Yekpare, analog dreams of a digital child

Yekpare is a storyteller which narrates the 8,500 year story of Istanbul. The story embraces symbols from pagans to Roman Empire, from Byzantine Empire to Latin Empire, and finally from Ottoman Empire to Istanbul at the present day. Haydarpasa Train Station, with its brilliant architectural forms, is the building on which the story is projected.

The connections between Middle East to West has been provided by Istanbul and Haydarpasa since 1906. In the 50's it served as a door for millions of internal emigrants who have triggered the chaos in Istanbul's dialectical daily life scenes. The project's conceptual, political and geographical positioning, the location's depth of field and the fact that the entire show can be watched from KadikÖy coast, make Yekpare a dramatic presentation.

Agustin: How was the process of getting the whole information regarding the characteristics of the building? It must have been really difficult to get the exact measures of the building for making Yekpare.

Erdem: It was not difficult if you were born in Istanbul. It has a hardcore brainstorming process to get the history together on a monolithic surface. One of the most powerful handicap was creating a visual story without cliches part of general speech. Because of that we started to think whole dynamics as symbols of sociological changes. For example; first part of the performance was referred to Christian era was shown by light from inside out as stained glasses. We specially wanted to show communications and links between cultural heritage to today's citizens. The production was more difficult than performance content! We were on Marmara Sea on a platform, we had 10 units, 15.000 projectors and 24 huge speakers from the platform. We had to play sound 1.5 seconds before starting the performance. It was hard to specifically calculate sound speed from cost to cost.

A: Do you consider you work as postmodern?

E: We did not think it was postmodern or not. It was just a simple visual approach to Istanbul with a new perception for audiences. We surely said that it is contemporary effect of a new kind of architectural visualization. 
 
A: If you could choose five buildings around the world for making something similar to Yekpare, which ones would you choose?

E: AKM (Ataturk Culture Center), Turkey; Casa Milà (La Pedrera), Spain; inside of JS Bach Chamber Music Hall, UK;  Luxembourg Philarmony and Kaaba.

A: Do you think of Yekpare as a piece of art?
 
E: It is not a piece of art, it is a form of art. It is the analog dream of a digital child who wants to get attention about his widely perception.

A: What does the term Libertarian mean to you?

E: Consequences of collective life forms.

Interview: Agustin Yarde Buller - agustin@libertarianmag.com

                                                                                                          ‘YEKPARE’ (monolithic) from nerdworking on Vimeo.