Gökçen Erkılıç

Gökçen Erkılıç is an architect, cartographer and video maker. In her works she explores transdisciplinary zones among mapping, video art, and design to investigate new methods in and beyond urban studies. Prior to Northeastern she was a visiting researcher at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern studies (2021-23). Her articles on other ways of mapping and coastlines were published in digital platforms and art books. In 2020 she founded Go.St as her research and design practice. She organizes workshops, works with communities, and explores feminist pedagogies using map making as a critical spatial practice.

In her video-cartography works, Gökçen takes a closer look at human and nature relations at planetary space. Her latest experimental video “Various Herbs You Want to Know Powers Of” (2023) uses augmented relity and 3d scans of plants to speculate a futuristic herbal. Her video work “This is not a line: Coastline as ecotone / flatland / landfill / whirlpool” is exhibited in various art collections and events (2022). Her post doctoral project “Coastline Atlas” (ongoing) charts infrastructures and territories among land and water at port geographies and contested waterscapes in the metropolitan region of Istanbul and environs.

Her latest article is entitled “For Thousands of Years, Waters Delineated the Destiny of This City and Its People”: A Material Cartography of the Coastlines and the Shaping of Istanbul’s Port Geography.

Previously, she has worked in curatorial projects in exhibitions including 15th Architectural Exhibition, La Biennale Venezia, Pavilion of Turkey (2016). She graduated from Middle East Technical University Department of Architecture (2010). She holds a master degree from Istanbul Bilgi University (2012) and a PhD from Istanbul Technical University (2019), was a fellow in Istanbul Studies Center (2017). Her doctoral thesis was entitled “This is not a line”: Critical Delineation of the Coastline in Istanbul.” She was a visiting researcher at Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies (2021-23).