The memory of Çubukçu Han as a visual archaeological experiment

THE MEMORY OF ÇUBUKÇU HAN AS A VISUAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT: This study aims to revive the historical, sociological, and aesthetic memory of Çubukçu Han, a building located in the Taksim–Tünel district that has gradually fallen into obscurity and faces the threat of demolition. Based on archival photographs dated between 1969 and 1971, the research develops a new interpretation of the building's past, its spatial memory, and the socio-cultural position of the families who once lived there. The main questions of this study are: How can an architectural structure be remembered through art? Can an ethical balance be established between documentary intent and artistic interpretation? The dissertation approaches these questions through an interdisciplinary method. The artist's background in Fashion and Textile Design with its focus on material, pattern, and form has evolved into a methodology of visual archaeology at the doctoral level. Thus, the technical language of fashion design and the conceptual depth of the plastic arts converge. The aim is not to interpret archival photographs and found objects with the historian's obsession for a single "truth" or the archaeologist's chronological precision, but rather to treat them as creative materials within a practice that remains accountable to archival responsibility. This approach seeks to provide the artist with both creative freedom and an ethical awareness of boundaries. The first chapter examines modern and postmodern approaches to historiography through the ideas of Ortega y Gasset, Southgate, Foucault, and Kaya Yılmaz. The second chapter discusses the relationship between archaeological knowledge systems and art. The third chapter explores the dialogue between art and sociology, focusing on the social position of the contemporary artist. The fourth chapter analyzes the status of photography as a document through the perspectives of Sontag, Berger, Benjamin, and Öngören. The fifth chapter investigates the interrelations between city, architecture, space, and object, contextualizing the historical background of Çubukçu Han. The sixth chapter compares the spatial and mnemonic strategies of artists such as Steichen, Serttaş, Shiota, Shonibare, Kabakov, and Calle. The seventh and final chapter presents the practical application of the proposed method, titled "A Visual Archaeology Experiment: The Memory of Çubukçu Han." Within this framework, the "Ghost Wardrobe" project reproduces the garment patterns found in archival photographs using translucent fabrics, rendering the past visible within space. Extending from photograph to pattern, from pattern to environment, this production process defines artistic practice as an ethical field of memory. This research reconsiders the aesthetic and theoretical frameworks of memory-based artistic production in contemporary art. It aims to demonstrate how the document transforms into "image," how collective memory becomes visible through certain agents, and how the artist can exercise the right of secondary appropriation responsibly. Transforming the act of extracting a spirit from found photographs and slides into a spatial ritual through plastic values means traveling backward and forward in time through the phenomenological resonances of a creative spirit within history. Ultimately, this dissertation discusses the activist form of remembrance within the context of contemporary art and re-evaluates the artist's relationship with the archive through the ethics of historiography. A Visual Archaeology Experiment: The Memory of Çubukçu Han stands as an interdisciplinary inquiry in which the document becomes art, history transforms into space, and memory attains visibility. Keywords: Çubukçu Han, Visual Archaeology, Ethical Archaeology, Anonymous Memory, Secondary Appropriation, Ghost Wardrobe