Common Assembly II at Nottingham Contemporary

Seminar: 28 Jan 2012, 10.30am – 6pm. Free, Gallery 2 With DAAR, Rasha Salti, Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri (16 Beaver Group), Sari Hanafi, Lieven De Cauter, Lorenzo Pezzani, Nishat Awan, Berlage Studio.

A one day seminar within DAAR’s reconstruction of the Palestinian Parliament, A Common Assembly II will consider the new nature of political action and association, against the background of current collective protest in the Middle East and around the world.

The term Common Assembly describes a radical form of political participation, revolutionary protest and collective action – from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, St Paul’s Cathedral – and Nottingham’s Market Square. These forums have changed the meaning of the words common, assembly and occupation.

Exhibition: 28 Jan 2012 – 15 Apr 2012

The centrepiece of their exhibition is a life-sized section through the abandoned Palestinian Parliament in a suburb of Jerusalem – a parliament that has never been used. Construction started during the 1996 Oslo Accord when peace seemed possible and was halted in 2003 after the Second Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, marked the failure of the political process.

The project began with the discovery that – mistakenly or intentionally – the building was constructed on Israel’s unilaterally declared border within Jerusalem. The parliament is partly within Israeli territory and partly within Palestinian controlled land – a small strip, no wider than the border line, is in legal limbo.

DAAR will build the section of the abandoned Palestine Parliament that the border line crosses in three dimensions. This suspended and elongated structure will act as a forum for debate on the future of Palestine during the exhibition.

How can political participation be organised for a partially exiled and geographically dispersed people? Palestine’s complex and developing nationhood offers the opportunity to think beyond the nation state as conceived and imposed by former European colonial powers.

Common Assembly is a project by Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti, Eyal Weizman, Nicola Perugini with Yazeed Anani, Nishat Awan, Ghassan Bannoura, Benoit Burquel, Suzy Harris-Brandts, Runa Johannessen, Zografia Karekou, Cressida Kocienski, Lejla Odobasic, Carina Ottino, Elizabeth Paden, Sameena Sitabkhan, Amy Zion.

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Nottingham Contemporary

Los Angeles Times 2011 year in review: Best in Architecture “Decolonizing Architecture”

Posted: 31.12.2011

It was a year in which American architects despaired that the economy might never really recover. It was also a year in which they produced a few small gems. And the profession as a whole continued to move past the flashy formalism of the last decade to seek new, genuine kinds of engagement with cities and people.

“Decolonizing Architecture.” At REDCAT, an exhibition by architects Eyal Weizman, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti offered a rare look at the architecture and infrastructure of Israeli settlements and their potential future.

“OMA /Progress.” This exhibition at London’s Barbican Centre on Rem Koolhaas’ firm — curated by Rotor, a young and talented design collective from Brussels — is big, sprawling and messy. But it gets with surprising efficiency at the complex heart of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s practice, which ranges from research to books to buildings.

“No More Play: Conversations on Urban Speculation in Los Angeles and Beyond.” Architect Michael Maltzan interviewed architects, academics, artists and writers for this nuanced, surprisingly upbeat portrait of Los Angeles, where rising density has brought the city to a “pivotal moment” in which “L.A.’s new identity is being determined.”

HL23. Neil Denari, the 54-year-old L.A. architect, waited a long time for his big break. He got it in Manhattan of all places, where his sleek 14-story luxury condo tower bends memorably over the High Line elevated park.

“Manifest Destiny: A Guide to the Essential Indifference of American Suburban Housing.” In 58 very short chapters, Jason Griffiths, a British architect who teaches at Arizona State, miraculously finds new language to describe the eternally affectless qualities of gated communities and tract housing.

West Hollywood Library. Designed the Culver City firm Johnson Favaro, the new library is a stirring reaffirmation of the power of civic architecture that came through the punishing low-bid public construction process with its lively spirit fully intact.

The Carmaggedon debate. Shutting down the 405 Freeway for a summer weekend turned out to be the traffic disaster that wasn’t. But the debate it prompted — about mobility, transportation and the primacy of the freeway in L.A.’s collective imagination — was overdue and productive.

The Sadik-Khan influence. New York transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan has made plenty of enemies by carving out new bike lanes in the city and pushing for congestion pricing. But her message is being heard nationwide: Just look at the new, bright green bike lanes on Spring Street in downtown L.A.

New World Center. Frank Gehry’s Miami Beach building for Michael Tilson Thomas’ New World Symphony looks a plain stucco box from the street. But inside is a whole village of spaces for playing and practicing music, not to mention a breakthrough in exploring the relationship between technology and live performance.

“Open City.” Teju Cole’s debut novel, whose protagonist is both an unreliable narrator and a tireless flâneur, contains memorable descriptions of architecture and urban form on nearly every page; imagine W.G. Sebald describing multicultural, post-Sept. 11 Manhattan.

