Thesis by Emir Alışık
Papers by Emir Alışık
CyberOrient, 2022
Text-to-image software have become widely accessible over the last few years, and the resolution ... more Text-to-image software have become widely accessible over the last few years, and the resolution of the images generated by these machine-learning software has increased to such a degree that the images attract more and more public attention. Midjourney is one of the few available AI tools that provides images to textual prompts. With early beta access granted, I have put the abilities and biases of the tool to the test by prompting it to blend a fictional city (i.e., Ambergris, created by Jeff VanderMeer in 1993 first for a novella) with a historical one (i.e., Constantinople). The ontological distance of these two cities would not pose a problem, for the textual and visual data for both are vastly available on the internet, which data the software utilizes to generate images. The decision to blend these two is based on Ambergris’s quality of being a city influenced by the history of Constantinople, yet diverging from it in other aspects. The software ended up generating images, where it employed various periods and urban features of both cities, all the while conforming to depiction styles that can be associated with both Ambergris and Constantinople.
Sanat Tarihi Yıllığı - Journal of Art History, 2021
1919 Kasım'ı ile 1921 Nisan'ı arasını İtilaf kuvvetlerinin işgali altındaki İstanbul'da geçiren U... more 1919 Kasım'ı ile 1921 Nisan'ı arasını İtilaf kuvvetlerinin işgali altındaki İstanbul'da geçiren Ukraynalı ressam Alexis Gritchenko (Oleksa Hryshchenko), 1923’te Paris’te Constantinople Bleu et Rose (Konstantinopolis Mavi ve Pembe) sergisini açtı ve 1930’da halen yaşadığı Paris’te İstanbul’da tuttuğunu söylediği günlüğünü yayımladı. Günlük’te Bizans Konstantinopolis’ine, onun tarihine, kültürüne, sanatına, mimarisine dair pek çok bilgi verir. Gritchenko’nun aktarımları hem güncel tarihyazımına hem de kişisel gözlemlerine dayanır ve tüm bunları duyusal bir deneyim olarak sunar. Gözlemleriyle beslediği tarih bilgisi, Günlük’te antik, Bizans ve Osmanlı’dan parçalar taşıyan eklektik ve tarihdışı bir Konstantinopolis olarak karşımıza çıkar. Gritchenko, Bizantinizm olarak değerlendirilebilecek eserler üreten modernist bir ressamdır, bu yönüyle çağının bir temsilcisidir; Vladimir Tatlin, Vasily Kandinsky gibi Gritchenko da Bizans sanatı üzerine düşünmüştür. Gritchenko’nun sözlü betimindeki duyusallık ve eklektik tarih algısı İstanbul’da ürettiği resimlerde de gözlenebilir. Özellikle şehrin Bizans surları ve Ayasofya’yı tasvir ettiği eserlerde Bizans ve Osmanlı ögeleri iç içe geçer. Gritchenko’nun Günlük’te kurguladığı Tarihi Yarımada, mekânları, yapıları, insanları ve onların gündelik hayatlarıyla tarihin akışının dışında kalmış, ancak tüm parçaları birbiriyle uyum içinde kurgulanmış fantastik atmosferiyle bir hierotopos’tur. Bu yazıda Günlük’te Bizans tarihi, yapıları ve kültürüne yapılan atıflar saptanmış ve bunlar hem çağdaş hem de Gritchenko’nun erişimi olabilecek yazın çerçevesinde değerlendirilmiştir. Böylece Gritchenko’nun, okuma ve gözlemlerine dayalı Konstantinopolis’ini nasıl kurguladığı gösterilmiştir.
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Ukrainian artist Alexis Gritchenko (Oleksa Hryshchenko), who lived in Istanbul between November 1919 and April 1921 during the occupation of the Allied forces, opened the Constantinople Bleu et Rose exhibition in Paris in 1923, where he displayed his works on Constantinople. In 1930, while living in Paris, he published a chronicle of his life in Istanbul (Deux ans à Constantinople). It depicted the Byzantine history, culture, art, and architecture in Constantinople. While his knowledge benefited from both the contemporary historiography and his scrutiny, he presents them as sensory experiences. What emerged was an ahistorical Constantinople, an amalgamation of eclectic features from the Ancient, Byzantine, and Ottoman periods of the capital. Gritchenko was a modernist artist who produced Byzantinism, much like his cohort, including Vladimir Tatlin or Vasily Kandinsky. His art reflected sensuous oral descriptions and eclectic representations of history, reproducing Byzantinism. The Historical Peninsula in Gritchenko’s journal is a hierotopos, a carefully rendered, fantastic atmosphere with ahistoric yet harmoniously functioning spaces, buildings, people, and daily life. This article evaluates and assesses the journal’s references to Byzantine history, monuments, and culture in the context of both the contemporary literature on Byzantine history and the literature that Gritchenko may have accessed. Thus, we reveal how Gritchenko constructed a Constantinople based on his readings and observations.
