The Archive's Memory: Marcell Restle's Anatolian Research Exhibition

Koç University / 25 June - 1 December 2019

The International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Research Symposium, held once every three years to share Byzantine research conducted in Turkey and abroad on the international platform and to increase awareness of cultural heritage, will be held for the 5th time this year. Within the scope of the symposium, which will address the theme "Byzantine Anatolia: Space and Communities," leading Byzantine researchers from around the world will meet in Istanbul between 24-26 June. As part of the symposium, the exhibition "Archive's Memory: Marcell Restle's Anatolia Research" will also be open to visitors. The exhibition, which opens on 25 June 2019, will be accessible until 1 December 2019. Under "Space Concepts," the perception of space and nature in Byzantine thought—in other words, how the Byzantines perceived Anatolia—will be traced through descriptions and depictions of rural and urban landscapes and structures in the visual arts and literature. This theme will focus on cultural definitions and interpretations of the sacred that appear in artistic practices and the relationship of these practices with the sacred. The symposium's final theme, "Interaction, Networks and Mobility," will explore through papers the relationships between communities in Anatolia as well as their movements, including displacement and seasonal migration. The exhibition "Archive's Memory: Marcell Restle's Anatolia Research," organized within the framework of the "International Sevgi Gönül Byzantine Research Symposium," will also be open to visitors. The exhibition, which opens on 25 June 2019, will be accessible until 1 December 2019. On the one hand, the exhibition showcases the systematic working method of art historian Marcell Restle, a leading researcher in the field, while on the other hand, it presents the rich archive created over decades by this passionate researcher who dedicated his life to studying cultural assets from the Late Antique, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman periods in Anatolia.