The city on Bosphorus, in the last two decades, has faced one of the most impressive economic growths of Europe. In a few years, with a constant activity, hundreds of skyscrapers and many financial districts have been built in Istanbul. Yet, beyond the impressive horizontal and vertical expansion, which covered with concrete large areas and rebuilt from the ground ancient neighbourhoods, the great real estate speculation has eaten territory and dispersed communities. The new houses and new offices are too expensive for the citizens, which are slowly pushed to the fringes. The new Istanbul made of glass and steel, of cast iron and marble, is mainly a ghost town. And while the new buildings advance, the old neighborhoods surrender and are reduced to dust, with their centuries of history. It is since years that Tarlabaşı, the Kurdish district, was sentenced to death. It is one of the most living places in town, with the many barefoot children playing everywhere. To follow the border of this progressive demolition is an ideal observatory to the changings that occurred to this country in the last 20 years.
«Living in Tarlabaşı with my team was a powerful and painful experience for all of us – said the artist. It was like watching a dying star. It was like being exposed to its last rays, from the privilege observatory of the building where installed the work. And this work is opposed to the advance of the desert with the desperate vitality of poetry». The installation has been made inside a big Art Nouveau building at the centre of the neighborhood. The only inhabitant is a deaf girl. While entering, the visitor can notice the simple life of somebody who lives in this place out of time, without being able to hear the big rumble of capitalism that besiege her world, her house. Yet she can feel this roaring threat through its vibrations on the glasses all around her. They are all cracked. Beside a window, there is an old gramophone. Its voice, made of harmonic vibrations, is used by the girl like a prayer that can calm down the fury of the jackhammers and the excavators.