Books by Emir Alışık
“What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul!”: Byzantium in Popular Culture / "İstanbul'da Bu Ne Bizantinizm!": Popüler Kültürde Bizans, 2021
10. The defining "conventions" of genres are not rigid labels but historical products that entert... more 10. The defining "conventions" of genres are not rigid labels but historical products that entertain the preoccupations of the attached communities; see ibid, 203.
“What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul!”: Byzantium in Popular Culture / "İstanbul'da Bu Ne Bizantinizm!": Popüler Kültürde Bizans, 2021
Pera Müzesi değerli katkılarından dolayı aşağıdaki kişi ve kurumlara teşekkür eder. Suna and İnan... more Pera Müzesi değerli katkılarından dolayı aşağıdaki kişi ve kurumlara teşekkür eder. Suna and İnan Kıraç Foundation, Istanbul Research Institute and Pera Museum would like to acknowledge the following individuals and institutions.
Conference Presentations by Emir Alışık
48th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference at UCLA, 2022
Authors of speculative fiction—in its wider sense encompassing fantasy, science fiction, and its ... more Authors of speculative fiction—in its wider sense encompassing fantasy, science fiction, and its subgenres—have occasionally appropriated Byzantine history. Their adoption of Byzantine topoi and nomenclature presents a unique Byzantinism in terms of utilization of history, for these authors’ reception of Byzantine history is not exclusively concerned with historical accuracy per se. Instead, they are keen on historicizing idiosyncratic speculative storyworlds that feel authentic. Role of Byzantine history in world-building and the novel ways in which speculative fiction authors select and appropriate historiography attest to the impact of evolving historiography on popular culture. Two such authors, Gene Wolfe (1931- 2019) and Jeff VanderMeer (b. 1968) built differing storyworlds imagined in the far future and alternate reality, in which Byzantine history is put to use in creating idiosyncratic fantasy and science fiction settings by conforming to a multitude of historiographical traditions. Wolfe and VanderMeer are analogous in their Byzantinism, which at the surface level is difficult to grasp, due to the eclecticism and the severe deformity of Byzantine elements (tropes, nomenclature, art, etc.) in the process of their appropriation for the purpose of worldbuilding.
Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun cycle (1980) imagines a stagnant and hierarchical society where an emperor-like figure governs the realm along with the bureaucratic elite. The story takes place in the far future in medieval Byzantine-like society, where the Hellenic, modern, and a futuristic extra-terrestrial past of humanity mold into myth. VanderMeer’s Ambergris cycle (2001) relates chronologically wide-spanning stories of a city-state through a very eclectic selection of literary forms. The weird connection between Ambergris’ timeline and the actual history makes the city-state prone to arbitrary impregnation of it by the history—specifically a Byzantine one. These authors’ seemingly arbitrary choice of historical names, titles, and phenomena, combined with spoliation of myths, ekphrases, and hagiographies render their storyworlds virtually unrecognizable but historicized timelines. When it comes to world-building, they are unique in their rejection of historical fiction and historical fantasy, and in the utilization of historicizing layers, and spoliation of history to provide an authentic but uncanny bond between history and fantasy. By examining the topoi and the nomenclature, which Wolfe and VanderMeer derived from Byzantine sources and historiography on Byzantium, I propose to show varying ways of corresponding with Byzantine history in speculative fiction. This is revelatory for the reception of Byzantine history, because, even though these settings are purely speculative they are submissive to modern ideologies and historiographies. Relevance of historiography in the speculative testify to a new way of appropriation, one that expanding scope of narration in accordance with historiography.
24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies, 2022
Digital Byzantium features a series of projects developed by institutions and research centres in... more Digital Byzantium features a series of projects developed by institutions and research centres in Turkey and Italy that provide virtual representations of Byzantium, cutting across spatial and temporal borders through a combination of archaeology, art, history, literature, folkloric traditions, and scholarly studies. These projects explore the multiple connections between places and people, their history and imaginary, as curators bridge linguistic, aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural borders through unique and meaningful perspectives. Digital Byzantium allows scholars, students, and the broader public to experience a Byzantium sans frontières, promoting its accessibility and knowledge beyond physical and cultural divides. Come and visit us daily for enjoying our exhibits and video screenings!
