Eyal Weizman at the Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture, 2nd March

Posted: 10.03.2010

In 2004, the Department of English and Comparative Studies inaugurated an annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture to honour a prominent literary scholar and a renowned public intellectual who died in 2003.
Said understood criticism to be a ‘humanistic activity’ encompassing ‘erudition and sympathy’, sensitivity to ‘inner tensions’, and an openness to imponderables and mysteries. His own finely-tuned responsiveness to the singularity of any piece of writing with which he engaged, is evident in his innovative and surprising interpretations of both canonical and marginalised literature.
These same writings also register the obligation felt by Said to make visible the actual affiliations that exist between ‘the world of ideas and scholarship on the one hand, and the world of brute politics, corporate and state power, and military force on the other.’
The University of Warwick had twice hosted visits from Edward Said. In 1994 the Department of English together with the Department of Philosophy held an International Conference on his work and the work this has generated. Papers presented at this conference were later published as Cultural Readings of Imperialism: Edward Said and the Gravity of History, ed. Keith Ansell Pearson, Benita Parry and Judith Squires (1997). In 2001 Said received an Honorary Degree. On both occasions his crowded lectures revealed his singular ability to bring politics to scholarship and scholarship to politics.

The 6th Annual Edward Said Memorial Lecture
Tuesday 2nd March 2010 at 6pm, University of Warwick, Ramphal Building, Room R0.21 
“Spatial Politics in Israel and Palestine”
Professor Eyal Weizman, Director of the Centre for Research in Architecture, Goldsmiths College, London.
Author of Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation (2007)
Further enquiries to: N.Lazarus@warwick.ac.uk

Panel Discussion at the Tate Modern London, 25 May 2010, 18.30–21.00

Posted: 25.02.2010

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Bethlehem-based architectural practice Decolonizing Architecture members Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman present some of the ideas that inform their work in conversation with researcher Lorenzo Pezzani, Abdoumaliq Simone, urbanist and Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College and film curator Rasha Salti.
This event runs concurrently with the ‘Decolonizing Architecture’ film season at The Delfina Foundation curated by Rasha Salti.
Supported by The Delfina Foundation

Tate Modern  Starr Auditorium
£12 (£10 concessions), booking recommended
For tickets, call 020 7887 8888

March 9, 2010 Alessandro Petti at The Human Rights Project Bard Collage, NY

Posted: 25.02.2010

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The Human Rights Project (HRP) enables students to learn about, and engage in, the contemporary human rights movement. The Project focuses on the philosophical foundations and political mechanisms of human rights and maintains a special interest in freedom of expression, the public sphere, and media. Since 2001 HRP has supported dozens of student internships at human rights and humanitarian organizations, governmental and international agencies, local community groups, hospitals and clinics, and research centers from Peshawar to Albany. HRP is directed by Thomas Keenan  

http://hrp.bard.edu/project/programs/

Alessandro Petti at the Urban Field Speakers Series in Toronto, March 11, 2010 at 7:30 PM


Posted: 23.02.2010

Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art is proud to present the fifth season of the Urban Field Speakers Series. Toronto, Ontario

Alessandro Petti

Sara Graham, moderator
March 11, 2010 at 7:30 PM


The artist, architect and professor at Bard / Al-Quds University speaks about Decolonzing Architecture, a collaborative research project that explores the problems and potentiality associated with the reuse of Israeli colonial architecture after Israeli occupation and settlers’ evacuations. Moderated by visual artist Sara Graham.

more info

Nahr el Bared Reconstruction Job Vacancy: Urban Designer & Achitect

Posted: 06.02.2010

Nahr el Bared Reconstruction for Civil Action and Studies (NBRC) would like to recruit one Urban Designer and two Architects to work on the production of the masterplan in the adjacent area.
NBRC is located in Tripoli/Nahr el Bared.

Please circulate the TOR for these positions:
1 Urban designer (2-5 years experience)
1 Architect (min 1 year experience)
1 Architect (3-5 years experience)

NBRC is a local Nahr el bared grassroot initiative that worked on the production of the masterplan of the nahr el bared camp and is currently working on a masterplan for the Nahr el bared Camp adjacent Areas. It focuses on advocating for the reconstruction of the destroyed camp and preparation of various studies to facilitate that process.
It was initiated in late June 2007.

