Serial Craft - IM, 2024

Site-Specific Kinetic Installation

Serial Craft highlights the mutually impactful relations between crafts and industry during the early industrialisation period of Turkiye.

Traces of adaptation  of craftsmanship to industrialized production and its subsequent transformation are still visible in many workshops in Istanbul. On their ceilings, you can see the hand-made pieces of old pulley-and-belt systems  that enabled the operation of multiple assembly stations thus increasing production.

In Turkiye, where industrialization began quite late compared to western countries, craftsmanship throughout the 20th century developed semi-industrial systems to meet the production demand and created the experiences cementing the foundations of today’s industry. With the progress of industrialization, the past role of craftsmanship, as well as its economic and cultural potential were ignored. Today, craftsmanship is romanticized by being reduced to an outdated cultural value; it is disappearing due to multi-layered problems and pressures caused by gentrification, urban transformation, population exchange, socio-economic policies and the industrial production system.

Produced in collaboration with craft studios around the city, the installation also underlines the current economic and cultural potential of crafts for contemporary productions in a post-industrial society.

Commissioned by: Istanbul Modern Museum

Photos: @k0mancero