Futures of Listening #Istanbul

Futures of Listening: Water Knowledge from Two Cities aims to establish and promote an empathic platform for listening to water knowledge from vulnerable local communities in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Istanbul, Turkey. To promote these underrepresented groups to identify water-related risks, and share the communities’ experiences and impact of maladaptive policies.

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Collaborating with Urban.Koop (Istanbul) and Forum Lenteng (Jakarta), the project develops a cross-breeding methodology with experts in hydrology and water security, sound studies and technology, participatory and experimental filmmaking, urban government and asset-based community building, and urban design practice to examine gaps between existing policies and the communities’ perceived risks and experienced impact and to explore ways in which their local knowledge and socio-economic, cultural, and emotional connections to water can be brought to the policy design and implementation.​

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Focusing on two neighbourhoods located at opposite ends of the world -Kalibata Pulo in the South Jakarta Water Basin and Sahintepe in the Küçükçekmece Lake Basin- the exhibition listens to the sounds of people and places. Over the course of one year, listening was approached not only as a research method but as a way of being together, making contact, and creating encounters.
 

Through sound and video installations composed of audio recordings, stories, images, and interviews gathered from both neighbourhoods, the exhibition invites visitors not only to look, but to pause, to listen, and to rethink urban life shaped by water through sound.