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Ekin Pinar

Middle East Technical University, Architecture, Faculty Member

Middle East Technical University, History of Architecture, M.A.

University of Pennsylvania, History of Art, Ph.D and M.A.

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Ekin Pinar is assistant professor at the Department of Architecture at Middle East Technical University. She received her Ph.D. from the History of Art department at the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of interest include history of art and architecture (modern and contemporary), cinema studies, history and theory of animation, history of experimental film and visual culture, expanded cinema, site-specific art, museum studies, institutional critique, and gender and sexuality studies. She has taught several courses on history and theory of film, animation, and modern and contemporary art and architecture at the History of Art department and Cinema Studies program at the University of Pennsylvania, at Middle East Technical University, as well as at the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Film at the Franklin and Marshall College. She is currently working on a book project on Canyon Collective, an experimental film group active in the San Francisco Bay Area in the sixties and seventies.

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Papers by Ekin Pinar

Politika ve Estetik Arasında: Sharon Hayes ve Deneysel Sinema Tarihleri

Yedi, 2024

Temporal Surfacing: Mosori Monika (1970) and Chick Strand’s Cross-Cultural Explorations

Camera Obscura, 2022

This article considers how the temporality at work in Chick Strand's film Mosori Monika (US, 1970... more This article considers how the temporality at work in Chick Strand's film Mosori Monika (US, 1970) breaks with the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist narratives of genealogy, progress, and production. In Mosori Monika, an experimental ethnographic film that documents the swamps of Orinoco River in Venezuela, filmmaker Strand focuses her attention on the interactions between the Spanish Franciscan missionaries who came to the site in 1945 and the Warao who had little to no interaction with the outside world before the missionaries’ appearance. The film shows the competing realities and subjectivities of two women living in the area: a Franciscan nun, Sister Isabel, and an old Warao woman, Carmelita. Unlike the linear “exceptional artist beyond her time” narratives manifest in the recent spur of interest in Strand's body of work, the article explores the contemporary feel of Strand's film in relation to the transnational, cross-cultural, and affective ranges that go unnoticed when the scope of 1970s feminisms is painted in broad brushstrokes. Accordingly, the article emphasizes that Strand's nonteleological approach to history and ethnography in her film at once challenges the colonial, patriarchal gaze and its temporal distanciation and subjugation and invites us to reassess the linear feminist narratives of evolution, progress, and/or loss that often tend to rely on reductive historical periodization. Strand's filmmaking methods and style provide us with an alternative feminist historiographical model, “surfacing,” that highlights the productive resonances between then, now, and possible futures.

The Place of Women's Filmmaking in an Interdisciplinary Architecture Course

Open Screens, 2022

This paper explores the rich pedagogical potential of women's filmmaking for interdisciplinary co... more This paper explores the rich pedagogical potential of women's filmmaking for interdisciplinary courses that explore the relations between cinema, architecture, and urbanism. While many courses on this subject tend to focus on white male filmmakers (e.g., Alfred Hitchcock, Jacques Tati, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang), in constructing a new version of this elective, I aimed to extensively incorporate women's filmmaking to the curriculum, especially opting for exemplary films that provide a rich basis to discuss the construction of gender and cinematic space in relation to one other. The course pays sustained, rigorous attention to women as filmmakers, textual subjects, and spectators while discussing topics including domesticity; borders and movement; screening space and spectatorship; cine-museology; national and transnational spaces; animated worldmaking; and digital realisms. Taking the classroom discussions on The Babadook (dir. Jennifer Kent, Australia, 2014) and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (dir. Ana Lily Amirpour, US, 2015) as its case studies, this paper considers how the use of women's filmmaking in an interdisciplinary course allows students to explore diverse strategies of cinematic representation that deconstruct and reshape gender in connection to the cinematic fabrications of space.

Through a Museum Window: Tacita Dean’s FILM (2011) and a Cinema of Dissensus

Quarterly Review of Film and Video

Across the Traces: Lawrence Jordan’s Animated Documents

Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2020

Since the early 1960s, Lawrence Jordan has appropriated a variety of Victorian engravings transfo... more Since the early 1960s, Lawrence Jordan has appropriated a variety of Victorian engravings transforming them into experimental animations through the use of cut-out stop-motion techniques. In their outmoded style and technique, the dense tapestry of collaged ephemera begins to function as indices of their original Victorian context and its printing processes. But the stop-motion manipulation also renders these indexical documents surreal through the juxtaposition of apparently unrelated images. This amounts to a reflexive approach harking back to the early days of cinema when audiences perceived the new technology as a source of wonder, amazement and magic. Jordan’s animations, such as Patricia Gives Birth to a Dream by the Doorway (1961–1964) and The Centennial Exposition (1961–1964), employ a productive tension not just between animation and documentary but between indexicality and illusion as well. In these animations, the use of such tensions exposes history and culture as fragmentary constructions of memory, fantasy and experience, thereby open to alteration, re-reading and reconfiguration in the present moment.

