During the period of its Fascist regime, Italy employed modern architecture to represent its imperial ambitions in Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. Ruins of Roman era architecture in Libya were used as political anchors to legitimize the “return” of Italy to these territories and the creation of a “new Roman Empire”.
However crucial they were for the colonial project for Italy’s history and identity the modernist architecture of Italian colonialism is as little known as the entire period of Italian colonialism and its ongoing legacy.
The embarrassing elegance of these architecture contrasts with the crimes of the colonization that have never been acknowledged; the “Gheddafi-Berlusconi reconciliation” of 2009 attempted to bypass, ignore or forced to produce a farce of the past.
The afterlife of these buildings might help to unpack and reveal the strict problematic relation between modernism and colonization, Italy and its colonial ghosts.
DAAR contribution to Monditalia, Venice Architectural Biennale curated by Rem Khoolhaas in 2014 is an installation that turn a confessional inside out, shifting it from being a religious-psychological apparatus for personal redemption into a political tool that calls for the exposure of the neo-colonial relations that still tie Europe and Africa in a thousands of webs.
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. In the next months, the United Nations and several other international organizations will vote on whether to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state and a member of their assemblies. These events are framed by other liberation struggles and civil turmoil throughout south-eastern mediterranean countries. Whatever the vote’s outcome, Palestinians must deal with a significant spatial and political problem: how can political participation and representation be organized for a partially exiled—and therefore, geographically dispersed—constituency?
DAAR 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. Thus, the building stands like a monument to the collapsed peace process. This condition of local impossibility, however, allows for a political imaginary to arise. Thus, the building becomes a starting point to imagine new types of political assembly.
We will use the building both as a site of intervention as well as a site of architectural speculation. Our aim 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 therefore operate through disassociations in which the constituency, the building and the territory are categories that constantly move in relation to each other. Therefore, the project seeks to operate simultaneously in different sites: re-creating and activating what we call “common assemblies” in several locations inside and outside Palestine.
Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal are a team of two extraordinary architects who live permanently at Beit Sahour on the outskirts of Bethelem in Palestine. They have worked since 2007 to revitalize, reconstruct, take apart, and reconceive both the ruins and abandoned spaces that are the remnants of the vast spaces throughout Palestine that have been destroyed, dispossessed, cut into pieces over some sixty years since the Nakba in 1947. Their work is extraordinary because it is unique in every way: from those they call on to work with them (artists, film makers, architects, young people from the refugee camps) to the visions they conceive and the materials and histories on which they draw. Their work is an engagement with what others think as impossible: how to imagine a future made out of ruins that are openings to new possibilities? How to take an abandoned military Israeli military site and reimagine its possibilities for habitation? How to imagine living in the enemy’s house? Refusing to wait for politicians or legal systems to change the terms of the debate, Petti and Hilal are changing those terms in advance and through the new infrastructures they both imagine and make possible. What kind of public space might be envisioned and built (as they have) at the center of a refugee camp while endorsing and making more real the “right of return”? These creative, modest, and brilliant young architects open their home to those from around the world to live and think with them through art, video, architecture, anthropology and history and more. Their two principal projects, “Decolonizing Architecture” and “Campus on Camps” are living archives in formation, of what is needed to think a future even as checkpoints stop their entry, arbitrary roadblocks cut access to villages, even as those who are ready to take up month long residencies in their compound are denied access and stopped at the airport gates.
Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal have no pretention. They are mobilizing the dormant energies around them and around the world to activate acts of political creation — their efforts are not designed to tell us what’s wrong with Israeli policy but to embrace a notion of critique that allies with Foucault’s definition: not to be governed by these people, at this time, in this way. They came to speak to us at the New School on the late afternoon of November 17, 2014. The Orozco room was at full capacity with people camped outside the doors. The anthropologist, Ilana Feldman, who is studying their projects, was there to comment as were Carin Kouni who directs the Vera List Center and myself. Listen closely to their visions, attend to their practices and projects. And if you should find the opportunity, take part in this venture in any way you can! This is engagement and critique oriented to the possible, to the making possible of what is deemed not possible, and to the future tense.
