We are in a time when the visual language we are familiar with from the world of advertising is scattered all over our living spaces. These codes, located at every point of the city that corresponds to our eye line, are trying to convince us that something is actually something else. It would be inadequate to say that advertising is merely a product promotion campaign in our time when capitalism has become absolute as if it were a philosophy of life. Take, for example, the advertisements of industrial food brands. How realistic can a product claiming to be natural be at a time when we are not only disconnecting from nature, but also destroying it like a virus? What does this image of a girl in a green t-shirt drinking buttermilk on a farm actually tell us, or not? The imaginary packaging created in our minds by that brand for that ayran tells us that it is natural, of course. And this, of course, is nothing but the packaging of a lie, embellished by pretending.
At the beginning of the article, we said that this pretend advertising language has spread to all our living spaces. In a study conducted by the World Cities Culture Forum in 2018, Istanbul ranked 34th out of 34 cities with a green area ratio of 2.2% among all metropolitan cities of the world. "We betrayed the city, we are betraying the city..." We are witnessing that this slaughter, which even the executives admit to, continues unabated. In the light of these confessions and the above research, it is useful to recall the housing advertisements that it is impossible not to come across; "in nature", "with a spacious forest view", "in the heart of Istanbul, in the forest", "valley mansions"... These construction site landscapes, which we can observe on any journey without even needing to pay special attention to them, hide something we are familiar with from the language of advertisements. Each of them is bordered by a fence decorated with natural images between it and the city. When we turn our eyes above the fence, we are greeted by cranes and cubic concrete forms. Here, nature is like a dream image in which an illegal act is hidden.
Packaging is a reference of imagination, not of existence. We are now consolation observers of this dream-producing industry. Like a penguin with an arctic landscape painted on the wall of his cage...