How to Fall in Love with the Island You’ve Never Been To?

I’m not in love with you, I’m in love with your picture. — Halil, Time to Love (Sevmek Zamanı, 1965)

This workshop takes inspiration from Metin Erksan’s movie Time to Love (Sevmek Zamanı, 1965). In the film, the protagonist Halil falls in love not with a woman, but with her portrait—refusing real-world connection in favor of an imagined attachment. This premise serves as a conceptual lens for the workshop: Can one form a bond with a place they’ve never been to? How do pre-existing images, narratives, and personal projections construct spatial belonging?

Framed around these questions, How to Fall in Love with the Island You’ve Never Been To? invites participants to explore the relationship between distance and perception through images in art and architecture. Through discussions, speculative mapping, and AI-generated imagery, participants will construct their own representations of Büyükada—critically examining how places can exist beyond their material presence.

Where: Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin, MA Program in Spatial Strategies, in collaboration with Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (Architecture) & Yeditepe University (Visual Communication Design)

When: 12th May, 2-5 pm

15th May, 10am-1pm