# Lebbeus Woods in Sarajevo on dpr-barcelona

dpr-barcelona just released a new article (itself drifted from Lebbeus Woods' blog) about what Woods calls "freespaces", added to war destroyed buildings in order not only to reconstruct, but also to rethink the building with its present time (and probably to make some scars appearing on it as well). The article is focusing on the Electrical Management Building in Sarajevo which was destroyed during the siege of 1992-95 and re-imagined by Lebbeus Woods with freespaces.

Read the article on dpr-barcelona here.

# Quarantine / Remoteness, paranoia and mechanisms of precautionary incarceration

Yesterday, I attended to Geoff Manaugh (BLDG BLOG) brilliant lecture at Pratt in which he introduced the Quarantine workshop he is currently leading in the Storefront. I am very interested by this notion of quarantine in the materialization of fear and paranoia its implies. The potentiality for each building to become a quarantine station therefore a prison seems to me as embodying perfectly an ultimate state of totalitarianism. It reminds me of Foucault's descriptions in Discipline and Punish (see former post) in which he depicts a middle age city infected by the Plague (see also Geoff's article on Albert Camus' Plague) and the imprisonment of every inhabitants in their own house waiting for the health inspection which would deliver a license of free circulation in case of non-infection. What is really striking with this notion of quarantine is the precaution it implies. No matter if one is infected or not, if he is suspected to be, his circulation will be controlled.
Another example quarantine evokes to me is Peter Watkins' movies, Punishment Park on the one hand and The War Game on the other hand. The first one depicts. in an amazing documentary imitation, the invention of a park lost in the desert used by the police to train itself, chasing in the most violent way young "voluntary" dissidents. The War Game is also a diversion of a documentary (a kind of official one) dramatizing a country (England) living in the paranoia of a nuclear attack. Through these two movies, we can observe both violent remoteness of infected citizens (the infection is not necessarily viral) and the fear being the leitmotiv of a nation and therefore its omnipresent material of this nation's both physicality and social relationships.

# Resisting the Capitalist Production of Space

Resisting the Capitalist Production of Space is a ten days conference organized in Brooklyn by Oppositionnal Architecture proposing discussions between sociologists, architects, geographers, historians, economists about resisting the systematic embodiment of capitalism in urban spaces.
Here is the program:

Ten Days for Oppositional Architecture
Towards Post-Capitalist Spaces

Location: Gair Building No 6, 81 Front Street , Brook l yn NY 11201 / York stop on the F Train

Wednesday, November 11 // 6 pm
Opening Reception

Thursday, November 12 // 7 pm
The Decommodification of Housing
Discussion with James deFilippis, geographer, Rutgers University, New Brunswick · Esther Wang and Helena Wong of CAAAV, Organizing Asian Communities, New York

Friday, November 13 // 7 pm
Bar + programming by Lize Mogel and Alexis Baghat, An Atlas of Radical Cartography*

Saturday, November 14 // 7 pm
The Real Estate Crisis, Private Property and the Prospects of Planning
Discussion with David Kotz, economist, University of Massachusetts Amherst · Teddy Cruz, architect, San Diego

Sunday, November 15 // 7 pm
Bar + programming by tba*

Monday, November 16 // 7 pm
On the Commons: Taking versus Granting Rights
Discussion with Peter Linebaugh, historian, University of Toledo · Brett Bloom of Midwest Radical Culture Corridor, Urbana · Rob Robinson of Picture the Homeless, New York

Tuesday, November 17 // 7 pm
Bar + programming by common room*

Wednesday, November 18 // 7 pm
Territory as a Means of Struggle
Discussion with Veronica Dorsey of United Workers, Baltimore · Neil Smith, geographer, City University New York

Thursday, November 19 // 7 pm
Bar + programming by Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi of SLO architecture

BELOW HIGH-WATER MARK
An evening of film footage and munical improvisation exploring hidden connections along the water ways of New York City

Musical Improvisation by Joe Warner

Friday, November 20 // 7 pm
Reclaiming Capitalist Spaces
Discussion with Janelle Cornwell and Julie Graham, geographers, University of Massachusetts Amherst · Max Rameau of Take Back the Land, Miami

