The Centres in The Margins: The No Man's Land as Public Place in Cyprus.

一块原本打算将公众拒之门外的土地是如何成为公共场所的？塞浦路斯的边界——这个拥有世界上最后一个分裂的首都的岛屿——提供了一个独特的场地，同时将边界和公共、边缘和中心、分裂和统一的概念结合在一起。北部由土族塞浦路斯人控制，南部由希族塞浦路斯人控制，作为世界上为数不多的非军事化无人区和独特的社会活力的地区之一，边界仍然很明显。社会和文化活动，从社区间的表演艺术节到饱受战争蹂躏的鬼城的导游，都可以在这片边境地区观察到。它被用作文化中心，挑战了以前人类学关于边界作为领土边缘的理论。在追求推进构成边界和公共空间的人类学框架的过程中，该项目将探讨边缘如何成为文化中心？我打算在这片无人区的两个文化最活跃的地区——莱德拉宫和瓦罗沙进行研究。联合国管理的莱德拉宫地区被矛盾地用于分裂和接触，双方塞浦路斯人在这里会面，举办展览和节日，以及小型会面，如语言课和与朋友喝咖啡。瓦罗沙是一个旅游胜地，在1974年战争之前主要是希族塞人居住，当时他们被迫流离失所。随后，它被土族塞人行政当局军事化，沦为臭名昭著的“鬼城”。北塞浦路斯土耳其共和国在2020年重新向公众开放了这座鬼城，这引起了全球的强烈反对。游客可以漫步、骑行，甚至在被毁坏的建筑环境旁边的海滩上游泳，由于瓦罗沙新开放的状态，这些活动仍未被探索。通过纵向参与观察和访谈收集民族志数据，我将关注文化工作者，参与他们的边境文化活动，如与艺术家一起策划展览，跟随导游参观战争遗弃。通过比较这些有前途的地点促进的文化活动，我的目的是探索从边境地区到公共领域的复兴所带来的政治、物质和社会影响。

How does a land intended to keep out the public become a public place? The border in Cyprus - the island with the last divided capital in the world - offers a unique field site that simultaneously brings together notions of border-ness and publicness, margins and centres, division and unification. The border, between the Turkish Cypriot-run north and the Greek Cypriot-run south, remains distinct as one of the few in the world with a demilitarised no man's land and with a unique social liveliness. Social and cultural activities, varying from intercommunal performing arts festivals to guided tours of a war-stricken ghost town, can be observed in this borderland. It is used as a centre for culture, challenging the previous anthropological theories of borders as territorial margins. In the pursuit of advancing anthropological frameworks of what constitutes borders and public spaces, this project will ask how the margins can become cultural centres? I intend to conduct research in the two most culturally active areas of the no man's land - Ledra Palace and Varosha. The UN-managed Ledra Palace area has been paradoxically employed for division and contact where Cypriots from both sides have been meeting to produce exhibitions and festivals as well as small encounters, such as language lessons and coffee-drinking with friends. Varosha was a tourist resort town that was inhabited mostly by Greek Cypriots before the 1974 war when they were forcibly displaced. It was subsequently militarised by the Turkish Cypriot administration and relegated to the infamous status of a 'Ghost Town'. Much to a major global disapproval, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus controversially re-opened the ghost town to the public for sightseeing in 2020. Tourists can roam and cycle around, or even swim on a beach next to the ruined/ruining built environment, and these activities remain unexplored due to the newly-opened status of Varosha. Gathering ethnographic data through longitudinal participant observation and interviews, I will focus on the cultural workers and participate in their in-border cultural activities, such as curating exhibitions with artists and shadowing tour guides giving tours of war abandonment. Through comparing the cultural activities facilitated in these promising sites, I aim to explore the political, material and social implications borne from the revitalisation of the borderland into the public sphere.