Street Art and Outdoor Advertisements : the Relationship between Street Art and Outdoor Advertisements in Istiklal and Bağdat Avenues, in Istanbul
Abstract: This thesis focuses on both street art and outdoor advertisements in Istanbul. Specifically, we chose Istiklal and Bağdat Avenues as our fieldwork areas to conduct our research. With its cosmopolitan structure Istiklal Avenue and high-standard lifestyle Bağdat Avenue together represent Istanbul to understand the multifaceted nature of social, cultural and political identities of the society. In relation to variations, working in two different districts is a crucial reference to discover various perspectives of citizens of Istanbul regarding our subjects: street art and outdoor advertisements. Since this project is conducted from a cultural analysts’ point of view, we aim to analyze the cultural reflections of the society from visual materials on the streets. At that point, in addition to the desk research about these subjects, we were out-of-home as well. We aim to gain a “subjective” perspective of the understanding of street art and outdoor advertisements from citizens’ narratives on the basis of one of our research questions: “how do we react to space and its contents.” Our main inspiration for this research is the power of invisible, hidden codes to discover taken for granted inclusionary and exclusionary definitions of cultural elements. For us, street art and outdoor advertisements are visible, part of our visual memory but they are not “visible” in everyday routines. One is accepted as “normal” within capitalist system; the other is accepted as one of the alternative ways of people’s self-expression who are excluded from this system. We analyze these stereotypical understandings through structuring both of them on the same scene; on streets. We questioned the existence of relationship between street art and outdoor advertisements; and their possible legitimization ways; and their place in people’s minds through our two case studies. According to our cases’ advertisement campaigns, which combines advertisement with street art; we chose Vodafone “Free Mobile” campaign as a global brand and Alpella “Ole” campaign as a local brand.
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