From Forms of Exception to Forms of Decay

Refugee camps are often contextualized as places of extreme conditions of exception and crisis. How can we look and understand refugee camps differently from the prevailing interpretation that sees them as static forms? In this talk, Pelin Tan will present and discuss camps as forms of decay, as border infrastructure and as commoning practices in the borderlines of today’s war-driven world.

Pelin Tan is a sociologist and art historian based in Mardin, where she is associate professor at the Architecture Faculty of Mardin Artuklu University. She holds a visiting research professorship at Hong Kong Polytechnic Design Faculty (2016), and is a contributor of the knowledge exchange platform The Silent University. She has published widely on urbanism, architecture, and contemporary art.