‘Small Histories’ –individual study for the group research project ‘Reading the City of Signs – Istanbul: revealed or mystified?’

This collaborative project ‘Reading the City of Signs’ was inspired by propositions found in Italo Calvino’s book ‘Invisible Cities’. Taking up Calvino’s invitation to distrust the masks through which a city presents itself Wright and a group of collaborators from London and Istanbul visited Istanbul in April 2003 to produce collective readings of the city.

The focus of Wright’s individual study was the small histories of Istanbul, personal and local, the alternative histories to the grand narratives of the travel guides or history books. Using collected testimonies and tales, photographed traces and found objects Wright evolved a series of narrative components that enabled her to transpose and tell these small histories in response to the site of each exhibition or publication. These varying installations became progressively about the spatial relationships between written statements and visual fragments echoing Calvino: “But what enhanced for Kublai every event or piece of news reported by his inarticulate informer was the space that remained around it, a void not filled with words.”

‘Small Histories’ was site-specifically installed at Istanbul Bilgi University (2003), the Architecture Centre Bristol (2003), University of Nottingham (2003) and London College of Communication (2004). Elements from these installations were exhibited at AKSANAT Art Centre Istanbul (2004) and published in an accompanying book (2005). A review of ‘Reading the City of Signs’ project was published in Baseline magazine (month 2005) including a two-dimensional representation and explanation of ‘Small Histories’. Most recently one of collaborators, Gerard Mermoz, has written an essay on the collective project in Design Issues journal (Spring 2006).