Closing Forum: Amplifying Voices, Expanding the Archive

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The closing forum, held following the documentary screening, opened a discussion on the legacy of the three-day program and how it can be sustained moving forward. Günseli Baki explained that the project began in November 2025 and has progressed as an expanding process encompassing artist workshops, children’s activities, field visits, seminars, exhibitions, documentary screenings, and panels.

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One of the key topics highlighted at the forum was how the project could become sustainable beyond physical participation. Fatih Kurunaz emphasized the importance of making the body of work generated over the three days accessible in a digital environment. The project team also noted that exhibitions, fieldwork, a glossary of concepts, resources, and recordings are being archived on the website; they added that this archive will be expanded to ensure the process is not limited to the three-day event schedule.

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Tunca Subaşı noted that such projects conducted outside major cities transform into a complete body of work. In his view, the exhibition made visible—through a pluralistic language—the emotions and encounters the artists experienced in the field, without reducing the subject to agitation or a claim to direct representation.

 

Gökçe Yeniev, meanwhile, pointed out that the central issue behind the project was not simply “conducting research and leaving.” One of the project’s founding intentions was for academic knowledge to reconnect with local experience, to establish contact with the people at the heart of the story, and for culture and the arts to create space for this encounter. According to Yeniev, the culture and arts component opens up alternative channels of circulation despite low attendance at venues; its impact extends over time through exhibitions, recordings, and digital archives.

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The Third Pillar: Local Participation, Media, and Civil Society

 

One of the most discussed topics at the forum was the project’s “third pillar.” Yücel Tunca noted that a bridge between academia and the arts has been established; however, he emphasized the need to separately consider a stronger component that brings together media, public relations, social media, local participation, and civil society. According to Tunca, the proliferation of discourse depends not only on the production of quality content but also on organized communication efforts that ensure that content reaches its intended audience.

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Fikret Adaman, meanwhile, noted that while such initiatives may not always generate broad participation, their long-term impact and historical record must be taken seriously. According to Adaman, counter-hegemonic spaces built around just transformation, the ecological crisis, and labor issues often emerge through small steps, limited encounters, and persistent documentation.

 

Fırat Genç said that in recent years, many people have scattered to different places, but that this dispersion has also created new connections and new areas of production. He described the feeling the three days in Bergama evoked in him as the realization of previously unseen lines of solidarity. Hale Eryılmaz, meanwhile, noted that a stronger foundation for communication and collaboration could be established among artist groups, cultural institutions, and ecological initiatives grappling with ecological destruction in the Northern Aegean.

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Ekin Çuhadar said that at a time when the arts and culture sector is becoming more involved in discussions on ecology and climate change, this project could serve as a starting point for academics, artists, local actors, and civil society organizations in different regions of Turkey who are grappling with similar issues. Ayşe Buğra, meanwhile, emphasized that the three-day program established meaningful connections between academic knowledge, artistic practices, ecological geography, and local cultural and artistic activities; she stressed that such gatherings should not be measured solely by the size of the crowds.

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​The contributions voiced at the forum demonstrated that the discussion on just transition cannot be limited to the fields of energy and ecology. Labor, agriculture, art, memory, local organizing, digital archives, children, youth, and knowledge production were all discussed as integral parts of the same process.

This debate, which began along the Soma, Bergama, and Ayvalık corridor, has once again demonstrated that a just transition cannot be achieved simply by closing mines or switching energy sources. As Günseli Baki points out, the real issue hinges on the question of how to build a more just life at that fragile threshold between earth and sky—one that is rooted in labor, the earth, memory, and other living beings.