24th International Congress of Byzantine Studies, 2022
Speculative fiction authors’ adoption of Byzantine topoi and nomenclature presents a unique Byzan... more Speculative fiction authors’ adoption of Byzantine topoi and nomenclature presents a unique Byzantinism in terms of utilization of history. Gene Wolfe and Jeff VanderMeer built differing storyworlds imagined in the far future and alternate reality, in which Byzantine history is put to use in creating idiosyncratic, historicized fantasy and science fiction settings by conforming to several historiographical traditions. By examining the topoi and the nomenclature, which the authors derive from Byzantine sources and historiography on Byzantium, I propose to show varying ways of corresponding with Byzantine history in speculative fiction.
XIVè Rencontres internationales des jeunes chercheurs et chercheuses en études byzantines: Memory and Marks: Commemorating, Transmitting, and Perpetuating, 2023
Byzantine urban layouts and architectural features are appropriated in the works of artists who i... more Byzantine urban layouts and architectural features are appropriated in the works of artists who illustrate speculative (i.e. alternate) worlds. Their work span across mediums such as digital illustrations, video games, and films, all the while employing the urban configuration of Constantinople, architectural forms of prominent buildings in the public imagination, and the visual grammar of most recognizable Byzantine artistic mediums. Intentional or haphazard anachronisms in the artists’ designs and reimaginations of the Byzantine, the pertinent appropriations of particularities of Byzantine art and architecture, and their repurposing of buildings and forms all provide a historicized context for the alternate worlds they create. Accordingly, historicized contexts for alternate worlds are informed by historiography and the tropes assumed to the Byzantine cities and people in the popular imagination. It should be noted that through various kinds of anachronisms, the historicized portrayals encompass features from many phases of the material at hand (especially architectural), not limiting themselves to Byzantine period. I propose to analyze iconographically several visual examples to map out an interaction between historiography and tropes. Thus, I argue that the ways in which the utilization of Byzantine history and visual grammar in creating alternate worlds are a testament to the role of the Byzantine in relating at times conflicting senses of otherworldly, numinous, chaos, and wonder.
Talks by Emir Alışık
Various games across genres such as Role Playing, Strategy, Action games, and combinations of the... more Various games across genres such as Role Playing, Strategy, Action games, and combinations of them have incorporated Constantinople and its architectural, urban, and sociological aspects into their level designs, plotlines, and characters. These games use tropes that are common across many artistic mediums and reflect the knowledge and understanding of Byzantium. The talk analyzes these games within the context of the 2021 exhibition at the Pera Museum “What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul!”: Byzantium in Popular Culture, where many playable versions of Constantinople and its inhabitants were categorized and exhibited with respect to the creation of tropes and their interrelation with various artistic mediums that appropriated Byzantine history.
Podcasts by Emir Alışık
What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul, 2021
Two Byzantinist colleagues reunite to discuss Arkady Martine’s 2020 Hugo winner space opera A Mem... more Two Byzantinist colleagues reunite to discuss Arkady Martine’s 2020 Hugo winner space opera A Memory Called Empire, and its allusions to Byzantine culture.
What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul!, 2022
Jeremy J. Swist hosts Sakis Tolis of Rotting Christ and Nikos Tragakis. They venture into the app... more Jeremy J. Swist hosts Sakis Tolis of Rotting Christ and Nikos Tragakis. They venture into the appropriation of history in Greek metal scene, especially by Rotting Christ.
What Byzantinism Is This In Istanbul!, 2022
Nebula and World Fantasy Awards winning author Jeff VanderMeer is interviewed by Emir Alışık on t... more Nebula and World Fantasy Awards winning author Jeff VanderMeer is interviewed by Emir Alışık on the Byzantine parallels in Ambergris cycle, and the appropriation of history in fantasy settings.
What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul, 2022
Rohan Harris and Roland Betancourt goes deep into the eerie mural scene in Zack Snyder’s Justice ... more Rohan Harris and Roland Betancourt goes deep into the eerie mural scene in Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021), discussing it in the context of late Byzantine art.
What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul!, 2022
İstanbul’dan Bizans’a: Yeniden Keşfin Yolları, 1800–1955 ve “İstanbul’da Bu Ne Bizantinizm!”: Pop... more İstanbul’dan Bizans’a: Yeniden Keşfin Yolları, 1800–1955 ve “İstanbul’da Bu Ne Bizantinizm!”: Popüler Kültürde Bizans sergilerinin yaratıcı ekibi Brigitte Pitarakis, Gülru Tanman ve Emir Alışık sergilerin hazırlık sürecini ve Pera Müzesi’nin geçmiş Bizans sergilerini ele alıyor.