Saturday, November 21 // 12 pm
Towards Post-Capitalist Spaces
Lecture by David Harvey, geographer, City University New York, 12 pm
Workshops with special guests*, 2 - 6 pm
Final presentation and discussion, 7 pm
Party, 10 pm

# Amnesty International publication about Israel water rationning in the West Bank and Gaza

vs

Amnesty International just publish a report about how Israel authority is rationing water in West Bank and Gaza, leaving any Palestinian with four times less water than any Israeli. This confrontation is obviously even more scandalous when you observe Israeli settlements in the middle of the West Bank owning prolific well irrigated farms and luxurious swimming pools...
That is actually one of the aspect of asymmetric wars which allows a total control (therefore a dependency) of the stronger camp on the weaker one, and this control is specially present on infrastructures. This way, the war can be lead in a very sly way, a kind of violence which does not say its name...

# Labichampi by Exyzt in Latvia

Paris based office EXYZT (see former posts here and here) released this interesting project in Liepaja (Latvia). What used to be Cold War military barracks is being transformed into a "cultural farm" trying to re-activate a guetto-like district in the town's suburbs. Faithful to a cheap and a crude language, EXYZT seems to succeed to tell an interesting story about trees taking over the barrack and hosting human creativity.


Merci Elodie pour l'info !

# Cities and the New Wars conference in Columbia

...I love New York...This Friday (September 25th) and Saturday (September 26th) will be held an amazing conference in Columbia University about Cities and the New Wars. It is organized by The Committee on Global Thought and Saskia Sassen.
Check the schedule out:

Friday, September 25, 2009

1:00pm - 6:45 pm
Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall

1:00 - 1:30 Introduction

Saskia Sassen
Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University.

1:30 - 3 Geographies of Terror

Chair: Saskia Sassen

Arjun Appadurai
Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University

Stephen Graham
Professor of Human Geography and Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of Cities and Regions, University of Durham.

Jessica Stern
Professor of Law and Affiliate, the Belfer Center's International Security Program, Harvard University.

3-4 War and Displacement

Chair: Elazar Barkan, Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University.

Les Roberts
Associate Clinical Professor of Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and former Director of Health Policy at the International Rescue Committee.

Karen Jacobsen
Associate Professor at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, and Academic Director of the Feinstein International Center, Tufts University

4 - 4:15 Break

4:15 - 5:15 Economic Violence

Chair: Yasmine Ergas, Center for the Study of Human Rights, Columbia University

Sudhir Venkatesh
William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology and Director, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University.

Claire Cutler
Professor of International Law and Relations, University of Victoria, Canada.

5:15 - 6:45 Urban Spaces as a Technology of War

Chair: Claire Cutler, Law and International Relations, Victoria U.

Eyal Weizman
Architect, Profesor and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College. Member, architectural collective "Decolonizing Architecture" in Beit Sahour/Palestine.

Peter Marcuse
Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Presevation at Columbia University.

Partha Chatterjee
Professor of Anthropology and Member, Committee on Global thought at Columbia University and, Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta, India.

6:45 - 7:30 Reception

Saturday, September 26, 2009
11:00am - 7 pm

The Dictionary of War Project

The concepts will be presented in 20-minutes time slots, in alphabetical order and without a break; they are recorded in a television studio setup, encoded in real-time and published on the internet.

11:00 Cold war planning - Jennifer S. Light (Northwestrn University)
11:30 Information - Ted Byfield (Parsons, The New School for Design)
12:00 Not-not- war - Rosalind C. Morris (Columbia University)
13:00 Pigeon - Gediminas Urbonas (MIT, Visual Arts Program)
13:30 Re-appropriating the city of fear - Fiona Jeffries (CUNY, Graduate Center)
14:00 Marketing War - Danny Kaplan (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
14:30 Annexpression - Tony Conrad (University of Buffalo, New York)
15:00 The Wall - Richard Sennett (New York University and London School of Economics)
15:30 Urban Warfare - Gar Smith (Environmentalists Against War)
16:00 Virtuous War - James Der Derian (Brown University)
16.30 War Games - Ashley Dawson (CUNY Graduate School)
17:00 Explosion Implosion: war in our time - Susan Crile (Artist, New York)
17.30 When a riot becomes a war - Suketu Mehta (New York University)
18:00 Wounded Cities - Ida Susser and Jan Schneider (CUNY Graduate Center)

# SWARM /// Multitude by Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt

Here is the wholeness of the chapter called Swarm intelligence in Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt's wonderful book Multitude published in 2004.

