In Istanbul the car driving middle class especially articulate a
nightmare vision of everyday traffic chaos, which in reality contrasts
with several partly self organised and developed local transportation
systems. So the minibus which integrates the residents of the
Gecekondus into the city (which was mostly informally set up by
immigrants from Anatolya) counts as a symbol of the "invasion of the
civitas through the barbaric farmer masses".
The Ehliyetisz performans, the "performance without licence" is a field
ready game of theory based on the large city of non-drivers, which was
actually carried out by a test team in Istanbul. They were supposed to
motivate "city ramblers" to discoveries in public transport. The test
team undertook the largest possible tour through Istanbul in one day
and used all the available forms of public transport. It showed that
these surprisingly many forms of transport by water, road and track
were able to be excellently co-ordinated, and a gap only came about
when the team had to rely on competent support from drivers. Orhan Esen
produced a version of this game as an installation for Learning from*.
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