MANIFEST'OU 2ND INTERNATIONAL ART AND DESIGN SYMPOSIUM CALL FOR PAPERS
The Manifest’ou 2nd International Art and Design Symposium, organized by Istanbul Okan University Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, will be held both in person and online. This year, under the theme “Everyday Life,” the symposium aims to open a discussion on how the everyday is addressed, represented, and transformed within the art and design disciplines of the 21st century.
Although often considered mundane, trivial, or invisible, everyday life constitutes the sphere where social structures, cultural codes, and personal experiences most intensely converge. Routines, habits, objects, and spaces extend far beyond mere functionality; they carry aesthetic, political, and cultural significance. In this sense, art and design emerge as powerful instruments that make the everyday visible, transform it, and imbue it with new meanings.
Since the second half of the twentieth century, everyday life has been a crucial site of inquiry in both social theory and artistic practice. Henri Lefebvre identified the everyday as the most invisible yet decisive domain of modern capitalist society, while the Situationist International developed strategies of creative action to subvert the mechanisms that turn individuals into passive consumers, thus transforming the quotidian into a space of resistance and invention.
Art and design, therefore, do more than represent daily life—they actively reshape it. From bringing ordinary objects into the realm of art, to turning everyday gestures into aesthetic performances, or reimagining familiar objects in terms of form, function, and meaning, these practices reveal the aesthetic, political, and cultural dimensions embedded in the everyday.
Guiding Questions
· How is everyday life approached and critically engaged within artistic practices?
· Can art become a method of resistance within daily routines?
· How might the ordinary and the invisible be rendered visible through art and design?
· In what ways can the performative dimensions of daily life—embodied in gesture and action—be articulated through art and design?
· How can the reconfiguration of everyday objects, spaces, and practices through design contribute to cultural and social transformation?
· Might re-examining the conventional relationships between people and spaces through design foster new perspectives in both individual and collective perception?
· To what extent do artworks that inhabit or represent everyday life shape cultural and aesthetic values, and can such influences serve as catalysts for future artistic production?
· Could the intersections of daily routines and artistic experience play a strategic role in fostering environmental awareness?
· How does digitalization alter the experience of everyday life, and what implications does this shift hold for art and design practices?
The Manifest’ou 2nd International Symposium on Art and Design invites scholars, artists, and designers to engage with these and related questions. Together, we will reflect on how everyday life is represented, reimagined, and transformed within art and design in the 21st century, and what aesthetic, cultural, political, and social questions emerge from these engagements.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Dr. Marcus Graf - Academician, Curator
GUEST SPEAKERS
Kurtul Erkmen - Architect, Founding Member and Chair of the Board of AURA Istanbul
Merve Gedik - Director of Cultural Heritage Projects, Department of City History, Promotion and Tourism, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality
Şeyda Çetin - Curator (Meşher)
Füsun Ertuğ - Founding Member of The Women’s Library and Information Centre Foundation (WLICF)
Yasemin Özcan - Artist
Yıldız Öztürk - Academician, Curator
Click here for the Symposium Full-Text Book.
MANIFEST'OU 1ST INTERNATIONAL ART AND DESIGN SYMPOSIUM CALL FOR PAPERS
The 1st International Art and Design Symposium will be held as a hybrid event within Istanbul Okan University's Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture. Its goal is to explore the methods that emerge in this context and to broaden the conversations between memory, sensory experiences, and creative practices in the transmission of cultural heritage.
Cultural heritage not only carries the physical structures and records histories of the past but also embodies intangible traces that reach into the present. In this context, shaped by historical processes, environmental impacts, and social transformations, the senses emerge as an indispensable component of heritage transmission. Senses, functioning as the building blocks of both individual and collective memory, contribute to the reproduction of cultural identity and social memory through perceptions like smell, taste, hearing, touch, and sight. In the fields of art and design, the role of the senses becomes even more pronounced, enabling a richer conveyance of cultural heritage that reimagines and situates the past within contemporary experiences. Questions surrounding how sensory experiences influence memory and manifest within artistic and design practices provide fertile ground for interdisciplinary discourse, underscoring the dynamic relationships at the intersections of the senses, memory, art, and design. This dynamic enables not only the transference of the past to the present but also the reimagining of the future through cultural and artistic perspectives.
Through symposium discussions on memory, transmission, sensory experience, and cultural heritage within innovative creative practices, we aim to foster debate on the ways in which the senses function as vessels of individual and collective memory and contribute to the renewal of cultural identity. We encourage submissions exploring questions such as:
· To what extent do sensory experiences influence the design of cultural heritage transmission and the processes of artistic production, and what are their impacts?
· How does the scent of a place, the texture of a fabric, the color of an image, or the tone of a sound activate cultural memory and contribute to the revitalization of heritage?
· How can memory and sensory experiences, through an interdisciplinary approach, give rise to new artistic and design practices?
· What role do sensory experiences play in the processes of preserving and transforming cultural heritage in an increasingly digital world?
· How do diverse sensory representations across time, place, and cultures foster dialogue within art and design disciplines?
By addressing these and similar inquiries, the symposium invites academics, artists, and designers engaged in creative fields to explore the potential of sensory experiences in the preservation and transformation of cultural heritage. It seeks to deepen understanding of the role of the senses in the modern recreation of heritage and aims to develop new approaches in artistic and design expressions that bridge past and present while strengthening future directions.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Prof. Dr. Eva Şarlak - Işık University, Visual Arts Faculty Member
Bager Akbay - Designer, Artist, Educator
GUEST SPEAKERS
Fisun Yalçınkaya - Sanat Dünyamız, Editor-in-Chief
Burcu Çimen - Yapı Kredi Museum, Museum Director
Click here for the Symposium Abstracts Book.
Click here for the Symposium Full-Text Book.