Memory Train
Research & Visualization Project
Ongoing web app project
On February 6, 2023, a powerful earthquake that caused enormous damage struck Turkey, with Hatay suffering the most. The seismic event resulted in a significant number of deaths, along with substantial damage to the region's cultural heritage and destruction of infrastructure. Political indifference and bureaucratic hold-ups marred the aftermath of this disaster, compounding the already difficult task of the recovery process. With international media attention decreasing, the people of Hatay were primarily left to cope with the aftermath on their own, battling with displacement and the rubble of their former lives. This thesis examines the shortcomings of traditional disaster recovery methods. It proposes a community-driven approach that combines community knowledge, cultural customs, and novel strategies to increase resilience and empower affected communities, specifically Uzunbag Village. Setting the scene of the earthquake's immediate effects, the exploration describes the scope of the devastation and the early reactions of both governmental and non-governmental organizations. The way that once-vibrant neighborhoods were reduced to barren wastelands of debris is an unsettling example of how poorly and slowly things were recovered.
I proposed this project during the Spring semester of 2023 in the scope of the AKPIA Travel Grant at MIT, and it has more than "Memory Train" and its visualization. I imagined a variety of case studies mainly separated into three: (1) observations and analog data 1 collection through local narratives (2) collaboration with local people on regeneration projects and providing a place for them to sustain their work by building a pavilion together with woman and children (3) making workshops with local and natural materials (4) creation of community-driven archive through the creation and collection of analog data. The workshops and events are planned to provide a venue for community members to gather, share their experiences with us, the project team, and with each other, and engage in collective storytelling, all while we document analog data to create a pioneer model of community re-building.
The term "analog data" in this project refers to found objects in the research area that both illustrate how the earthquake affected the locals' current circumstances and new objects created in collaboration with the locals to highlight the disparities in how regenerative approaches can shape narratives.
Initially, we planned to collaborate with local artisans on silk making and printing to represent the cultural heritage while creating job opportunities and economic empowerment for the community, particularly for displaced women, queer individuals, ethnically separated people, and many others. The community-driven archive and website are planned to serve as a repository for earthquake-affected communities’ stories, experiences, and struggles. The website is planned to be open for journalists, artists, researchers, archivists, and academicians to tell these stories. The project’s scope was more significant than we had achieved since it was a short-term project, and we realized the project’s temporality might be more feasible for the small group of people there. NGOs and volunteers in the region are still working, but their numbers have decreased over time, and some projects were very long-term and insufficient to meet urgent needs. As a result of these observations, as our daily adventures go up and down and the city’s suffering is reflected somehow, we made some changes to the project. We created a temporary zone for creation to set an example for upcoming projects, improve community morale, and support the resistance with production.
Although the project uses transient objects to record the often ignored stories, it also addresses real-world issues by working with locals and creating new archives by collaborating with the community through arts and crafts and authentic storytelling. Building a reed pavilion in collaboration with the women and children of Uzunbag village, which acts as a complementary component for community involvement, is crucial to the project. This section of the project explains how the pavilion supports a cycle of production that uplifts locals, regenerates community morals, and strengthens production habits, explicitly making it easier to transform natural materials into handcrafted goods with the help of workshops organized by the project team. In addition to supporting these objectives, the pavilion workshops centered on cultural heritage like silk production and printing are essential to developing a community-driven regeneration space and archive that acts as a storehouse for regional experiences and narratives. The project concludes by assessing how these initiatives have affected nearby communities and discussing the larger ramifications of disaster recovery models. It evaluates the project's impact on resilience-building, power dynamics, and promoting a just and equitable recovery process. In addition to describing the aftermath of a terrible natural disaster, the thesis also highlights the potential of localized, participatory approaches in promoting resilience and recovery in communities affected by disasters through this thorough analysis. This work offers a critical perspective on the shortcomings of conventional disaster responses and suggests a model that prioritizes sustainable development, cultural preservation, and empowerment.
As an extension to our observations, our project evolved beyond merely reporting from a field trip into presenting a new approach to design that includes practical applications. Initially, the idea was to document the temporal moments following the earthquake—sometimes capturing beauty and hope, reflecting stark reality.
These temporal objects in memory train were collected from collapsed homes, empty and rubble-filled streets, and during conversations in the village where we stayed, each imbued with its own story. The primary goal of this documentation was to understand the stories these objects tell and to test how they collectively form a narrative. Each object has a unique story; therefore, the project was designed as a website where clicking on an object would reveal its story. Although the website has not yet been launched, these objects have been scanned using photogrammetry and modeled through a 3D modeling program, bringing them to virtual life.