What Byzantinism Is This in Istanbul, 2022
Bu bölümde, 1980’lerden günümüze İstanbul’da Bizans tarihine yönelik kurumsallaşan ve artan ilgi ... more Bu bölümde, 1980’lerden günümüze İstanbul’da Bizans tarihine yönelik kurumsallaşan ve artan ilgi sonucu üretilen sergiler, konferanslar ve yayınlara kısa bir bakış atıyoruz.
Yerden Yüksek, 2022
Pera Müzesi 2022'ye Bizans çalışmalarına odaklanan iki sergiyle merhaba dedi. "İstanbul'da Bu Ne ... more Pera Müzesi 2022'ye Bizans çalışmalarına odaklanan iki sergiyle merhaba dedi. "İstanbul'da Bu Ne Bizantinizm!" ve "İstanbul'dan Bizans'a Yeniden Keşfin Yolları: 1800-1955" başlıklı sergiler Mart'a kadar ziyaretçilerini bekliyor. Yerden Yüksek'te bu hafta Bizans’ın popüler kültürdeki eklektik varlığını keşfe çıkan “İstanbul’da Bu Ne Bizantinizm!” sergisini küratörü Emir Alışık'la değerlendiriyoruz.
Açık Mimarlık, 2022
Video oyunları, metal müzik, çok satan kitaplar, tarih ders kitapları gibi popüler kültür üretiml... more Video oyunları, metal müzik, çok satan kitaplar, tarih ders kitapları gibi popüler kültür üretimlerinde Bizans kimliğinin nasıl inşa edildiğini ve alımlandığını araştıran "İstanbul'da Bu Ne Bizantinizm" sergisi, 13 Mart 2022 tarihine kadar Pera Müzesi'nde ziyarete açık. Sergi kapsamında yayımlanan podcastler, parça listeleri, film seçkileri ve İstanbul Araştırmaları Enstitüsü kütüphanesinde oluşturulan arşiv de popüler kültürde Bizans konusunu farklı veçhelerinden işliyor. Serginin küratörü Emir Alışık bu programda konuğumuz. Bizantinizm fenomenini, popüler kültürde Bizans kimliğinin hangi politik ve toplumsal ortamlarda, nasıl bir haletiruhiyede üretildiğini, hangi kentsel imgelerin nasıl dolaşıma girdiğini konuşuyoruz.
Meşher Podcast
Meşher Podcast’in beşinci ve Gritchenko ile ilgili son bölümünde, sanatçının İstanbul’da ziyaret ... more Meşher Podcast’in beşinci ve Gritchenko ile ilgili son bölümünde, sanatçının İstanbul’da ziyaret ettiği Bizans ve Osmanlı yapıları ile İstanbul hakkında bilgi edindiği yazılı kaynaklar masaya yatırılıyor. Sanat tarihçileri Tarkan Okçuoğlu ve Emir Alışık, küratör Ebru Esra Satıcı ile birlikte, Gritchenko’nun yararlanmış olabileceği kaynaklar ışığında şehrin anıtsal yapıları ve mekânları hakkında sohbet ediyor.
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Thesis by Emir Alışık
Papers by Emir Alışık
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Ukrainian artist Alexis Gritchenko (Oleksa Hryshchenko), who lived in Istanbul between November 1919 and April 1921 during the occupation of the Allied forces, opened the Constantinople Bleu et Rose exhibition in Paris in 1923, where he displayed his works on Constantinople. In 1930, while living in Paris, he published a chronicle of his life in Istanbul (Deux ans à Constantinople). It depicted the Byzantine history, culture, art, and architecture in Constantinople. While his knowledge benefited from both the contemporary historiography and his scrutiny, he presents them as sensory experiences. What emerged was an ahistorical Constantinople, an amalgamation of eclectic features from the Ancient, Byzantine, and Ottoman periods of the capital. Gritchenko was a modernist artist who produced Byzantinism, much like his cohort, including Vladimir Tatlin or Vasily Kandinsky. His art reflected sensuous oral descriptions and eclectic representations of history, reproducing Byzantinism. The Historical Peninsula in Gritchenko’s journal is a hierotopos, a carefully rendered, fantastic atmosphere with ahistoric yet harmoniously functioning spaces, buildings, people, and daily life. This article evaluates and assesses the journal’s references to Byzantine history, monuments, and culture in the context of both the contemporary literature on Byzantine history and the literature that Gritchenko may have accessed. Thus, we reveal how Gritchenko constructed a Constantinople based on his readings and observations.