The worst: Downtown megaplans. With Farmers Field and a revamped, expanded Union Station, Los Angeles is planning megaprojects at both the south and north ends of downtown. Both sadly are shaping up as business as usual, thanks to disappointing designs for the stadium and a cautious, even timid, shortlist for the Union Station master plan.

los angeles times

Opening Saturday 05.00 pm – 19th November, Khalil Al-Sakakini Ramallah

Posted: 17.11.2011

COMMON ASSEMBLY I: Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Posted: 27.10.2011

Common Assembly: Deterritorializing the Palestinian Parliament is a long-term
project to think through and conceive spaces for political participation, decision
and action for all Palestinians. This autumn, the United Nations will vote on whether
to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state and a member of their assembly. This
event’s arrival on the heels of other liberation struggles throughout the Middle East
makes it a historic moment with great potential. Whatever the vote’s outcome,
Palestinians must deal with a significant spatial problem: how can political
participation be organized for a partially exiled—and therefore, geographically
dispersed—people?

Where different revolutionary initiatives launched by Palestinian academics and
various factions seek to address this problem on the political and institutional level,
DAAR is committed to thinking through this problem on the architectural, territorial
and (extra) territorial levels. The studio has been granted access to the Palestinian
Parliament building in Abu Dis. It was constructed with international donations during
the Oslo years but the project was abandoned before completion. Now the Wall cuts
the building off from Jerusalem. The building stands as a monument to the collapsed
peace process but this condition of local impossibility allows for a political imaginary
to arise. Thus, the building becomes a starting point to imagine new types of political
assembly.

DAAR decided to use the building both as a site of intervention as well as a site of
architectural speculation. DAAR’s goal is to work through an understanding of the
relationships between territory, population and political representation. In Palestine,
the population cannot be represented by a single parliament building, as it would
serve only a people within imposed borders that fragment all those who see
themselves as Palestinians; it must operate through disassociations in which the
people, the building and the territory are categories in constant motion in relation to
each other.

Alessandro Petti – Creative Time Summit, New York – 23 September 2011

Posted: 27.10.2011

Watch live streaming video from creativetime at livestream.com

Exhibition: DAAR at Steirischer Herbst

23/09 – 16/10
c/o Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill & Festival district: Information and Ticket Office
Mon – Fri 12 noon – 8 pm
Sat & Sun 10.30 am – 8 pm

www.steirischerherbst.at

UN-Habitat calls for planner

UN-Habitat calls for urban planner in the area of Jerusalem.

Submission’s dead line: 14 October 2011.

UNDP/PAPP vacancy call

Towards return of Palestinian refugees

Posted: 16.09.2011
Sedek 6 Editorial: an introduction, and an invitation
It is doubtful whether there has ever been an idea in the modern history of Israel and Palestine whose consideration of the feasibility and development of possibilities has been so rejected and neglected as that of the idea of the return of the Palestinian refugees. Israel’s denial since the end of the 1948 war of the Palestinian refugees’ right to return home has focused public attention about the refugees on the right of return, thereby banishing the development of all political vision and practice from the public debate.

Sedek 6 is a challenge to this negation, which has effectively imposed a freeze on the return of the Palestinian refugees as a practical possibility. Sedek 6 provides a tri-lingual textual and visual platform for initial experiences in thinking – political, visionary, and planning – toward the return of the Palestinian refugee

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Design Studio at the Berlage Institute

Posted: 12.09.2011
27 September 2011, 12:00–19:00
Opening Conference, Introduction of the Academic Year Program 2011-2012
Berlage Institute, Botersloot 25, 3011 HE Rotterdam, The Netherlands

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Eyal Weizman at University of Bergen and Columbia University

Posted: 10.09.2011
Hollow Land: Landscape, Memory, Politics
The Fourth Nomadikon Meeting
Bergen, September 20, 2011


The event is jointly organized by the research project Nomadikon: New Ecologies of the Image and the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Bergen, and is open to the public.
Part One
Egget, Student Centre, University of Bergen, Parkveien 1


14.45 Words of welcome 
Asbjørn Grønstad, Nomadikon, and Knut Vikør, Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies 


15.00 – 16.30 
Øyvind Vågnes, “’What has happened in a place is always happening’: Reflections on Footnotes in Gaza”
Kjersti G. Berg, “Humanitarian Governance and the Construction of Palestinian Refugee Camps”
Henrik Gustafsson, “Site, Speech and Silence”


16.30 Break, Coffee, Fruit, Pastry

17.00 – 18.15 
W.J.T. Mitchell, “Art X Environment: Extreme Social Landscapes”
Includes a screening of Khaled Jarrar’s Journey 110 (2009, 13 min)


18.15 Break,
Coffee

18.30-19.30 

Eyal Weizman, “Decolonizing Architecture”


Part Two
Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall, Rasmus Meyers allé 5

20.00 Joe Sacco, “Recreating Place and Time in Comics”

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Injured Cities, Urban Afterlives
A conference cosponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women and the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference at Columbia University

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2011 – SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2011
MILLER THEATER AND WOOD AUDITORIUM, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

What are the effects of catastrophe on cities, their inhabitants, and the larger world? How can we address the politics of terror with which states react to their vulnerability? This conference, convened ten years after September 11, 2001, aims to explore the effects of catastrophe and to imagine more life-affirming modes of redress and reinvention. In a series of presentations and conversations, an international group of artists, writers, and activists will imagine creative responses to disaster and initiate a new collective memory of the events of September 11. Speakers include Ariella Azoulay, Nina Bernstein, Hazel Carby, Teddy Cruz, Ann Jones, Dinh Q. Lê, Shirin Neshat, Walid Raad, Saskia Sassen, Karen Till, Clive van den Berg, Eyal Weizman, and narrators from the September 11, 2001 Oral History Project at Columbia.

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