Keywords: cinema of attractions, cut-out technique, found material, historiography and animation, indexical animation, indexicality, outmoded, spatial representation in animation, stop-motion animation, Victorian memorabilia

Site-Specific Protest: Liberate Tate’s Performances at Tate Modern

METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, 2019

Yüzüncü Yılında Bauhaus: Kurgular / Söylemler / Tarihsellik

Dosya, 2019

Bauhaus’un 100. Yıl Etkinliklerine Küresel ve Azınlıkçı Çerçevelerden Bir Bakış

Mimarlık, 2019

Bauhaus’un 100. yıl etkinlikleri, mimarlık ve tasarım tarihi yazımına önemli katkılarda bulunurke... more Bauhaus’un 100. yıl etkinlikleri, mimarlık ve tasarım tarihi yazımına önemli katkılarda bulunurken, Bauhaus’un ele alınış yöntemleriyle ilgili sorgulamayı da beraberinde getiriyor. Bu etkinliklerde Bauhaus ve mirasının oynadığı rolü irdeleyen yazar, “Batı merkezli, beyaz erkek odaklı tarih anlayışını yıkmaya çalışmaları” nedeniyle bu çalışmaların önemine dikkat çekiyor.

Book Chapters by Ekin Pinar

The Futurist Myth of Accelerated Subjectivity: Speed in Umberto Boccioni's Works

in Mobility and Fantasy in Visual Culture, edited by Lewis Johnson, New York: Routledge, 2014

Sanatsal Mekan Mekansal Sanat

İnci Aslanoğlu için bir Mimarlık Tarihi Dizimi, derleyen Elvan Altan ve Sevil Enginsoy Ekinci, Ankara: ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Yayınları, 2019

Toplanmanın İzinde: Mekânsal Hafıza, Protesto ve Sanat

Acil Toplanma Yerinden Manzaralar (sergi katalogu), derleyen Onur Çimen, Ankara: Goethe Institut, 2022

Insurgent Articulations

Canyon Cinema Discovered (exh. cat.), edited by Brett Kashmere and S. Topiary Landberg, 2022

Sinemasal Mekan ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Üzerine Notlar

Sinema ve Mimarlık, Celal Abdi Güzer, der., 2023

Yakın Plan: Çaǧdaş Sanat Müzeleri

Sanat ve Mimarlık, Celal Abdi Güzer, der., 2024

Co-Authored by Ekin Pinar

The diagonal axis from "VERB to VOID": interdisciplinarity in basic design studio education

by Pelin Yoncaci-Arslan and Ekin Pinar

ArchNet-IJAR, Sep 15, 2022

Teaching Architectural Design Studio Remotely: The Introduction to Architectural Design Course at METU

by Pelin Yoncaci-Arslan and Ekin Pinar

Journal of Design Studio, 2020

This paper aims to briefly assess the potentials and limits of online learning environment for st... more This paper aims to briefly assess the potentials and limits of online learning environment for studio education by focusing on the case of 2019-20 spring semester studio of Introduction to Architectural Design course at Middle East Technical University’s Department of Architecture. As a transitory course between basic design principles and architectural design, Introduction to Architectural Design addresses the issues of site, program, structure, form, and material in reference to small scale architectural interventions. Reviewing the usual course of the semester until the COVID-19 outbreak as well as the effects of the unexpected switch to the emergency distance teaching, the paper highlights both the creative advantages and material shortcomings of the course’s adaptation process into the online studio format.

The diagonal axis from VERB to VOID: interdisciplinarity in basic design studio education

Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, 2023

Teaching Architectural Design Studio Remotely: The Introduction to Architectural Design Course at METU

by Ekin Pinar and esin komez

Journal of Design Studio, 2020

This paper aims to briefly assess the potentials and limits of online learning environment for st... more This paper aims to briefly assess the potentials and limits of online learning environment for studio education by focusing on the case of 2019-20 spring semester studio of Introduction to Architectural Design course at Middle East Technical University's Department of Architecture. As a transitory course between basic design principles and architectural design, Introduction to Architectural Design addresses the issues of site, program, structure, form, and material in reference to small scale architectural interventions. Reviewing the usual course of the semester until the COVID-19 outbreak as well as the effects of the unexpected switch to the emergency distance teaching, the paper highlights both the creative advantages and material shortcomings of the course's adaptation process into the online studio format.

