Once upon a time in Pergamon: Reality and Representation in the Hellenistic City

Abstract

A current trend in archaeological scholarship is to produce hyper-real reconstructions of ancient ruins with three dimensional modeling programs such as 3-d Studio, sketch-up and/or photoshop. Visually impressive, these images produce a false sense of completeness. While such architectural fantasies seems harmless, on certain occasions they may reflect and reproduce repressive political ideologies. An example to such a powerful imagery was 3d reconstructions of Taksim Artillery Barracks, which were produced in a book called Ghost Buildings in 2010 (Figure 1). This book included 3d renderings of ten non-existent monumental buildings from Byzantium until 1950’s in Istanbul with the premise of what if they still existed. Inspired by these imagery, Turkish Government attempted to rebuild Artilley Barracks as a shopping mall in place of Gezi Park as a part of pedestrianization of Taksim project even though Gezi Park was under protection as a public green area by The Cultural and Natural Resources Protection Committee. Gezi uprising started as a public outrage at the decision in 27 May 2013 to prevent demolition of the park and reconstruction of Taksim Artillery Barracks.