Arabahmet Kültür Evi

Description

What is ‘Arkhe’?
Founded by Arabahmet District Development Company Ltd. on the initiative of the Nicosia Turkish Municipality, Arkhe is an intellectual and creative production space in the heart of Nicosia, where studies focusing on social memory, cultural heritage and multi-disciplinary art practices will be carried out, effective policies will be developed in these areas, and collaborative uses will be encouraged.

Why ‘Arkhe’?
For the ancient philosophical tradition, seeking, discussing and interpreting knowledge was a holistic action. When we look at the founders of ancient philosophy, all fields from politics to medicine, from art to engineering, from botany to art were within the scope of philosophy as a whole. In this period, philosophy focused on recognising and perceiving the world as a whole with the motive of loving knowledge. However, with the construction of the human-centred world and the Enlightenment, the production of knowledge began to be divided, and with Kant, this production was divided into faculties. This path followed by the modern academy created distinctions such as social sciences and natural sciences and divided the fields of study into departments.

This point where modernity separated knowledge and production has taken an eclectic form with postmodernism and critical thought. The fact that cultural studies brought together many different disciplines and developed a method of production outside the prescriptions of modernity brought cultural production closer to the first form of action of philosophy.