Ann Stoler, Willy Brandt Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology and Historical Studies at the The New School for Social Research in New York City
Visible Evidence, the annual scholarly conference on documentary film, media, culture and politics. Visible Evidence 21, as is traditional, will feature a range of panels, workshops, plenary sessions, screenings and special events around documentary, its practices, histories and theories.
Decolonising Architecture: Interventions in the Field of Vision ‘The Morning After’ with Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti
Saturday, December 13
Venue: School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium, Jawaharlal Nehru University Time: 7pm
Using their recent publication, Architecture after Revolution (Sternberg Press, Berlin 2014), as a structuring device for their presentation, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti will share a set of architectural fables from the unfolding struggle for Palestine. Their proposals are future speculations about the seemingly impossible, the actual transformation of the very structures of domination. At times these involve ‘cinematic’ interventions that organize the field of vision.
MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts
Via Guido Reni 4A – 00196 Rome
L’approccio speculativo dello scrittore, quello operativo dell’architetto, quello intimo del fotografo sono punti di vista per guardare al fenomeno prolificante della crescita di muri – fisici, emotivi, politici, sociali – che segnano e disegnano i confini del mondo in cui viviamo.
A testimonianza di un muro caduto lo scrittore tedesco Peter Schneider, autore di romanzi come Il saltatore del Muro (1982), del saggio Dopo il muro: i volti della nuova Germania(1992) e del più recente Berlin Now: The City After the Wall (2014), che ha indagato i cambiamenti della città di Berlino dal punto di vista sociale, politico e artistico negli ultimi decenni.
Di luoghi dilaniati da contrasti e muri di incomunicabilità parlerà anche Alessandro Petti, Direttore dello studio DAAR Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency con sede in Palestina che opera in Medioriente con progetti che nascono dalla lettura e dalla “decolonizzazione” dei luoghi, spesso macerie, duramente colpiti dai conflitti.
Intervengono
Peter Schneider, Alessandro Petti e Seba Kurtis
Modera Francesca Fabiani
Public square, Fawwar Refugee Camp, Hebron, West Bank. Photo by Adam Ferguson
The Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility hosts a lecture by Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal entitled “Spatial Ordering of Exile: The Architecture of Palestinian Refugee Camps.”
The lecture is followed by a roundtable discussion with Ilana Feldman (Associate Professor of Anthropology, History and International Affairs at George Washington University), Carin Kuoni (Director of Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School for Public Engagement) and Ann Stoler (Professor of Anthropology at The New School for Social Research).
The event is part of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility 2014-15 Lecture Series “Rethinking Refugee Spaces: Architecture, Design, and Politics” and is co-sponsored by the Global Studies Program, The New School for Social Research, Vera List Center for Art and Politic and Bard College.
Monday November 17th 2014 at 6pm
Orozco Room (A712)
66 West 12th street New York NY more
Winter Residency – (01 November 2014 – 31 January 2015)
Spring Residency – (01 March 2015 – 31 May 2015)
DAAR is glad to announce an open call for architects, artists and cultural practitioners interested in exploring the intersection between space and politics in one of the world’s most conflict-charged areas. By joining the DAAR team this year, the participant will be invited to explore the concept of “exile”. Rather than seeing exile as a state of postponements – delaying actions until a particular time is fulfilled ¬– it will be considered as an operational tool for actions taking place in the present are and able to transgress borders and forced dislocation. DAAR/studio in exile seeks to mobilize exile as an architectural and political concept. Architecture is produced by the interaction of three basic elements: site, social context and the architect. Exile – the forced distance between communities, architects, and buildings – is a prevalent condition within rapidly transforming contemporary Southeastern Mediterranean countries and is challenging this triangle of local relations.
