Suna Ozankan

In Leere Plätze oder Gibellina come teatro (Empty Spaces or Gibellina come teatro), Suna Ozankan approaches the Sicilian city of Gibellina as a place between destruction, remembrance, and utopian redesign. The original city was completely devastated by the earthquake of 1968; the ruins were concreted over and replaced with a planned city by the same name. The project was never completed and to the present day wide streets, empty squares, and the construction shell of the theatre dominate the image of this contradictory place. How does one describe the fate of such a place? What words are capable of conveying this city that was destroyed, rebuilt, then simultaneously abandoned, and left unfinished? This publication develops a multimedia exploration that raises issues of home, loss, and identity in the context of living spaces that have been destroyed and unnaturally rebuilt.