| Abstract [eng] |
The title of this paper is “Disaster Anticipation in the Biopolitical, Social and Artistic Interactions: A Case Study of Istanbul”. It examines how the anticipation of the earthquake influences the political, social and cultural experience in the city, reorients the governmental policy and how these new trends are reflected in the contemporary art field, particularly the 2018 and 2019 Istanbul Design and Art Biennials. Using interdisciplinary complex methodology, which combines historical perspective, biopolitical discourse, concepts of assemblage, diagram and transversality, discursive and intertextual analysis of art projects as primary sources, public discourse analysis, relational and discursive art concepts, the paper concludes that the disaster anticipation serves the government to motivate expansive urban transformation and securitisation policy, strengthen a coherent control network covering more and more spheres of public life, including culture and art fields. The contemporary art field reflects the dominating governmental policy, thus suggesting its colonisation as a biopolitical instrument, and cannot offer alternatives, which could empower the society to react. The paper could be useful for analysing the biopolitical enactment of catastrophes and risks in general, analysing the agentic capacity of contemporary art towards societal transformations, or studying Turkish and Istanbul society. |