Books by Emir Alışık
Conference Presentations by Emir Alışık
Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun cycle (1980) imagines a stagnant and hierarchical society where an emperor-like figure governs the realm along with the bureaucratic elite. The story takes place in the far future in medieval Byzantine-like society, where the Hellenic, modern, and a futuristic extra-terrestrial past of humanity mold into myth. VanderMeer’s Ambergris cycle (2001) relates chronologically wide-spanning stories of a city-state through a very eclectic selection of literary forms. The weird connection between Ambergris’ timeline and the actual history makes the city-state prone to arbitrary impregnation of it by the history—specifically a Byzantine one. These authors’ seemingly arbitrary choice of historical names, titles, and phenomena, combined with spoliation of myths, ekphrases, and hagiographies render their storyworlds virtually unrecognizable but historicized timelines. When it comes to world-building, they are unique in their rejection of historical fiction and historical fantasy, and in the utilization of historicizing layers, and spoliation of history to provide an authentic but uncanny bond between history and fantasy. By examining the topoi and the nomenclature, which Wolfe and VanderMeer derived from Byzantine sources and historiography on Byzantium, I propose to show varying ways of corresponding with Byzantine history in speculative fiction. This is revelatory for the reception of Byzantine history, because, even though these settings are purely speculative they are submissive to modern ideologies and historiographies. Relevance of historiography in the speculative testify to a new way of appropriation, one that expanding scope of narration in accordance with historiography.
Talks by Emir Alışık
Podcasts by Emir Alışık
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Ukrainian artist Alexis Gritchenko (Oleksa Hryshchenko), who lived in Istanbul between November 1919 and April 1921 during the occupation of the Allied forces, opened the Constantinople Bleu et Rose exhibition in Paris in 1923, where he displayed his works on Constantinople. In 1930, while living in Paris, he published a chronicle of his life in Istanbul (Deux ans à Constantinople). It depicted the Byzantine history, culture, art, and architecture in Constantinople. While his knowledge benefited from both the contemporary historiography and his scrutiny, he presents them as sensory experiences. What emerged was an ahistorical Constantinople, an amalgamation of eclectic features from the Ancient, Byzantine, and Ottoman periods of the capital. Gritchenko was a modernist artist who produced Byzantinism, much like his cohort, including Vladimir Tatlin or Vasily Kandinsky. His art reflected sensuous oral descriptions and eclectic representations of history, reproducing Byzantinism. The Historical Peninsula in Gritchenko’s journal is a hierotopos, a carefully rendered, fantastic atmosphere with ahistoric yet harmoniously functioning spaces, buildings, people, and daily life. This article evaluates and assesses the journal’s references to Byzantine history, monuments, and culture in the context of both the contemporary literature on Byzantine history and the literature that Gritchenko may have accessed. Thus, we reveal how Gritchenko constructed a Constantinople based on his readings and observations.
Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun cycle (1980) imagines a stagnant and hierarchical society where an emperor-like figure governs the realm along with the bureaucratic elite. The story takes place in the far future in medieval Byzantine-like society, where the Hellenic, modern, and a futuristic extra-terrestrial past of humanity mold into myth. VanderMeer’s Ambergris cycle (2001) relates chronologically wide-spanning stories of a city-state through a very eclectic selection of literary forms. The weird connection between Ambergris’ timeline and the actual history makes the city-state prone to arbitrary impregnation of it by the history—specifically a Byzantine one. These authors’ seemingly arbitrary choice of historical names, titles, and phenomena, combined with spoliation of myths, ekphrases, and hagiographies render their storyworlds virtually unrecognizable but historicized timelines. When it comes to world-building, they are unique in their rejection of historical fiction and historical fantasy, and in the utilization of historicizing layers, and spoliation of history to provide an authentic but uncanny bond between history and fantasy. By examining the topoi and the nomenclature, which Wolfe and VanderMeer derived from Byzantine sources and historiography on Byzantium, I propose to show varying ways of corresponding with Byzantine history in speculative fiction. This is revelatory for the reception of Byzantine history, because, even though these settings are purely speculative they are submissive to modern ideologies and historiographies. Relevance of historiography in the speculative testify to a new way of appropriation, one that expanding scope of narration in accordance with historiography.