Pelin Tan's "Transversal Methodologies"

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.