Shadowing Silence: A Spatial Rewriting of Myths and Fairytales

This paper, through theory and the authors’ own pedagogical and critical spatial practice, explores the ways in which myths and fairytales may suggest playful and collective storytelling to create a plurality of meanings and corporeal engagements that are often silenced through the hegemonic structures of society. Referencing feminist philosophers Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, and Hélène Cixoux, the authors take myths and fairytales as a medium to address individual urban experiences and resistance against the city’s gentrification through neoliberal administrations. Their practice, entitled Spatialized Myths, includes a collective mapping of historical and contemporary myths and rewriting of them through a shadow performance with students of architecture in a non-functioning synagogue in Gaziantep, a former Roman city in southeastern Turkey.