Conversation:
On Land, In Water: Amphibian Practices
Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas and Gökçen Erkılıç

Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas will present their interdisciplinary artistic practice, focusing on their ongoing project The Swamp School, in conversation with Gökçen Erkılıç.

Swamps are not only carbon sinks but critical ecosystems, providing habitats for diverse life forms and supporting rich biodiversity. The Swamp School explores the swamp as both an ecological system and a conceptual tool for rethinking human cohabitation with other species. Positioned at the intersection of multiple disciplines, the project engages with the swamp as a dynamic, fluid space of learning.

Beyond The Swamp School, the conversation will expand to the broader role of radical pedagogies in the arts, particularly in relation to critical practices and wet landscapes. The discussion will address progressive methodologies in climate research, activism, and citizenship, fostering new ways of learning and engagement.

Organized as part of “Istanbul Coastline Atlas Vol. X: Deep Listening / Deep Mapping,” one of five research strands within Water Assemblies, this conversation will be held in English and is open to everyone. The program will take place online via Zoom and will be broadcast live at Salt Beyoğlu. Please register here for online participation. No registration is required for in-person attendance at Salt Beyoğlu.

Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas are artists, educators, and co-founders of Urbonas Studio, an interdisciplinary research practice that facilitates exchange amongst diverse nodes of knowledge production and artistic practice, with a focus on civic spaces and collective imaginaries. The duo has exhibited internationally in the São Paulo, Berlin, Moscow, Lyon, Gwangju, Busan, Taipei, Kaunas, and Helsinki biennials, the Folkestone Triennial, Manifesta, and documenta, among others. They have also held solo shows at the Venice Biennale, MACBA in Barcelona, and National Gallery of Art in Vilnius. They co-curated The Swamp School at the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2018. Their co-edited volume Swamps and the New Imagination: On the Future of Cohabitation in Art, Architecture, and Philosophy, published by Sternberg Press and distributed by MIT Press, is forthcoming in 2025. Gediminas Urbonas is a professor at MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology. Nomeda Urbonas is a research affiliate at MIT.

Gökçen Erkılıç is a transdisciplinary artist, architect, cartographer, researcher, and educator. Her practice focuses on mapping watery bodies, borders, and planetary health, using perspectives of critical mapping, feminist geography, and spatial justice. She is the founder of Coastliner Lab, where she challenges traditional forms of mapping to explore its decolonial and social agency, as well as its interaction with art and technology. Her work has been featured on various platforms, including the Sharjah Biennial, Arts Letters & Numbers, Materia Arquitectura, Salt Research, Arter, Yapı Kredi Culture and Arts, Pera Museum, and Manifold Press. Erkılıç completed her undergraduate studies in Architecture at the Middle East Technical University, her master’s in Architectural Design at Istanbul Bilgi University, and her PhD at Istanbul Technical University with her thesis “‘This is not a line’: Critical Delineation of the Coastline in Istanbul.” She ran cartographic research on the Black Sea, Eastern Mediterranean, and Anatolia at the Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Currently, she teaches in the Department of Art + Design at Northeastern University College of Arts, Media and Design, and is affiliated with metaLAB (at) Harvard and NULab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Science.