Vertebral Layers of Spacefaring Human Ape Society

Contemporary urban society compresses bodies from all sides in order to extract the maximum, similar to an orange being squeezed.
The vertical axis in society, embedded in terms such as “high society,” reflects social hierarchy. Power figures position themselves above others, both literally and symbolically.
Who has ownership of the skies, high altitudes, or even space?
The idea emerged while observing the skyscraper under construction situated near S-Bahn Neukölln, or the Amazon Tower near Warschauer Straße, whose form and presence strongly remind us of the hunger for high-rise development and its accompanying exploitation.
Fikirtepe imagines realising the socio-cultural changes brought about by these transformations, the ownership of the sky, the anatomy of looking down from above, and being crushed beneath these imposing structures through an audiovisual installation.
A single video plays on a vertical screen, split into two halves. On one side appear images of gentrification and related emotional flows created by Emre Birişmen using analog methods; on the other side are two-dimensional cityscape figures and transmissions moving through cosmological tunnels created by Mert Akbal in Blender. The sound component, composed by Melih Sarıgöl, accompanies the images and is also available online. Developed from modular synthesizer material, the composition contrasts low and high frequencies, echoing the vertical structure of the visuals.
Fikirtepe is an audiovisual performance collective formed by artists Mert Akbal, Emre Birişmen, and Melih Sarıgöl, exploring space through conceptual experimentalism. The name refers to a heavily gentrified neighborhood in Istanbul while also evoking its literal meaning: fikir (idea) and tepe (hill). Once suggesting a place of elevation, reflection, and perspective over the city, this possibility has largely disappeared amid aggressive urban transformation.