Detournement in social media visuals for a shared activist identity and imagery

Abstract

This article aims to analyse some of the popular activist posters and images related to the Gezi Park resistance that took place in Turkey in 2013. The author argues that the theoretical approach of detournement is the driving force in the formation of the activist 'identity' and 'imagery' related to Gezi protests. Further through detourning the attacks of the government the article examines how the activist posters and images caused shifts in meaning and generated the negation and recreation of signs and significations. In this way it can be seen that detournement as a subversive theoretical approach can be reconstructive while deconstructing verbal and censorship attacks from the government. The article engages with the word capulcu (looters) in an address by the former Prime Minister against the Gezi protesters and the penguin documentary used as a censorship element during the protests. It analyses how detournement applied by the protesters to these attacks led to the creation of a shared Gezi identity and image.