At the invitation of Evren Uzer, Otto von Busch, and local denizens, I used a buggy traditionally used to leave lines of chalk on soccer fields to draw a line of bread crumbs through two locations that were not my home. Erased by hungry pigeons, passersby, cars, ants, wind, and other unknown elements, the crumb meridian marks my temporary presences in a foreign location.


Some background info about Turkey's cultural history of bread
As a symbol as alimentation, generosity, and compassion, bread plays an in interesting role in the cultural imagining of Istanbul.

In Judeo-Christian cultures, the breaking and sharing of bread (or Eucharist) recalls the taking of Communion and the symbolic consumption of the body of Christ. Bread also carries strong connotations in Turkey and specifically in Istanbul. For one, the boundaries of modern-day Turkey is situated in the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent, birthplace of the earliest civilization founded on an agricultural economy whose primary staple and food source was various grains (wheat, barley, rye) for the production of bread.

Later, the founding of Byzantium, Constantinople, and modern-day Istanbul are laden with references to bread as symbol of spiritual and therefore political strength. The construction of the Hagia Sophia (the 'Blue Mosque'), the architectural gem of Byzantium, is explained through the following legend: "One day during mass, Byzantine Emperor Justinian dropped the holy bread from his hands and before he could grasp it, a bee picked up the bread and flew away. Justinian sent the message to all bee-keepers in the empire to look for the bread in their hives. After a couple of days, a bee-keeper arrived with a very peculiar looking hive. Justinian decided then and there that a magnificent church to be built would have this hive as its ground plan." [1]

In the 4th century transformation of Byzantium into Constantinople, Emperor Constantine's plans included not only expanding the city walls and erecting significant monuments, but free bread and citizenship as an incentive to encourage settlement of the region between the city center and new expanded walls. [2] Later, the importance of wheat in the Ottoman Empire was evidenced by the provisioning of wheat by religious municipal organizations governing the city's various neighborhoods. Clifford A. Wright writes, "The first order of business for the Ottoman government in the Middle Ages was the provisioning of wheat for the city of Istanbul, the capital. The waqf, the religious institution, played a major role in provisioning the city, with the qadi, a religious magistrate, responsible for the task. The charitably endowed hospices of the city distributed thousands of loaves of bread and meals each day to hundreds of people. The imarets, charitable organizations that fed thousands of people who did not have an independent source of income, had large staffs of cooks and larders. They were the closest thing to today's public soup kitchens and they gave leftover food to widows and children." [3]

Writing on the conflation of bread and citizenship, one source writes: "Provisioning of the Imperial capital Istanbul had been one of the major concerns of the Ottoman rulers from the classical age to the dawn of the modern era. Grain occupied a particularly important place in the provisioning policies of the Ottoman state due to the fact that the Ottoman sultans considered the steady supply of 'people's bread' in the capital city as one of the ways to promote and reproduce their image of sovereignty in the general public opinion." [4]

As a universal symbol laden with spiritual, political, and also secular connotations, bread is a medium that in consuming becomes a kind of universal communion.
Marisa Jahn & Steve Shada

BACK

THE CRUMB MERIDIAN
(Hartford, CT & Istanbul)
by Marisa Jahn & Steve Shada
2005
media: breadcrumbs, buggy

venue:
VROOM, a conference in Istanbul curated by Evren Uzer & Otto von Busch, hosted this project to be conducted on the streets of Istanbul and Hartford, CT (USA)