Book Reviews by Ekin Pinar

KİTAP ELEŞTİRİSİ: SİNEMA VE MİMARLIK ARAKESİTİNDE KURGUSAL MEKÂN, TARİHSELLİK VE SANAT

METU JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, 2023

Book Review: Restricted Access by Elizabeth Ellcessor

Film Criticism, 2017

Politika ve Estetik Arasında: Sharon Hayes ve Deneysel Sinema Tarihleri

Yedi, 2024

Temporal Surfacing: Mosori Monika (1970) and Chick Strand’s Cross-Cultural Explorations

Camera Obscura, 2022

This article considers how the temporality at work in Chick Strand's film Mosori Monika (US, 1970... more This article considers how the temporality at work in Chick Strand's film Mosori Monika (US, 1970) breaks with the patriarchal, colonial, and capitalist narratives of genealogy, progress, and production. In Mosori Monika, an experimental ethnographic film that documents the swamps of Orinoco River in Venezuela, filmmaker Strand focuses her attention on the interactions between the Spanish Franciscan missionaries who came to the site in 1945 and the Warao who had little to no interaction with the outside world before the missionaries’ appearance. The film shows the competing realities and subjectivities of two women living in the area: a Franciscan nun, Sister Isabel, and an old Warao woman, Carmelita. Unlike the linear “exceptional artist beyond her time” narratives manifest in the recent spur of interest in Strand's body of work, the article explores the contemporary feel of Strand's film in relation to the transnational, cross-cultural, and affective ranges that go unnoticed when the scope of 1970s feminisms is painted in broad brushstrokes. Accordingly, the article emphasizes that Strand's nonteleological approach to history and ethnography in her film at once challenges the colonial, patriarchal gaze and its temporal distanciation and subjugation and invites us to reassess the linear feminist narratives of evolution, progress, and/or loss that often tend to rely on reductive historical periodization. Strand's filmmaking methods and style provide us with an alternative feminist historiographical model, “surfacing,” that highlights the productive resonances between then, now, and possible futures.

The Place of Women's Filmmaking in an Interdisciplinary Architecture Course

Open Screens, 2022

This paper explores the rich pedagogical potential of women's filmmaking for interdisciplinary co... more This paper explores the rich pedagogical potential of women's filmmaking for interdisciplinary courses that explore the relations between cinema, architecture, and urbanism. While many courses on this subject tend to focus on white male filmmakers (e.g., Alfred Hitchcock, Jacques Tati, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang), in constructing a new version of this elective, I aimed to extensively incorporate women's filmmaking to the curriculum, especially opting for exemplary films that provide a rich basis to discuss the construction of gender and cinematic space in relation to one other. The course pays sustained, rigorous attention to women as filmmakers, textual subjects, and spectators while discussing topics including domesticity; borders and movement; screening space and spectatorship; cine-museology; national and transnational spaces; animated worldmaking; and digital realisms. Taking the classroom discussions on The Babadook (dir. Jennifer Kent, Australia, 2014) and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (dir. Ana Lily Amirpour, US, 2015) as its case studies, this paper considers how the use of women's filmmaking in an interdisciplinary course allows students to explore diverse strategies of cinematic representation that deconstruct and reshape gender in connection to the cinematic fabrications of space.

Through a Museum Window: Tacita Dean’s FILM (2011) and a Cinema of Dissensus

Quarterly Review of Film and Video

Across the Traces: Lawrence Jordan’s Animated Documents

Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2020

Since the early 1960s, Lawrence Jordan has appropriated a variety of Victorian engravings transfo... more Since the early 1960s, Lawrence Jordan has appropriated a variety of Victorian engravings transforming them into experimental animations through the use of cut-out stop-motion techniques. In their outmoded style and technique, the dense tapestry of collaged ephemera begins to function as indices of their original Victorian context and its printing processes. But the stop-motion manipulation also renders these indexical documents surreal through the juxtaposition of apparently unrelated images. This amounts to a reflexive approach harking back to the early days of cinema when audiences perceived the new technology as a source of wonder, amazement and magic. Jordan’s animations, such as Patricia Gives Birth to a Dream by the Doorway (1961–1964) and The Centennial Exposition (1961–1964), employ a productive tension not just between animation and documentary but between indexicality and illusion as well. In these animations, the use of such tensions exposes history and culture as fragmentary constructions of memory, fantasy and experience, thereby open to alteration, re-reading and reconfiguration in the present moment.

