27 October 2021
Kundura Hafıza Project, launched in 2015 in collaboration with the History Foundation and growing steadily ever since, centers on oral history work shaped by the memories of nearly 200 former workers of the Beykoz Kundura Factory and their families, memories that have accumulated in each of their minds, while enriching its archive with documents, photographs, objects and many other physical sources. On the UNESCO World Day for Audiovisual Heritage on October 27 and under its chosen theme, “Your Window to the World,” Kundura Hafıza takes its place as one of the key actors in preserving and passing on audiovisual cultural heritage, as “a window opening from the factory’s past memory onto the present.”
Today, the oral history work carried out under the umbrella of the Kundura Hafıza Cultural Heritage Preservation Association forms the foundation of the Kundura Hafıza archive. In looking at Beykoz Kundura’s past, the memories of the factory’s veteran workers and their families, stored in digital media such as video and audio, are used today as resources that nourish collective memory, as audiovisual cultural heritage preserved in digital archives. Thus, as it journeys into the past of the Beykoz Kundura Factory, Kundura Hafıza ‘reminds’ us of what it ‘remembers’ through oral history work, exhibitions, workshops and archival work.
The “Kundura’s Memory: A World Fit into a Factory” exhibition, a starting point for passing on collective memory, is located in the ‘Marangozhane’ (Carpentry Workshop), where wooden shoe lasts were produced in the days of the Beykoz Deri ve Kundura Fabrikası (Beykoz Leather and Shoe Factory). In addition to the videos, audio recordings and archival documentary featured in the exhibition, this space where the lasts were once made also houses objects such as leather, shoe-upper sewing machines, shoes and laboratory equipment, making room for memory to transform, to exist anew within itself and to carry on its continuity. With an inclusive and interactive approach, it captivates visitors with audiovisual narratives delivered via QR codes and tablets, and takes them on a journey through the preserved original buildings of Beykoz Kundura, one of Türkiye’s most important industrial heritage sites.
Founded in the early 1800s and in continuous production until 1999, the factory was transferred in 1933 to Sümerbank Beykoz Deri ve Kundura Fabrikası, after which it became a social living space with a population of up to three thousand, complete with facilities such as a nursery, a cinema, a social club, a health center and a library. The life the factory shaped forms the historical reference for Beykoz Kundura’s present-day tradition of being a ‘social space’ that hosts multidisciplinary events such as cinema, dance, exhibitions and concerts. As the shoe factory turns into a story factory, it follows the traces of the past and adapts them to the present. Born from the repurposing of the Boiler Room, which produced the factory’s energy during the Sümerbank period, Kundura Sinema and Kundura Sahne continue to radiate energy at the heart of Kundura today, aiming to be more than just a cinema and a stage. While bringing their audiences together with elements of audiovisual heritage, they also carry the echoes of the film screenings and concerts held during the factory years to present-day Beykoz and Istanbul.