Survival Kit for Dummies

We are in the midst of an era where the world deteriorates politically and ecologically. Natural disasters trigger one another, pandemics and social crises escalate the scale of these catastrophes. The effect of climate change empowers the extreme weather conditions such as floods, fires or hurricanes and turns them into more fatal and destructive, while the biodiversity diminishes and natural sources get scarce and leads to water crisis and overall causing wars over energy and nurtures these tensions and deepens them. 

Wars keep on displacing people, global inequality paves the way to the poverty and housing problems and reinforces the system of exploitation. The extreme rightists a rallies and democratic values are in e threading the growing strength of power restirts the freedom of speech and impacts fundamental rights. All of these induce denial of scientific reality and lead to disinformation and infollution.

Life is getting hard to deal with. – or we make every effort to harden it. In both cases we hang on to some tools that could save us in the first hand individually. The exhibition, Survival Kit for Dummies focuses on these moments of sole escape from the chaotic atmospheres. Here, artists rethink the notion of those survival kits; as an emergency exit, a good plan to survive from the reality we are in.

These suggestions address not only the conditions of physical survival, but also the need for mental and emotional resilience. The dystopian visions of the future no longer belong solely to fiction; they have become an integral part of our lived reality.

Our instincts work in tandem with our capacity for rapid thinking and creative problem-solving. Economic crises may pave the way for new social models. This exhibition explores the knowledge, resources, and tools needed to endure the challenges of the present, without the need for a doomsday scenario.

DIY (Do-It-Yourself) culture provides fertile ground for imagining practical and self-directed forms of problem-solving. Within this framework, we envision the creation of “survival kits” based on functional production strategies. These kits may draw on guerrilla tactics, camouflage techniques, practices of personal sovereignty, ancestral knowledge, or reactivated forms of collective memory.

In this regard, the inventive practices emerging from collective movements of resistance can offer important points of reference. During the Gezi protests in Istanbul in 2013, hundreds of people developed improvised strategies to cope with police violence, transforming ordinary objects into tools of protection and solidarity. Swimming goggles, milk bottles, masks, and wet wipes became components of makeshift survival kits that embodied a peaceful yet effective form of resistance. Likewise, during Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement in 2014, protesters mobilized everyday items—umbrellas, masks, and black clothing among them—to navigate conditions of both physical and digital vulnerability.

The devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey in 2023 reminded us that preparedness extends beyond physical survival; it also involves cultivating conditions for psychological and emotional resilience. In the aftermath of the disaster, public awareness around emergency preparedness intensified. At the same time, many urban residents turned toward practices aimed at sustaining inner stability. Meditation, yoga, breathwork, and saltwater therapies became part of a repertoire of coping mechanisms—forming what could be understood as “abstract survival kits,” designed not to protect the body alone, but also to support the mind in times of uncertainty and collective distress.

Drawing on these reflections, the exhibition invites artists to develop their own survival kits. Through these proposals, it seeks to explore how collective imagination and creative production can function as modes of resilience, care, and survival.

Melis Golar
August 2025