Keywords: cinema of attractions, cut-out technique, found material, historiography and animation, indexical animation, indexicality, outmoded, spatial representation in animation, stop-motion animation, Victorian memorabilia

Site-Specific Protest: Liberate Tate’s Performances at Tate Modern

METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, 2019

Yüzüncü Yılında Bauhaus: Kurgular / Söylemler / Tarihsellik

Dosya, 2019

Bauhaus’un 100. Yıl Etkinliklerine Küresel ve Azınlıkçı Çerçevelerden Bir Bakış

Mimarlık, 2019

Bauhaus’un 100. yıl etkinlikleri, mimarlık ve tasarım tarihi yazımına önemli katkılarda bulunurke... more Bauhaus’un 100. yıl etkinlikleri, mimarlık ve tasarım tarihi yazımına önemli katkılarda bulunurken, Bauhaus’un ele alınış yöntemleriyle ilgili sorgulamayı da beraberinde getiriyor. Bu etkinliklerde Bauhaus ve mirasının oynadığı rolü irdeleyen yazar, “Batı merkezli, beyaz erkek odaklı tarih anlayışını yıkmaya çalışmaları” nedeniyle bu çalışmaların önemine dikkat çekiyor.

The Futurist Myth of Accelerated Subjectivity: Speed in Umberto Boccioni's Works

in Mobility and Fantasy in Visual Culture, edited by Lewis Johnson, New York: Routledge, 2014

Sanatsal Mekan Mekansal Sanat

İnci Aslanoğlu için bir Mimarlık Tarihi Dizimi, derleyen Elvan Altan ve Sevil Enginsoy Ekinci, Ankara: ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Yayınları, 2019

Toplanmanın İzinde: Mekânsal Hafıza, Protesto ve Sanat

Acil Toplanma Yerinden Manzaralar (sergi katalogu), derleyen Onur Çimen, Ankara: Goethe Institut, 2022

Insurgent Articulations

Canyon Cinema Discovered (exh. cat.), edited by Brett Kashmere and S. Topiary Landberg, 2022

Sinemasal Mekan ve Toplumsal Cinsiyet Üzerine Notlar

Sinema ve Mimarlık, Celal Abdi Güzer, der., 2023

Yakın Plan: Çaǧdaş Sanat Müzeleri

Sanat ve Mimarlık, Celal Abdi Güzer, der., 2024

The diagonal axis from "VERB to VOID": interdisciplinarity in basic design studio education

by Pelin Yoncaci-Arslan and Ekin Pinar

ArchNet-IJAR, Sep 15, 2022

Teaching Architectural Design Studio Remotely: The Introduction to Architectural Design Course at METU

by Pelin Yoncaci-Arslan and Ekin Pinar

Journal of Design Studio, 2020

This paper aims to briefly assess the potentials and limits of online learning environment for st... more This paper aims to briefly assess the potentials and limits of online learning environment for studio education by focusing on the case of 2019-20 spring semester studio of Introduction to Architectural Design course at Middle East Technical University’s Department of Architecture. As a transitory course between basic design principles and architectural design, Introduction to Architectural Design addresses the issues of site, program, structure, form, and material in reference to small scale architectural interventions. Reviewing the usual course of the semester until the COVID-19 outbreak as well as the effects of the unexpected switch to the emergency distance teaching, the paper highlights both the creative advantages and material shortcomings of the course’s adaptation process into the online studio format.

The diagonal axis from VERB to VOID: interdisciplinarity in basic design studio education

Archnet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, 2023

Teaching Architectural Design Studio Remotely: The Introduction to Architectural Design Course at METU

by Ekin Pinar and esin komez

Journal of Design Studio, 2020

This paper aims to briefly assess the potentials and limits of online learning environment for st... more This paper aims to briefly assess the potentials and limits of online learning environment for studio education by focusing on the case of 2019-20 spring semester studio of Introduction to Architectural Design course at Middle East Technical University's Department of Architecture. As a transitory course between basic design principles and architectural design, Introduction to Architectural Design addresses the issues of site, program, structure, form, and material in reference to small scale architectural interventions. Reviewing the usual course of the semester until the COVID-19 outbreak as well as the effects of the unexpected switch to the emergency distance teaching, the paper highlights both the creative advantages and material shortcomings of the course's adaptation process into the online studio format.

KİTAP ELEŞTİRİSİ: SİNEMA VE MİMARLIK ARAKESİTİNDE KURGUSAL MEKÂN, TARİHSELLİK VE SANAT

METU JOURNAL OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, 2023

Book Review: Restricted Access by Elizabeth Ellcessor

Film Criticism, 2017

Canyon Collective Artists: Micropolitics in West Coast Experimental Film, 1960-79

Ph.D dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2015

The 'Place' of Film: Cinematic Spaces, Sites, Settings

Kesit, 2020