September 1955
2016 CAMIT Grant Recipient
About the Project
The Council for the Arts at MIT supported a VR documentary about the Istanbul Pogrom called September 1955 which was presented in the Keller Gallery at MIT.
During the Istanbul Pogrom in 1955, over two days many shops and houses of the non-Muslim minorities in Istanbul—Greeks, Armenians, etc—were destroyed by mobs. The virtual reality piece is a reenactment of the riots, giving viewers the perspective of a local shop owner. September 1955 draws on the photographic archive of Maryam Sahinyan (1911–1996) and Osep Minasoglu (1929–2013), Armenian photographers who lived in Istanbul at the time of the attack.
About the Artists
September 1955 project team:
Çağrı Hakan Zaman, PhD Student, Design and Computation Group, Department of Architecture
Deniz Tortum, Alum, MIT Comparative Media Studies and Open Documentary Lab
Nil Tuzcu, Research Fellow, Department of Urban Studies and Planning
In the Media
Filmmaker Magazine: True/False 2017 Critic’s Notebook 1: Resistance and Futility
Daily Sabah: Virtual Reality takes center stage at Istanbul’s Independent Film Festival
Buzzfeed: Perception And Embodiment In A VR Documentary
Huffington Post: Uncertainty in Post-Coup Turkey Is Refueling Istanbul’s Art Scene