From Sovereign of Seeing to Interaction with Body: A Backyard Narrative in Harbiye

FROM SOVEREIGN OF SEEING TO INTERACTION WITH BODY: A BACKYARD NARRATIVE IN HARBİYE

Ceren Okumuş, MA Student in ITU Architectural Design,

Advisor//İpek Akpınar, Assoc. Prof. Dr. ITU Faculty of Architecture

FROM SOVEREIGN OF SEEING TO INTERACTION WITH BODY: A BACKYARD NARRATIVE IN HARBİYE

CEREN OKUMUŞ, ADVISOR//ASSOC. PROF. DR. İPEK AKPINAR

Ceren Okumuş, MA Student in ITU Architectural Design, İpek Akpınar, Assoc. Prof. Dr., AGU/ITU Faculty of Architecture

Abstract Harbiye is one of the modern settlements of İstanbul. In this neighborhood, residential buildings typologically include backyards which are close to each other. Because of the location of residential buildings, interaction starts with a curtain opening every day. Seeing the other neighbor or not being seen from outside rule the everyday life, and the lives of the backyard users take shape according to this observer-observed relationship.

However, seeing is not the only interaction in the backyards: With a deeper observation of everyday life, another way of communication can be discovered. A garden wall which is used as a shelter for the cat, a morning shout from upper floor neighbor, shadow of a chestnut tree which is used by first-floor neighbors creates another way of communication. This essay investigates the other way of communication in everyday life with the following questions: How did seeing become so important in our lives and what is the effect of its importance? Is there a way to take down the sovereign of seeing and building up a new way of interaction via other senses? And could this interaction create more humanitarian and bodily-sense relationships between various kinds of lifestyles? The research will be held on backyards of Harbiye and Osmanbey starts with an investigation of the historical importance of seeing which became more dominant with the central perspective tradition of Renaissance painting and expands through daily life. With the domination of seeing, the separation between the vision and the body occurs and causes the loss of importance of other senses. But with a rich environment of daily life, dispense the authority of the vision could be possible and it can give opportunities of another way of communication. In addition to writing, the printout will be collages of different narratives of each life which tell the stories of their everyday life events.

Keywords: Harbiye, Osmanbey, Backyard, Interaction, Seeing, Perspective, Observation, Surveillance, Everyday Life

Introduction The story which is told in this text takes place in a backyard of Harbiye. Here is a space for the users encounter at least once a day, here is a space approached with caution, here is a space avoided from stranger, here is a space where the day starts after a curtain-opening, after a while with familiarity; here is a space for observation of the relations of solidarity, and here is a space that exists not only with seeing but also with actions. How do people build relationships in a backyard where women leaning out of a window, cats walking on their tiptoes, flowers in the balconies, clothes, curtains and shutters, sunshine, the rustling of the walnut tree and old garden walls are ordinary actors? At which point, relationships differ from each other; what are the sources of the relationships? In the first chapter, the text aims to explain the relationships of the backyards. Through this explanation, it leads us to the discovery that users integrate with each other by using their eye. Then, it answers the question of “why did seeing become so important and turn into a surveillance mechanism?”, with making a reference to the central perspective tradition of the Renaissance painting. Besides, it tries to investigate the power relations caused by surveillance mechanism, the separation of the eye from the body; because of this separation receding into background of the other senses and the effects on daily life in Harbiye backyards. In the second chapter, the text mentions bodily-centered approaches which take down the power of the eye. With some interactions in daily life, described as collages, drawings, and short stories, the users of the backyard become more familiar with each other, and these interactions try to break the power of seeing and its centrical location.

[1]

To see, the authority of seeing, and a neighbor as a prying eye ” The neighbor is the eye. An eye who has the right to look at everywhere. For example, the eye has seen the blindness of the universe. Even though it has seen everything, (…) it has not been perfected itself yet. It cannot calculate the light refracted in the water after, it gets overpowered by bright light, and gets blurry when too close. It needs a mind to process what it’s seeing. With its magnificent complexity, it is both magnifical and nothing on its own. Because of some bad things arise in the body and eye friendship, it has not been asked itself, in whose socket am I? “ (Kaygusuz, 2007) Harbiye is a place close to Taksim in İstanbul, which represents the modernization of the city even if this is not obvious nowadays. Modernization meant having a flat in İstanbul in old times, but now this cannot be considered as a representation of modernization anymore due to the mass production of apartment buildings.

However, in Harbiye, there is a distinguishable typology that makes these apartments unique (Figure 1, Image 1). This typology is the backyards, and each of the almost-50-years-old-apartment buildings have a backyard.

