Balat: Living Together explores the memory of one of the most kaleidoscopic neighborhoods of Istanbul, which is significant in terms of its cultural and historical heritage. Authors from various disciplines such as cultural anthropologists, semiologists, historians, architects have jointly put their efforts to identify and re-actualize the social and urban memory of this place, analyze the current life of Balat, draw parallels between different periods – from the Byzantine era to the tragic events of the 20th century.
One of the main goals of this book is to show the memory and post memory of the multicultural Balat and the transformation of the ways of co-existence of various ethnic and religious groups in one place through transdisciplinary analysis.
The experience of living together, the peaceful co-existence and the shades of minor and major catastrophes and conflicts are anchored in memories of Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Jews,Turks, and others.
Like Balat's memory, this book is multi-layered, woven from various languages and methods. Academic texts, statistics, factual evidence, autobiographical stories, and fiction are intertwined. In addition, the editors of the book have paid particular attention to the visualization of Balat and fragments of the architectural memory of the place: it is full of illustrations, maps, and photographs from both family archives and notable photographers.
ISBN 978-9939-1-1500-9
© CSN Lab, 2023
Balat: Living Together. Collective monograph ed. by Amiryan T., Kalantaryan S., Kıygı G., CSN Lab, Yerevan, 2023, 376 p.