Sur­rounded by the Uninhabitable

SALT Beyoğlu, Forum



Responding to a number of basic functional requirements, as well as introducing spaces for conversation, information-sharing, rest and study, Surrounded by the Uninhabitable by Céline Condorelli is an intervention that attempts to open up the Forum at SALT Beyoğlu. The revisiting and development of previous research and materials produced by SALT will be a primary focus in the evolution of the Forum.

Condorelli’s intervention is simultaneously a reconfiguration of the Forum, the reception area, and her Support Structures from the exhibition Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914 (November 22, 2011 - March 11, 2012; SALT Galata). By distributing/dispersing the reception area and creating multiple seating scenarios, the installation aims to encourage those promenading on İstiklal Caddesi to enter SALT Beyoğlu and experience the Forum as a publicly inhabitable space, to form new patterns of movement, use and encounter.

Surrounded by the Uninhabitable is an ongoing, evolving installation that revisits the study as the activity of thinking and researching, and the space dedicated to it. In this project different structures, on a scale between furniture and architecture, offer a range possible ways to use and inhabit the space of the Forum. They are composed of fragments of other rooms, and loosely refer in form and color to existing and fictional studies. This semi-utilitarian installation addresses the social function of space by combining sculptural object, exhibition and institution entrance.

In its second iteration, Surrounded by the Uninhabitable is reconfigured to a new set of functions that play out in a public arena - the Forum of SALT Beyoğlu. The first iteration of the installation acted as a Support Structure for books and objects in the exhibition Scramble for the Past. The project will be accompanied by an online publication that follows the adaption of the structures as they respond to a different set of criteria and a new environment.

In collaboration with the British Council.