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Light or Heavy?
Personal, Political or Cultural?
Mmm…I keep the personal intimate thoughts for my diary and my good friends.

For now, for this first time ever that I lay my thoughts open and available to all, I will hide behind the imaginary curtains of a workshop that I attended few weeks ago at the University of SOAS, with the theme Walls, Barricades. Borders, Gates: Political Negligence and the Twenty-First Century City 

Being the only non-academic attending did not feel too uncomfortable. Even though I thought that this type of gatherings tend to be one extra intent of “converting the converted”, I managed to stop my internal criticism and I realized that events like this one are necessary to “keep the flame’’ going.

It seemed to me that these academics are individuals who are trying to engage in the making of the contemporary history. Certainly, they do use their deep library type knowledge, fieldwork research but often they also know how to take off their “sophisticated glasses”, and convert into activists.
How much is the impact of academic activism?  It is hard to measure it.
How can art, social sciences, science really be part of the solution?

The solution of what? Do we even need or seek one? Are we too comfortable with the emotional, social and political maps of our cities? Our cities of extremes; of solidarity and  hate, of segregation and integration, of loneliness and collaboration. What means to be a good citizen? A good city planner? How do resist to segregation, discrimination, racism?

Istanbul, Beirut, Jerusalem, London, Damascus some of the cities we travelled during the workshop through the lenses of imperial nostalgia, fixation with walls, human stories, connections and separations, the power of ‘imposed, constructed’ images and Hope.

Keya Anjaria, used Orhan Pamuk’s novel Black Book and Perihan Magdens’ novel Two girls, to show that a literary story map is sociopolitical as well as geographical; in the sense of “what happens is determined by where it happens”.  There is space in novels where the protagonists walk, fight, cry, live, love, fear.

Pamuk and Magden use the streets, squares of Istanbul, (in my opinion, the most beautiful city in the world), to guide their readers into the city’s imperial past, religious and social present struggle and uncertain but hopefully (although unlikely any time soon) inclusive future.

The protagonists of both novels were placed to walk towards Taksim Square and once reaching it  they experienced a profound transformation, a liberation that comes after a tragic full of anguish past.

Why this rite of passage takes place in Taksim?  What does the square symbolize? It is a historic center, cosmopolitan, full of shops that invite for consumerism western style behaviour. But it is also the place where the 2013 Protests began, to protect Gezi Park that led to a gathering of 3.5 million people participating to rallies reacting to Erdogan’s unfair, undemocratic ways of governing.

Keya Anajaria, at the end of her talk did make a point about how literary fiction is not a practical solution to Istanbul’s struggles. Novels intermix fact and fiction. Black Book and Two girls do not give the answers we are longing for, but they do keep our mind sharp, our hearts sensitive and our compasses active and truth seeking, protecting us in a way from the flood of unnecessary knowledge and messages that “invade” our lives.

So if it is true what Keya says, that “what happens is determined by where it happens”, I am trying to mentally locate my city, Athens and search for symbolic streets, neighbourhoods, squares that are “stigmatized” with certain actions of oppression or resistance, historical joy or mourning.  These spaces  could perhaps serve as the ground of future interactions and responses to the city challenges.

So my call for action is to go out and explore our cities, walk their streets, ask questions and learn their history, read the wall graffitis and visit their galleries and museums, get involved, help and ask for help.

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Live our cities with curiosity.

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