During the guided walk, Cengiz Mengüç leads visitors past his interventions and invites them to construct alternative slogans together – encouraging a deeper examination of the structured language of the city and potentialities for subversion.

His project, ‘Smoothie Report,’ collects texts from real estate, city marketing, hospitality, and retail advertisements he encounters in the urban landscape, and re-composes them as poetic slogans. These slogans are then reintroduced into the cityscape as subtle interventions, playfully questioning the dominant urban narratives.

Mengüç delves into the languages of gentrification processes in Rotterdam. Drawing inspiration from René de Boer’s notion of the ‘Smooth City’ – a global trend where cities strive for perfection, efficiency, and control, pushing out alternative stories, ideas, and subcultures – Mengüç investigates how this phenomenon unfolds in Rotterdam’s city center.