Overview

Rob Nixon describes the relatively slow and invisible environmental disasters that follow global warming, climate change, toxic drift, expanding droughts, oil spills, and wars as “Slow Violence.” Drawing on this concept of “slow violence,” Christof Mauch proposes the concept of “slow hope,” arguing that the untold stories of silent but positive environmental change, often hidden in plain sight, must be made visible.

Unfortunately, examples of the aforementioned crises and the responses to them are frequently encountered in the Turkish context. It is inevitable to observe the evolving responses to the negative impacts of these decisions, as well as the impacts of political decisions on nature and society. This course will focus on the ways art intersects with Slow Violence and Slow Hope, examining and relating these events from a social science perspective, while also attempting to analyze them from an artistic perspective and make them visible through artistic practice. The primary objective of the course is to examine examples of Slow Hope and Slow Violence in Türkiye, generally considered within the context of Environmental Studies, and to relate these two concepts to the concept of Artivism, which stands somewhere between activism and artistic creation. This will be explored and discussed through Artivist examples. The effort to combine art with activism to generate political, aesthetic, and economic approaches to emerging events will be another focus of this course and the path to its outcomes.

In addition to theoretically examining the topics mentioned above, participants are also expected to engage in practical exercises to bring to light events they believe exemplify the concepts of slow violence and slow hope in Türkiye, using art and/or new media in various formats. Participants are expected to consider an event not solely as an environmental disaster, but also to consider and highlight aspects of gender, racism, and class inequality.