Digital reproducibility in locative media: Atatürk, his mother and women’s rights monument, İzmir

Abstract

This research delves into the digital reproductions of a specific monument in locative media employing Walter Benjamin’s conceptual framework presented in ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’. The monument in question, namely, the recently reconstructed and rescaled Atatürk, His Mother and Women’s Right Monument in İzmir, Turkey serves as an exemplary case for examining the reproducibility of monuments within both physical and digital environments. Its significance lies not only in the ongoing political and scholarly debate revolving around the decision of local municipality to undertake its reconstruction, but also in its growing popularity in social media as a consequence of this debate. The analyses of digital reproductions of the monument in the paper are twofold: The first gives insights into the effects of digital reproductions on the aura and authenticity of the monument in locative media. The second focuses on how the local municipality and individual users instrumentalize these productions to perform official and mundane rituals and aestheticize not only their own political agendas but also their everyday life.