Beyond their physical existence, these backyards continue an almost finished type of relationship; the neighborhood. Even if it recalls notions such as solidarity and giving-taking relationships at first; in Harbiye backyards, neighborhood has been mostly based on to see and to be seen, maybe because of the locations of the apartment buildings, or because of the unbeatable instinct: Curiosity. To see or pry into someone else’s life is the main subject in backyards: All the other lives have been constructed by this main subject, the authority of seeing has invaded the daily life before it neighborhood relations.

Figure 1. Map of Harbiye Image 1. Harbiye street view

In that case, where does this authority of seeing which is accepted without any question come from and how did it become real? Does it come from the right of to look at everything which has been told in the text of Kaygusuz? Or does this right occur in the course of time? How do people believe if someone sees everything she/he is the authority? Even if the right to look at, and to see everything is attributed to god in religions, the authority of seeing can displace itself easily and create similars of itself. Sometimes, these similarities may appear in an art tradition or in the daily life.

One of the images of the authority of seeing is the perspective tradition in Renaissance painting. Berger, explains the perspective tradition in his book Ways of Seeing: “Perspective makes the eye the center of the world of visible objects. Everything is collected on the eye like the escape point at infinity. The world of visible objects is organized to spectator as the universe which has been organized to god” (Berger, 1995, p.16). This is the rule of perspective in the Renaissance painting. It pictures the idealized world and decides the places of the objects; which will be in front, which will be on the back or the distance as well. The central perspective which includes the tradition of looking at the world from the outside creates a domesticated and controllable space.

The domesticated space also includes “body� which is located across the eye as an object of the eye. According to Florenski, the relationship between the body and the eye is not a relationship which comes to life with an alive touch and feelings; the eye perceives the painting space as a completed body which stands across itself (Florenski, 2007, p.10).

Table 1.

Conceptual Map

The separate positioning of the body and the eye can be described as a result of Cartesian philosophy that mechanizes our perception of the world. The break between the senses and the identification of seeing as the best accepted sense in daily life bring along the authority of seeing and make the other senses less important.

Because of its domination, the sense of seeing hardens the other senses to exist. The comprehension and immobilization in the sense of seeing evoke a control mechanism which also exists in Renaissance painting. The seeing, which produces a constant domination and certitude, is fostered extensively and it establishes the metaphysic of existence ruled by the eye (Levin, 2005 cited in Pallasmaa, 2011, p.22). According to MerleauPonty this means “yoking the world of an absolute observer, that has same distance to everything, no point of view, no location, no body, and pure logic“ (Merleau-Ponty, 2008, p.24). As a result of this situation, understanding with perceptions and seeing with the body lost their importance. However; experience is made of the unity of senses, not by their sharp separation. (Merleau-Ponty, 2008, p.27-28).

As another result of easy translocation of authority, neighbor can be described as an authority in daily life. The apartments around Harbiye offer backyards to occupants where they can both be busy with ordinary tasks of daily life and pry each other. Neighbor, as a representation of the eye that has the right to look at everything in daily life, becomes visible in the backyards from the first day of the apartment life. The newcomer causes curiosity and the neighbors seek to understand it, between the general neighborhood relationships. However, the previous acceptance of the domination of the eye shows itself here too. Closing the shutters and curtains, hanging the clothes as a barrier, canvases, covers for privacy in balconies… All of these are the members of the idealized world where prying has been accepted. As the whole backyard users has accepted the authority of the eye previously, they live their lives obeying the rules of the seeing. The eye behind the curtain becomes the eye of the god: It puts a distance between itself and the one who is being watched, and exists in an idealized world. As a result of coming forward of seeing amongst the other senses, the authority of the eye is accepted once again in daily life. Backyard therefore is defined as a place that is watched behind a curtain. Because of the distance created by the observation, the backyard becomes a place where other senses are given less importance, and that the unrest of being seen is prominent. Here is a place where the inside-outside separation becomes clear with windows, here is a place where the daily life’s rules are reproduced with the comfort of criticizing of the other lives from a constant point. The eye pursues the existence of itself in the world without any interaction with the others. Neighbor is only the stranger seen from a distance. (Figure 2)

Figure 2. The backyard where has been shaped by the authority of the eye

[2]

Beyond the authority of seeing As the perspective regime based on Renaissance painting orders the objects according to near-far relationship and aims to establish authority with a divine, a central eye; the painting after Renaissance realizes the opposition with the different positioning of the view. For the careless observer it might seem there are some mistakes of perspective in these pictures, however; what really matters is that two objects are never seen at the same time: The time needed for the view to pass from a point in space to another always goes in between the fragments of space, and the being has been seen through the prism of time (Merleau-Ponty, 2008, p.24). It can be understood as the series of the escape from the idealized world of central perspective and makes it real with a try to give back the deserved polycentricism and complexity to the image (Florenski, 2007, p.10). The dynamic view which looks through different views pays no attention to the authority of the one eye.

