording the otherwise uncounted stories of Hasköy.
Maps are not simply aerial views of the land. Maps, as political graphics are composed to supply specific data and express certain aspects of a geograpy. The manner of mapping depends on how a place is intended to be presented, more than how it is actually perceived.
Hasköy is a neighbourhood in İstanbul, on the shores of Goldenhorn. Once the home of the Christian minorities who had to flee in the 1960s, Hasköy also witnessed right and left-wing political oppositions and unresolved political assassinations in the 1980s. Over the years, not only the social structure of the neighborhood has changed, but also its physical functioning has undergone major changes with projects such as the coastal road filling.
The method of the Altas is sewing and embroidery, two methods that I was not accustomed to back in 2022. I chose those practices over drawing and painting in order to encourage the elderly local women by creating a situation that they are experts in and I am not; thus hoping to make them feel needed, depended on, and vital – which they are.
Hasköy Narrative Atlas aims at gathering not only the erased history but also the ongoing stories of the locals of the neighborhood on a map. The large fabric, which is the basis of the map, doubles as a picnic blanket – a common ground for the community to converse, tell their stories, or simply observe the ever-expanding narratives of Hasköy.
“In summer, open-air movie theaters would screen movies at night. While the Turkish flag appeared on the screen, the right-winged youth would clap and cheer. The leftist youth, now wanting to be defeated, adopted the pirate flag in the movie as their symbol, and cheered it instead.”
“My brother spent the whole night printing manifestoes again. When he sneaked back home near dawn, he was met with my father. Although he wanted to lie about his whereabouts, his blue ink-stained hands revealed everything.”
“One of our neighbors was an old lady from the northern coast. She would grow purple cabbages in every empty patch of land. She brought the original cabbages from her hometown.”
“One night, one of the piers of the old bridge went missing! People say that the scrap-dealers stole it while everyone was asleep, but I would like to believe that after standing still for so many years she decided to flee.”
“His hand-writing was so beautiful that even the most ignorant peddlers would hide his graffities with their barrow when the police passed-by.”
“There used to be a river crossing the neighborhood, however they have filled it when it ran dry, and in the 80’s became our main street, our protest walks would always begin there.”
The co-stitched patches narrating an adopted pirate flag, the holiday drummers, poems hidden in shoes, a bridge eloping her duties to enjoy the night, a guitar solo in the mosque, the crowds forming the flow of the river, a hidden slogan, a shot in the mirror, a ghost carrying either a gun or a rose.
Ilgın Hancıoğlu 
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