The City as an Archive of Doing and Undoing: The Case of Istanbul's Atatürk Cultural Center

Abstract: This article traces the recent debates around the preservation or demolition of the Atatürk Cultural Center (AKM) in Istanbul's Taksim Square as a case example of urban visual memorial projects. In doing so, it argues that the city of Istanbul, and Taksim Square in particular, archive processes of political doing and undoing, with implications on the claims to public life and political futurity. Not only a site of compulsive preservation, the archive is also an expression of the drive to incorporate the memorable or to annihilate its very possibility. As such, the discourse over AKM and its evocations of remembering, forgetting, ruin, or renovation, position it as an especially poignant cultural artifact, bringing into visibility the politicity of the city as an archive that chronicles its own internal incongruence.