The resident should be able to work in extreme and difficult situations and with limited resources, handle frustration linked to a military occupation, have team spirit while being able to work alone with a high degree of self-initiative. Good proficiency in both written and spoken English is necessary, Arabic is an asset as are familiarity with the Palestinian context and contemporary discourses on Palestinian refugees, high motivation and personal identification with DAAR’s projects and approach.
The resident will be offered a studio and residency at DAAR in Beit Sahour (Bethlehem, Palestinian Territories) for a period of 3 months (beginning November 1st or February 1st). Working days: from Monday to Friday (10am to 6pm). The resident will enjoy weekly lectures and seminars, walks, field trips and collective meals.
Interested candidates are invited to submit a CV and cover letter, both in English, explaining their motivation in wishing to join DAAR residencies. Please forward the application and CV as soon as possible to info@decolonizing.ps: before the beginning of the Winter Residency – (01 November 2014 – 31 January 2015) or before the beginning of the Spring Residency – (01 March 2015 – 31 May 2015).
In collaboration with Foundation for Art Initiatives, British Council, Delfina Foundation
London, Delfina Foundation
Wednesday 2 July 2014, 10.00 – 12.00
RSVP-guestlist@delfinafoundation.com
Participants: Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal, Eyal Weizman, Ismail Shek Hassan, Muhammed Jabali, Shourideh Molavi, Gautam Bhan, Ruba Saleh, Umar al-Ghubari.
Return is a political act that is both practiced at present and projected as an image into an uncertain future. But return cannot be understood only as the suspended politics of an ideological projection, but also as a varied form of politics constantly practiced, grounding a future ideal in present day material realities. This represents a varied set of practices and spatial interventions that we would like to call “present returns”. The concept of present returns grounds the right of return in daily material practices. Traditionally, the return is understood as a coming back to one’s places of origin and one’s property. However, during the sixty-six years of exile, conditions have changed not only in the cities, towns, and villages that were cleansed but also in the places of refuge, where a new political culture has gradually started to articulate itself. The return poses both a challenge and a promise that are far in excess of the mere reversal of time. It is the most necessary move in the implementation of decolonization because the notion of returns demands the complete reorganization of modes of property ownership and the relation between multiple polities and territory.
Returns will have a simultaneous material effect in both the sites of origin and the sites of displacement. The result might be a reciprocal extraterritoriality that connects the two sites into a single dislocated site. This project seeks thus to chart out and intervene within a wider field of possible political, social and cultural practices of returns.
The right of return is the right to the urban, to a condition of heterogeneity and multiplicity that may already distinguish the sites of origin. Furthermore, the right of return challenges the structure of property rights and means that new forms of co-habitation will need to be developed. But the returns of Palestinian refugees will not only demand a radical change in and to Israel/Palestine, they will also affect the transformation of cities across the entire region. There are millions of refugees across the region already undergoing revolts and massive transformations, mainly on the outskirts of the now burning conurbations of Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, and Amman. The emergence of refugees as a diffused polity might help us to rethink today’s struggles not from the point of view of national liberation, but from that of a continued profanation and decolonization of state borders.
Prolog
A year ago, we gave to ourselves to chance to take a sabbatical year to mark out the 7 years of our collaboration and DAAR production. Thanks to the support from the Foundation for Art Initiatives, we finally had the chance to systematize scattered texts written in occasion of exhibitions in a coherent structure of a book. This gave us a sense of conclusion and a new possible beginning.
At the moment that “Architecture after Revolution” will leave its on life, we are preparing ourselves for a new beginning. One central characteristic of DAAR has been the possibility to create a group formed by people that “can not be together”. We profaned national borders and religious affiliations. In the coming years we want to continue and accelerate this “profane collaborations”. For this reason we decide to set up a studio in exile, that will work as a twin with the architectural studio and art residency in Beit Sahour. By having a studio in exile we will have the possibility to work and gather people that could not otherwise be together due the political situation in Palestine. The work will be organized around two winters residency (in Beit Sahour) and a summer residency (in London and other locations).
