Construction sites, temporary yet lengthy occurrences in urban landscape, are sites of both production and performance. While resting on a complex set of regulations, planning and finance, construction embodies the collective consciousness in its most solid form. Each building material - the economies of its production, flows or labour required to put it up - can be scrutinised through the lens of its political agency. At the same time, the repetitive sounds and actions inherent for construction can be seen as urban choreographies directed by the economic forces at work.
İnşaat (Construction) is a venture into building sites across Sinop and a collection of artefacts and narratives embedded in them. On one hand, it aims to open a discussion about the conception of the material world, i.e the material culture of the region, and on the other to offer a feminist perspective on this labour intensive, exclusively male industry.
We started our research by reading the local newspapers, which were reporting on the stop of the construction due to various irregularities and the overall negative impact of the 2016 urban plan. This action was initiated by a group of citizens led by an activist Hale Oğuz. Once we arrived to Sinop, we spent couple of days mapping and visiting several still ongoing construction sites, where we got to know both the local construction methods, still fairly unmechanised and thus heavily reliant on human labor. With the help of translators, next couple of days we conducted several interviews with construction workers. We were asking about the work they have been doing as well as about the working conditions, especially with regards to the recent construction stop. We presented our findings on a table improvised from the local materials and in a booklet that was a collection of intimate stories about the everyday on a construction.