Even though the sense of sight taming the body and its superiority in daily life puts “seeing with body” and “perceiving with all the senses” in the background, emergence of dynamic view and its allowance of polycentricism creates polycentric relations between the senses. Also, it seeks to combine the long-separated eye and body. This situation is explained by Pallasmaa with a reference to Merleau-Ponthy philosophy as this: ‘For Merleau-Ponty, sensation does not only consist visual, tactual and aural data. He speaks about sensing as a whole, with our whole being’ (Pallasmaa, 2011, p.27). In the backyard, the neighboring eye as an authority is a situation only if the eyesight is accepted as a dominating sense. Only watching the rear windows, finding ways not to be seen from across might be a way of communicating, but they are also intensifiers of the authority of seeing. Because looking is the opposite of knowing and acting. Observer stands across the seen, but doesn’t know how it got created or its inner reality. Observer as a passive being stands still, being an observer is a disattachement from both the ability to know and the power to act (Rancière, 2010, p.10). As a result, seeing is only a limited part of the sensual spectrum and if it is alone, it only empowers the authority of seeing. Including the other senses and the time into the eyesight is an opposition to the authority of seeing.

The eye, mentioned in text before, is defective, because of some bad things arise in the body and eye friendship, it has not been asked itself, in whose socket am I? Who are these backyard users then? Are they made of only from curtains, canvases, shutters or hanged clothes in the world of seeing rather than knowing?

Daily life consists varieties that cannot only be explained through seeing. Although the dominance of eyesight, the visual relationship, and elements of privacy which are produced as a result of this relationship put a distance between the observer and observed as central perspective does; backyard life is not solely dependent on these. Daily life is the place where the distance produced by seeing and limits of seeing are overcome. These varieties which do not accept the authority of seeing and, described as different way of understanding and telling, might be the relationships which established with body and speech.

In lieu of conclusion The relationships, which are discovered with the usage of backyard for a certain while, take shape by carrying the actors’ daily lives out of their home. Intersection of the acts, which start primarily by “leaning out of the window”, with the other actors of the backyard, can also be understood as a starting point of denial of the interaction through only seeing. Leaning out of the window and trying to take a branch of the neighbor’s tree, asking questions to each other from window to window, pouring water on the noisy neighbors, laying under the shade of the walnut tree which belongs to next door neighbor, and making a home to stray cats from the wall which divides two backyards can be given as examples of these acts. In every example, either an act which is produced over a shared object; or over a common usage can be seen. In these actions; which give back the required importance to the body, support polycentricism instead of a single spectator, try to understand the uniqueness of the lives and their productions; actors not only exist with their images but also with their actions.

(Figure.3)

Figure 3. Backyard, perceived when being outside

The backyard appears as an ordinary space in daily life throughout this text; which consists of the authority establishing function of seeing and prying, and the research of the authority scattering tactics. In the backyard, where one acts with deliberation because of the fear of being seen, the life changes when everything becomes familiar and this familiarity allows extraordinary interactions. Following the curiosity resolving but authority constituting relationship which is produced by prying into each other’s lives behind the windows; interaction tactics appear as a place which is not only produced by seeing outside of the windows but also by putting forward the body. This appearance gets the person question today’s world; is it possible to find another way of communication and collectiveness? What kind of changes appear in architecture if the body and the other senses, polycentricism, chaos, and time are considered? These questions could be subject for another research, but they still worth asking and getting excited about.

References Berger, J., 1995. Görme Biçimleri. 6th ed. İstanbul: Metis Yayınları.

Florenski, P., 2007. Tersten Perspektif. 2nd ed. İstanbul: Metis Yayınları.

Merleau-Ponty, M., 2008. Algılanan Dünya. 2nd ed. İstanbul: Metis Yayınları.

Pallasmaa, J., 2011. Tenin Gözleri. İstanbul: YEM Yayın.

Rancière, J., 2010. Özgürleşen Seyirci. İstanbul: Metis Yayınları.

Kaygusuz, S., 2017. Gözün kayıp oyuğu. T24, [online]. (Last updated 13:44 PM on 02nd May 2017). Available at: <http://t24.com.tr/yazarlar/komsu/gozun-kayip-oyugu,17163> [Accessed on 15 May 2017]