Ephemeral Architectures, Fugitive Assemblies: the Romantic Imaginaries of Assembly Democracy in the Gezi Protests

Abstract

In this paper, with a dual focus on architecture and democracy, we explore the interaction between ephemeral architectures constructed and fugitive assemblies formed during the Gezi protests. We make four main arguments. First, we argue that these architectural and spatial interventions cannot be reduced to instrumentally useful appendages to political action. Rather, they helped cultivate a new democratic ethos. Second, the novelty of the Gezi uprising consists in the new attitudes and sensibilities it has incorporated into democratic politics such as skepticism about representative democracy, civic care, and listening. These radical democratic sensibilities, as we show, blossomed in a more ephemeral architectural and spatial form in Gezi Park. However, their democratic significance, durability, and practicability were debated in neighborhood assemblies. Third, with one foot in architectural history and the other in democratic theory, for a transdisciplinary analysis, we argue that ephemeral architectures constructed and fugitive assemblies formed during the Gezi uprising manifested romantic imaginaries as expressions of radical democratic expectations. Fourth, based on our analysis of visual documentation carried out by activist groups, journalistic sources, and activist testimonies, we argue that both the original aspects of Gezi and the commonalities it shares with similar experiments with assembly democracy across the world since 2010s can properly be assessed if we pay attention to these romantic imaginaries.