Pelin Tan’s
“Tranvsersal Methodologies” was a discussion about what challenges
Tan has identified and overcome while trying to sustain an educational
infrastructure in a university in Southeast Turkey in a Kurdish area. One of
her main questions for the evening was: how do we keep our institutions running
without necessarily leading them to become futher institutionalized. When one
tries to teach outside of an institutional space, as programs such as Campus in
Camps or Silent University do, one still ends up reproducing certain aspects of
institutional structures: a single gathering place, a syllabus, etc. The Silent
University is a project initiated by an artist for refugees, and now run by
refugees. Yet the Silent University is partially failing, or at least failing
in certain locations, because it’s hard to find a space or art institution with
the resources and infrastructure to run these programs. After a discussion of
autonomy, Tan went on to discuss three film projects – Episode 1 – 2018,
Episode 2 – Noosphere, and Episode 3 – The Fall of the Artists’ Republic. These
projects show that camps are sites of potentiality for creating social
possibilities.