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29.11.2024

International Conference - Confronting the Past, Building the Future: Memory Studies with the Youth

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On December 13-14, Hafıza Merkezi will organize an international conference titled "Confronting the Past, Building the Future: Memory Studies with the Youth". The conference aims to contribute to the efforts to confront the past and to engage the youth with innovative approaches to collective memory. 

Hafıza Merkezi Memory and Youth program aims to introduce young people from different cities across Turkey and from different social backgrounds to the fields of collective memory and memorialization, to increase their interest and knowledge and interest about these topics. The program creates a space for dialogue between the young individuals, who can share their own experiences, knowledge, and memories. It also gives us an opportunity to discuss the connections between past and present struggles.

In the third round of the program, which started in March 2024, we supported young people to contribute to memorialization efforts by producing their own projects, either individually or in small groups. This international conference will offer a platform for the project participants to share the methods and results of their original memorialization projects.

Date: December 13-14, 2024
Location: Anarad Hığutyun Building - Havak Hall, Papa Roncalli Str. Number: 128 Harbiye, Şişli İstanbul 

✍️ Click here to register. 

🔁 Turkish-English simultaneous interpretation will be provided. 
📤 For any questions, you can contact us at hafizavegenclik@hafiza-merkezi.org

The conference aims to create an environment of free thought and discussion, where participants can share their projects addressing issues such as state violence, racism, migration, gender, space and memory. Among our discussants are two experts from Armenia, Arsen Abrahamyan (Cultural and Social Narratives Lab) and Eviya Hovhannisyan (Heinrich Böll Foundation, Yerevan Branch). With roundtable meetings, interactive workshops, documentary screenings and memory walks, the event offers participants the opportunity to understand and experience the field of memory through different disciplines and practices. In the interactive workshops: 

  • Damla Sandal will explore what it means to reconstruct memory by making creative interventions in photographs during the Embroidering Memory workshop. 
  • Roza Erdem, through the Those Who Remain: Storytelling workshop, will allow us to vividly experience the role of stories in linking individual memory to collective memory. 
  • Takuhi Tovmasyan and Zeynep Kılıç, in the Tracing Rituals and Tables workshop, will demonstrate how food can shape and transform memory through the practice of making halva.

We will end the conference with a memory walk in Balat. This memory walk is the result of the creative collaboration of four institutions and individuals: the Cultural and Social Narratives Lab, with their Balat: Living Together project, the Hrant Dink Foundation, with their KarDes Multicultural Memory Tours guide, Karakutu Association, with their original methodology for interactive memory walks, and Sevcan Tiftik, who grew up in the neighborhood. 

Click here to view the brochure containing the project summaries of the participants.

Program 

December 13, Friday 

9.00 - 9.30: Registration and Opening Speech 

9.30 - 11.00: Memorializing Violence

  • Ruken Ay Adın, Confronting the Past: The Digital Memory Site of the 1930 Zilan Massacre
  • Şilan Es, Xo Vira Meke (Do Not Forget): The Memory of Dersim ‘38
  • Ayliz Onaylı, How Is a City Recognized? Urban Memory and Everyday Life Narratives in Maraş

Discussants: Eviya Hovhannisyan and Serhat Arslan

11.15 - 12.45: Memory Studies at the Intersection of Migration and Gender 

  • Burak Keşanlıoğlu, Pride in the Rural: Invisible Colors
  • Berfin Hanalp, The Gender of Migration – Memory of Truth
  • Serhat Vejîn Alan and Aybars Karahan, Out of Sight: Earthquake and the Migration Experiences of LGBTQ+ People

Discussants: Ameda Karakuzu, Müzeyyen Araç and Waseem Ahmad Siddiqui

13.30 - 14.45: Roundtable: Oral History and Difficult Fieldwork Experiences

  • Esengül Ayyıldız
  • Eviya Hovhannisyan
  • Mert Koçak

Moderators: Ruken Ay Adın and Şilan Es

14.45 - 15.55: Visual Testimonies: Documenting Exclusion and Discrimination through Documentaries

  • Caner Dara, Hey Hawar – Unmourned Grief (In Memory of Süleyman Aksu)
  • Mehmet Kuyumcu, Missed Lives – The Dom People

Discussants: Berke Baş and Nesrin Uçarlar

16.15 - 18.00: Interactive Memory Workshops

  • Damla Sandal, Embroidering Memory
  • Roza Erdem, Those Who Remain: Storytelling
  • Zeynep Kılıç, Tracing Rituals and Tables: Making Halva with Takuhi Tovmasyan 

(The workshops will run concurrently, with participation limited to 20 persons per workshop.)

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December 14, Saturday 

10.00 - 11.30: Spatial Memories

  • Jiyan Andiç and Francesco Pasta, There are Orchards around Diyarbakır: Retracing Forced Urbanisation in the 1980s-90s
  • Ezgi Ceylan and Fatih Aydın, Gionis Memory Map (Imbros)
  • Yiğit Göktuğ Torun and Roni Batti, Tari2na/Tariqna – The Memory Route (Antakya)

Discussants: Arsen Abrahamyan and Fırat Genç

11.45-13.15: Roundtable: Where Are Memory Walks Headed?

  • Damla Barin
  • Umut Azak
  • Arsen Abrahamyan

Moderators: Ezgi Ceylan and Yiğit Göktuğ Torun

14.00-15.15: Closing Session

15.30 Departure for the Balat Memory Walk


The Truth Justice Memory Center extends its gratitude to the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul and the Olof Palme International Center for their contributions to the realization of this international conference and the Memory and Youth project. The content of the conference is solely the responsibility of the Truth Justice Memory Center and does not reflect the views of the supporters.