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Upcoming Project: Swimming and Walking…
The first Swimming ~ Writing ~ Walking workshop was held in October 2025 within the Kaş Performance Days Artist Residency Program in the Mediterranean Sea in Türkiye.
More will follow in 2027 on embodied methods in artistic research…
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Shared Walks
The Shared Walks walkshops offer various perspectives through playful walking prompts compiled in card sets that focus on different themes and help us connect to ourselves, others and the environment in different ways.
Shared Walks for Urban Dreaming (2026) to reveal urban unconscious
Shared Walks | Ways of Knowing (2024) for intercultural philosophy
Shared Walks | Futures (2023) for collective imagination
Shared Walks | Climate Change (2021) for ecological awareness
Shared Walks (2018) for urban participation and dialogue
All Actual Walks (2018-2026)
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The Politics of the Balcony in Contemporary Art
The ongoing PhD research on The Politics of the Balcony in Contemporary Art at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna explores the visual politics of public space and art practices that deal with political histories.
A short essay on The Political Balcony as “Difficult Heritage” was published in 2025.
The research idea is rooted in the handmade book Fall From A Balcony (2018/2020), which was prepared by intervening in various media photographs of balcony speeches to question the relations between space and power in recent history and today.
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The Home Series
Home Sketches are a series of ink drawings of interconnected houses, created throughout the lockdowns during the coronavirus outbreak in 2020.
They were first exhibited as part of the #TheVoidCity (2020-2021) project at Kunsttankstelle Ottakring within the Grundstein So Sind Wir Exhibition in Vienna in June 2021.
The Home Book 1: 40 evden geçmeden yolunu bulamayanlar (those who can’t find their way without going through 40 homes), a handmade artist book that engages with the image of home to explore belonging and our relationship to space, was first exhibited as part of the 46 group exhibition within the Edirne Biennale in June 2026.
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The Memory and Arts & Hafıza Merkezi
The Memory and Arts project (2018-2021) aimed to open up discussions through contemporary artworks dealing with human rights in Türkiye.
Talks and Memory and Arts 2020 was published in 2021 based on a selection/archive (400 contemporary artworks) and a public program.
By examining examples from the selection/archive, the chapter “Human Rights, Memory and Contemporary Artistic Practice in Turkey” was published in the volume Curating as Feminist Organizing (2023).
My collaboration with Hafıza Merkezi continued with The Shrinking Democratic Space Report (2022), examining the restraints placed on civil society organisations in Türkiye.
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Walk May Talk
Walk May Talk is a program looking at different aspects of walking as an artistic practice through a series of talks and walks, screenings, interactive performances, workshops and walkshops. It aims to create a space for exploration, discussion and inspiration in dealing with different issues through walking.
Initiated and co-curated by Eylem Ertürk and Bernd Rohrauer, the first program of Walk May Talk was organised in collaboration with the Social Design Studio and the Angewandte Library at the University of Applied Arts Vienna throughout May 2019.
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At Home in A Liminal World
At Home In A Liminal World (2019) researches the feeling of in-betweenness by exploring “liminal” situations. Times of transition, permanently liminal times, are the locus of the project.
Considering liminality both as a concept and an approach, the project involves artistic and curatorial approaches in three different actions: a performative act, in-depth interviews and an Instagram account as a space of everyday rituals.
The project was initiated by Eylem Ertürk and organised initially in collaboration with Magdalena Hubauer and Pavel Naydenov in the Social Design_Arts as Urban Innovation Master Program at the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2019.
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BAK: Revealing the City through Memory & Anadolu Kültür
BAK: Revealing the City through Memory (2012-2017) is a cultural collaboration and artistic production project that brings together young people from distant cities through a series of meetings, trainings, collective productions, exhibitions, screenings and panel discussions.
The BAK project was initiated and co-curated by Eylem Ertürk and Övgü Gökçe at Anadolu Kültür, and realized in collaboration with docIstanbul – Center for Documentary Studies and Geniş Açı Project Office (GAPO).
BAK Exhibitions in 2013 and 2016 were launched at Depo İstanbul and travelled to different cities in Türkiye.
Following up on my work with youth at Anadolu Kültür, I wrote the Youth and Participatory Projects in Türkiye Report in 2019 with Dutch Culture.
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Perform 2012
Officially presented by PARC: International Performing Arts Research and Production Association in Istanbul; Perform2012 was initiated and implemented by Pelin Başaran, Burcu Barakacı and Eylem Ertürk to organize performing arts activities during 2012 collaborations in the Netherlands and Türkiye.
Perform2012 (2011-2012) promoted various levels of collaboration between different groups of artists and audience, different scales of cultural organisations and institutions, different features and dynamics of cities and communities by building and organising bilateral performing arts activities in two countries: İstanbul Performing Arts Platform, Co-Production Program, and Performing Arts Circulation Program in İstanbul, Rotterdam and Amsterdam.
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Local Cultural Policies Handbook: Steps, Tools and Case Studies
Designed as a practical resource for municipalities and civil society organisations working in the field of culture, the publication pulls together new methodological tools and diverse practical experiences from civic participation in local cultural policy development from across Türkiye.
With contributions by renowned experts and co-authored and edited by Eylem Ertürk, Local Cultural Policies Handbook: Steps, Tools and Case Studies is based on knowledge and field experiences gathered from the project Invisible Cities: Building Capacities for Local Cultural Policy Transformation in Türkiye by the European Cultural Foundation, Anadolu Kültür and Cultural Policies and Management Research Center (KPY) at Istanbul Bilgi University.
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İstanbul2010 European Capital of Culture
Within a research project on the inventory of Cultural Heritage and Cultural Economy in Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture, I wrote and published two separate research reports on the Performing Arts Scene and the Music Industry in Istanbul.
In 2011, I co-edited the volume Talks Towards the City: Capital of Culture vs Capital Culture by the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality Directorate for Culture, based on six public talks held between November 2008 – May 2009 at the Tarık Zafer Tunaya Cultural Centre in Istanbul.
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beautiful:sunday | Self in Photography
beautiful:sunday (2010-2012) is a series consisting of more than a hundred photographs taken and edited every Sunday for two years as a self-inquiry and visual research into everyday life.
The Artist as the Object of Photography: Self-Portrait in Photography (Fotoğrafın Nesnesi Olarak Sanatçının Kendisi: Fotoğrafta Özportre) is my Master of Arts Thesis in Photography, Institute of Fine Arts at Marmara University, Istanbul, 2007. (Unpublished)
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The Public Turn in Contemporary Art
The Public Turn in Contemporary Art project consists of a series of activities on the role of contemporary art in the creative transformation and democratisation of public space.
Curated by Pelin Tan and coordinated by Eylem Ertürk at santralistanbul, the project was initiated and implemented by Istanbul Bilgi University and santralistanbul in cooperation with ArtBOX.gr (Thessaloniki), University of Art and Design Helsinki and Maison des métallos (Paris).
The project book Kamusal Alan ve Güncel Sanat – The Public Turn in Contemporary Art was edited by Asu Aksoy and Eylem Ertürk.
eylem:duygu 