How might we spatialise the scant mapping and ephemera of an island subsumed in the name of progress?

In 1964 The Iron Gates Dam project on the lower Danube was initiated, and with the mid-stream island Ada Kaleh, was doomed to being subsumed in water. 14 kilometres upstream of the dam, the island now lies 30 metres under the central flow of the river, one of many cultural casualties to the modernising of the Socialist Republic of Romania. However, this was an atypical place, in any context, and had been a cultural island for over 100 years. It has been argued that its history starts in the trials of Hercules, however we know conclusively of a Hapsburg fortification, followed by an Ottoman civilian population who resided there. When the Ottoman empire was pushed back, Ada Kaleh was left a cultural and literal island of 19th century Ottoman culture in an area which bore little similarity. Through various rulers and regimes, it persisted against the odds until even its parent state was unrecognisable.

This project seeks to spatialise and give built form to that which has been lost. As a very real place, yet with remaining no spatial dimension, it is an effort to amplify existing ephemera and representations, in order that Ada Kaleh might be explored still. It features on the maps of the various regimes who ruled it, almost as a footnote, on the edge, an unknown. I bare no relation to this island, bar solidarity and intrigue, so will attempt to minimise my own interpretation, in favour of amplification.

I choose to focus on 2 key traces of place; photographs, correspondence, and most significantly historical maps. Many of these highlight its specificities as a place that dodged and subverted mapped borders. In collaging these ephemera, I seek to add a spatial dimension to what remains as a just a cultural essence. The resulting artefact takes form of a speculative map, taking visual cues from the likes of Terra Forma (MIT Press, 2022), Conspiracy of Cartographers: Retrofuture Maps, and the tactile, ambiguous maps of William Kentridge. In 2D & 3D I explore representation of the currents which formed the island’s identity, including its passive resistance to progress, tourism as its means, and its lingering Ottoman inheritance.