How Can a University Course Multiply? Discussions on Aesthetics and Politics

April 12 , 15:00 – 18:00

Graduate students of the course Design and Society: Aesthetics and Politics, taught by Meltem Ahıska at Kadir Has University, Faculty of Art and Design, in the Fall 2024–2025 semester, are bringing their research into the public sphere. These research projects—on robots, artificial intelligence, archives, memory, ecology, and art—question the representations of lived reality through aesthetic perception and modern power relations. By addressing themes such as visuality, sound, time, and space, they point to ruination and numbness, opening up discussions on the politics and potentials of aesthetics.

 

Program Overview:
Opening | 3 PM
Meltem Ahıska

 

Session 1 | 3:15 PM 
Technology, Error and Adventure

• Tolgay Keskin – An Off-Modern Ruin: Detroit: Become Human
• Çılga Doğukanlı – Broken AI: Can Reflective Nostalgia Be a Tool?

Regimes of Sensibility and Imagined Communities 

• Sedanur Akyavaş – Imagined Communities and Modernism: Reimagining  Group D?
• Beyza Oruç – Between Reality and Artificiality: The Transformation of Aesthetic Perception
• Özkan Fıçıcıoğlu – Marketing Visuals and the Everyday Role of Humanoid Robots

 

Session 2 | 4:15 PM 
Time, Space, and Consumption

• Bengisu Öten – Fashion Photography on the Tension Line of Myth and Power: Ground Control
• Aydıncan Ataberk – Motion and Power Relations in Contemporary Media Politics: The “Succession” Series

Creative Encounters Beyond Representation

• Bengisu Yağışan – A Promise of Transformation in the Sensory Texture: Sound Poetry
• Lisa Araz – Archive as Encounter: Family Photos in the Huşamadyan Archive
• Dicle Beştaş – SedimentXILT: Layers of Human and Non-Human Labor

 

Session 3 | 5:30 PM 
Discussion: What Do We Expect from the University?