Seçil Yaylalı

61 Meters of Kahya Bey Street

with Ekmel Ertan (both as PASAJ’s members)

2015-2016, Istanbul, Turkey

mixed materials

as part of the project "We decide how we reside" initiated by HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

The exhibitions took place in Apartman Projesi Berlin 2015, PASAJ Tarlabasi 2016

Kahya Bey Sokak is a 61-meter-long street in Tarlabaşı, a complex yet harmonious neighbourhood of Istanbul mostly inhabited by low-income people belonging to different subcultures. 61 Meters of Kahya Bey Street developed around the idea of enabling the district's self-representation through its residents. It was realized as part of the project We decide how we reside, initiated by HKW to stimulate practical and radical discourse on housing in Berlin, Istanbul, and Marseille, respectively, with the participation of the art spaces Kotti-Shop, PASAJ, and La Folie Kilomètre.

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Seçil Yaylalı and Ekmel Ertan engaged with a group of kids living and working along Kahya Bey Sokak through a series of workshops on the basics of photography and video shooting, interviewing, and story-telling held at PASAJ, an artist-run space located on the road and around the area. Kids were among the residents living on their streets the most, trying somehow to fill their time without any proper educational, sports, and entertainment services and spaces available.

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After the workshops, they started documenting the neighbourhood by themselves, addressing people and places they considered significant for their story. Relatives, friends, neighbours, and local acquaintances were filmed and recorded in their houses, shops, and streets and asked about their lives as residents of Tarlabaşı. Interviewers and interviewees soon initiated spontaneous and confidential conversations on many aspects of their personal experiences in the area, bringing up crucial issues such as inadequate and unsafe social housing, precarious working conditions, lacking services, and public space security. 61 Meters of Kahya Bey Street became a series of documentary videos telling the district from various local perspectives that voice the residents’ expectations, desires, and attachments to the district. 

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The group created an interactive textile map as a medium for displaying the short films, reproducing the layout of Tarlabaşı and combining some documentation pictures taken by the participants during the project.