Concept
DAAR/studio in exile aims at creating an intellectual and physical space that allowed architects, artists and researchers from Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Libya to undertake common projects in sites inaccessible to some of the group’s members. Providing a network of relations and sites throughout the South-eastern Mediterranean, the “studio in exile” will undo the local relation between architect and site, between social communities and building, and between a building and its context. This will be articulated by looking at and working with diasporic communities, Palestinian and others, in establishing a remote set of relations.
Architecture is produced by the interaction of three basic elements: site, social context and the architect. DAAR/studio in exile seeks to challenge this triangle of local relations by mobilizing “exile” as an architectural and political concept. Exile – that is forced distance between communities, architects, and buildings — is a prevalent condition within fast transforming contemporary South-eastern Mediterranean countries, where an increased number of people are forced to live far from their social, cultural and political context. In DAAR/studio in exile we consider exile, rather than being a state of postponements –delaying actions until a particular time is fulfilled — we consider it as an operational tool for actions that take place into the present able to transgress borders and forced dislocation.
The model for turning exile into an operation context come from DAAR’s long term relation and work with displaced and dispersed Palestinian refugee communities. These communities have no access to the site most important to their political identity – the site of their origins – and are further dispersed between different countries with no immediate access between them. The architecture in exile built in refugee camps was always thought as a bridge to site. In DAARs projects – we used exile as a political concept to connect between refugee groups, themselves and between them and the inaccessible site. Other models for political action at a distance are grounded in DAAR’s long-term analysis of parliaments in exile, and its experience with working remotely in an architectural studio.
Locations
One of the location of the studio in exile will take place in London (the place where many governments in exile took place), because it is a neutral ground for people coming from Palestine and elsewhere. During summers – we plan to organize a summer school — as already experimented with in DAAR/Beit Sahour. During two months in July and August it will include lectures, seminars and workshop. The pilot projects for this year and for only two weeks will include architects from Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya.
After the initiation of project during the summer, two winter programs – located in Beit Sahour– will implements ideas discussed and proposed during the summer. A yearlong program will culminate back in London with a public forum and an exhibition.
Summer residency at Delfina in London
(24 of June – 7 of July)
Participants: Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal, Eyal Weizman, Ismae’l Sheikh Hassan, Muhammed Jabali, Umar al-Ghubari, Shourideh Molavi, Gautam Bham, Ruba Saleh.
Winter Residencies – Studio based program in Beit Sahour
(1 November 2014 – 15 June 2015)
Two winters programs open to ten artists and architects (1 November 2014 – 1 Feb 2015; 1 Feb- 15 June-2015) Open call for the residencies will be published soon.
Summer residency at Delfina in London and other locations
(1 July – 31 August – 2015)
End of the first year cycle and beginning of new investigations.
In collaboration with Foundation for Art Initiatives, British Council, Delfina Foundation
In occasion of the publication of their book “Architecture after Revolution” (Sternberg Press, Berlin 2013), members of DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency) Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman will conduct a workshop on Al Masha as a possibility to re-articulate the relation of common and public spaces in Palestine in relation and beyond the events and places of the Arab revolts. This panel brings together architects, artists, activist and researchers to discuss the the role of common spaces today in the struggle of justice and equality. In the second part, in occasion of the presentation of the installation of “Italian ghosts” at the Venice architecture Biennale, DAAR will use colonial modernist architectures as point of departure in order to start a public discussion on colonization, decolonization and revolution in Libya. The workshop will explore the afterlife of Italian colonial architecture, its embarrassing beauty and its implications with crimes committed during the Italian occupation, its role in the construction of Italian identity and its ongoing influence and legacy.
http://www.saledocks.org/
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
