Electronic Crossovers
I Used to Hear You, But Now I Cannot:
On an Urban Renewal Project in Istanbul
Burcu Yaşin

Pera Museum’s talk and performance series Electronic Crossovers invites you to explore the fields that interact with electronic music!

A fruit of collaboration with Istanbul-based musical collective ÆVOM, “Electronic Crossovers” looks at a range of fields and disciplines that feed on and interact with electronic music, technology, literature, cinema, environment, psychology, sociology, computer games, politics, urban transformation, nature and philosophy to name a few. In the first event of 2020, Burcu Yaşin invites us to reflect on urban transformation with reference to sound.

Burcu Yaşin’s “I Could Hear You Once, But Now You Cannot Be Heard” centers on the impact of the urban renewal project in Sarıgöl quarter of Gaziosmanpaşa district in Istanbul on the quarter’s soundscape, and looks at how Roman communities and musicians, major figures in the 1990s’ entertainment scene of Istanbul as well as residents for nearly 50 years, have become unheard in urban memory and daily practices.

The work revolves around the visual as well as the audio aspect of urban renewal, and intends to make a sound-oriented analysis of the renewal project’s impacts on the neighborhood through the concepts of "acoustic communities" and "acoustic communication” as put forward by Barry Truax. This qualitative research collected field data via semi-structured interviews with residents of the quarter and those of the neighboring quarters who hear the quarter’s sounds, observant’s experiences, and photography and video archives. At the fourth event of the series, Burcu Yaşin introduces her project and invites the audience, through her DJ performance, to imagine the sounds of a quarter that is still going under urban renewal.

18:30     Talk
20:00     Performance

The event will take place at the Pera Museum Auditorium. Free admission; drop in. The talk will be in Turkish.

Burcu Yaşin, born in 1991 in Kocaeli, started her musical studies at age six as a member of the children’s choir of Kocaeli Metropolitan Municipality Conservatory. In 2008, she was admitted in the composition program of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul State Conservatory at the high school level. In 2010, her work “Spatium” was played at the Young Composers - New Pieces: The Journey of Sound IV. Next year, in 2011, Burcu got admission from the Theory undergraduate program at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul State Conservatory. In 2013, Yaşin entered the musicology program as part of her double major studies, and in 2014, she was awarded an associate degree in the Theory program. In the 2015-2016 academic year, she pursued her Musicology studies at Københavns Universitet under the Erasmus programme. Yaşin graduated in 2017 from the Musicology department at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul State Conservatory, where she is presently a graduate student. Her current roles include teaching assistant at Sabancı University for two courses lectured by Prof. Filiz Ali, namely Major Works of Classical Music and Major Works of 20th Century Music, and lecturer at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul State Conservatory. Her extracurricular activities include volunteering projects for underprivileged, discriminated children at risk.

What is ÆVOM?
ÆVOM is an İstanbul based, borderless and independent collective organizing arts, culture and music events in different venues.