Continue reading “Nahr el Bared Reconstruction Job Vacancy: Urban Designer & Achitect”

Decolonizing.ps chosen by Artforum as one of ten most important Art Projects of the decade

Posted: 31.01.2010

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Top Ten by Tirdad Zolghadr

I’m a little tired of interdisciplinarity à la “exhibition research,” where we play semi-Foucauldian journalist or quasi-Rancièrian ethnographer with boring impunity. But decolonizing.ps shows it’s still possible to cross disciplines and act like adults. With a subtle sense of site and medium, format and form, Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti, and Eyal Weizman use architecture to articulate possibilities of decolonization: “Recognizing that Israeli colonies and military bases are amongst the most excruciating instruments of domination, the project assumes that a viable approach to the issue of their appropriation is to be found [in] inaugurating an ‘arena of speculation’ that incorporates varied cultural and political perspectives.” Said “arena” includes landscape designs for interrupting the colonial apparatus, proposals that strive to be both pragmatic and militant, inventive and long-term.

http://artforum.com/inprint/issue=201001&id=24455

The Delfina Foundation and Decolonizing.ps Inaugurate Residency in Bethlehem

Posted: 28.01.2010

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The Delfina Foundation and Decolonizing.ps are collaborating on a residency in Bethlehem, at the Decolonizing Architecture studio. This residency is an opportunity for practitioners to gain intensive experience in practice lead research and spatial activism, within the conceptual frame of the studio, in one the world’s most charged conflict areas.

Lorenzo Pezzani is the first practitioner to take part in this pilot project. A PhD candidate at Goldsmiths University’s Centre for Research Architecture, Lorenzo Pezzani’s practice-based research looks at how the afterlife of various buildings, monuments, migrant bodies and images can enhance, through profanation, the production of a new postcolonial ecology.

The Delfina Foundation facilitates artistic exchanges and dialogue between the UK and the Middle East & North Africa via a programme of artistic residencies and related public events. Its public programme (including talks & exhibitions) provides platforms for artists to explore common areas of practice, showcase their work and look at the link between the arts and civic society.

More information about The Delfina Foundation.

The Book of Return in Action

Posted: 20.01.2010

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The Book of Return assembled for Zochorot it is simultaneously an archive of aural and drawn testimonies about the Palestinian towns and villages destroyed in 1948, and a collection of ideas for an effective return of Palestinian refugees. More importantly it is a tool around which discussions about different forms of returns can take place. The aim is to add to the legalistic approach to the right of return a projective one which proposes a series of images, aiming to open the imagination towards different forms in which an actual return could take place. We believe that a combination of a legal and an architectural approach are necessary in order to open the political imagination.

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The book of Returns is a nomadic device, moving through the different sites and locations where refugees are dispursed, mirroring their political extraterritoriality. In each context it is performing another function. Including maps, drawings, photographs, texts, analysis and actual projects is a fundamental tool to kick start discussions, raise questions, and work around profound fears. Size, material and color are the structural parts for the case. The size plays the role in inviting stake holders to gather around this monumental book. The information collected within the book are intentionaly raw, direct and somehow undetermined, in order to be used as trigers for discussions.

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Inaugural Conference of CAMP Center for Architecture Media and Politics

Posted: 10.01.2010

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Building on the established intellectual networks and projects of Decolonizing Architecture, CAMP the Center for Architecture Media and Politics is an international collective of architects, scholars, artists, urban planners and theorists committed to research, teaching, and cultural programming that generate new thinking about the role of architecture, media, and the politics of space in zones of conflict. The center aims to combine this research with an equal commitment to teaching, an aim it is pursuing through affiliation with the Al-Quds Bard Honors College for Liberal Arts and Sciences in Abu Dis. C A M P wants to rethink the relationship between research and teaching, to establish innovative programs of study that structure learning in ways that involve students more substantively in research. On this front, C A M P will begin by establishing a summer school that expands the student residency program already in place at Decolonizing Architecture. The inaugural C A M P conference “Architecture, Pedagogy & the Politics of Spatial Knowledge” (12-13 January, 2010) is meant to give preliminary shape to the center and to better define these core objectives: collective research, teaching, curricular development, and cultural programming.

camp_program.pdf

campmission.pdf