Urbanopathic Confection is a cross-urban confectionary stand, which, for one night only, prepared and packaged remedial candy. Visitors could savour and contemplate the translocal flavours sourced from the meteropolitan sprawls of Amsterdam and Istanbul. A caramalized mix of authentic Amsterdam-Istanbul ingredients, Urbanopathic Confection also has the quality of a vaccine containing minute amounts of urbanic matter that provide immunity against city toxins. Made according to tips and ticks gleaned from both Amsterdam and Istanbul  inhabitants who hold the safely guarded secrets of confection-making particular to each city.
Urbanopathic Confection was performed and eaten as part of Kosmopolistanbul, CitySense, Surveillance, Secrecy, Security, Control : A playful evening pondering media, control, surveillance, secrecy and art in urban environments
Curated by Nat Muller in collaboration with NOMAD
With presentations and performances by: Maki Ueda, Sasker Scheerder & Radboud Mens, Burak Arikan, Wietske Maas, Edwin van der Heide, Â Koray Tahiroglu.
It is no big secret that urban centres have become sites of surveillance and control. Gone are the days that the urban city dweller could carelessly drift – as the 19th Century flaneur, strolling from one area to the other, and then disappear anonymously into the crowds. As our urban experience might have become more anonymous in regard to social interaction, our behaviour – how we move, what we see, hear, taste and smell – is becoming more regulated, watched and controlled. Anonymity it seems, is no longer an option. Our urban sensibilities are often directed, mediated and pre-programmed, either by security measures or by other overt or hidden codes of conduct. It is no coincidence then that how we consciously sense our cities – our “City Sense†– ultimately defines how we position ourselves as citizens.
CitySense offers a playful interpretation on how to actively engage your urban senses and reveals the hidden and questions the exposed in an evening choc-a-bloc with video screenings, live food and smell installations, live audio-visual performances, and party to close off the night. It also is an event where the practices of Dutch artists (predominantly from Rotterdam) and Turkish artists (predominantly from Istanbul) come together.
The event is followed by a panel discussion on the 21st of September with the participating artists:
“Security’s Spectacle: The Seen and The Unseenâ€
15.00 – 17.30 Presentations by: Lemi Baruh (TR), Maki Ueda (NL/J), Wietske Maas (NL/AU), Sasker Scheerder (NL).
Moderated and introduced by Nat Muller (independent curator) and Basak Senova (NOMAD).
In cities in The Netherlands, as well as in Istanbul, we see an increase in the “spectacle of securityâ€: more police, more metal detectors, more bag&body searches, more surveillance cameras, etc. This visual performance of surveillance and security significantly changes the outlook of our cities, but also how we experience them, conduct ourselves in and through these controlled zones, as well as how our conceptions of private and public are affected. Within the current obsession of assessing and exposing that which cannot be seen, i.e. the threat, how do the senses fare which are invisible, such as sound, smell and taste? Are they part and parcel of the system of control, and is what we hear, smell and taste pre-configured. Or can we, as is the case with counter-images, always find a system hack? An afternoon of debate and artist presentations exploring the performance of security in its visible and invisible ways.
CITY SENSE flyer [pdf]
Basak Senova’s CITY SENSE flckr set