When a distributed network attacks, it swarms its enemy: innumerable independent forces seem to strike from all directions at a particular point and then disappear back into the environment. From an external perspective, the network attack is described as a swarm because it appears formless. Since the network has no center that dictates order, those who can only think in terms of traditional models may assume it has no organization whatsoever-they see mere spontaneity and anarchy. The network attack appears as something like a swarm of birds or insects in a horror film, a multitude of mindless assailants, unknown, uncertain, unseen and unexpected. If one looks inside a network, however, one can see that it is indeed organized, rational, and creative. It has swarm intelligence.

Recent researches in artificial intelligence and computational methods use the term swarm intelligence to name collective and distributed techniques of problem solving without centralized control or the provision of a global mode. Part of the problem with much of the previous artificial intelligence research, they claim, is that it assumes intelligence to be based in an individual mind, whereas they assert that intelligence is fundamentally social. These researches thus derive the notion of the swarm from the collective behavior of social animals, such as ants, bees, and termites, to investigate multi-agent-distributed systems of intelligence. Common animal behavior can give an initial approximation of this idea. Consider, for example, how tropical termites build magnificent, elaborated domed structures by communicating with each other; researchers hypothesize that each termite follows the pheromone concentration left by other termites in the swarm. Although none of the individual termites has a high intelligence, the swarm of termites forms an intelligent system with no central control. The intelligence of the swarm is based fundamentally on communication. For researchers in artificial intelligence and computational methods, understanding this swarm behavior helps in writing algorithms to optimize problem-solving computations. Computers too can be designed to process information faster using swarm architecture rather than a conventional centralized processing model.

The swarm model suggested by animal societies and developed by these researchers assumes that each of the agents or particles in the swarm is effectively the same and on its own not very creative. The swarms that we see emerging in the new network political organizations, in contrast, are composed of a multitude of different creative agents. This adds several more layers of complexity to the model. The members of the multitude do not have to become the same or renounce their creativity in order to communicate and cooperate with each other. They remain different in terms of race, sex, sexuality, and so forth. What we need to understand, then, is the collective intelligence that can emerge from the communication and cooperation of such a varied multiplicity. Perhaps when we grasp the enormous potential of this swarm intelligence we can finally understand why the poet Arthur Rimbaud in his beautiful hymns to the Paris Commune in 1871 continually imagined the revolutionary Communards as insects. It is not uncommon, of course, to imagine enemy troops as insects. Recounting the events of the previous year, in fact, Emile Zola in his historical novel La Debacle describes the “black swarms” of Prussians overrunning the French positions at Sedan like invading ants, “un si noir fourmillement de troupes allemandes.” Such insect metaphors for enemy swarms emphasize the inevitable defeat while maintaining the inferiority of the enemy-they are merely mindless insects. Rimbaud, however, takes this wartime cliché and inverts it, singing the praises of the swarm. The Communards defending their revolutionary Paris against the government forces attacking from Versailles roam about the city like ants (fourmiller) in Rimbaud’s poetry and their barricades bustle with activity like anthill (fourmilieres). Why would Rimbaud describe the Communards whom he loves and admires as swarming ants? When we look more closely we can see that all of Rimbaud’s poetry is full of insects, particularly the sounds of insects, buzzing, swarming, teeming (bourdonner, grouiller). “Insect-verse” is how one reader describes Rimbaud’s poetry, “music of the swarm”. The reawakening and reinvention of the senses in the youthful body-the centerpiece of Rimbaud’s poetic world- takes place in the buzzing and swarming of the flesh. This is a new kind of intelligence, a collective intelligence, a swarm intelligence, that Rimbaud and the Communards anticipated.

# District 9 by Neil Blomkamp

Imagine a story where aliens are not anymore the bad guys but we, humans, are. The part of Neil Blomkamp's District 9 is an remarkable docu-fiction (alla Peter Watkins or Chris Marker) using alliens as a global metaphor of foreigners as a people and illustrates pretty well how apartheid (the movie takes place in Johannesburg) has some social and urban consequences. District 9 is a slum where people (aliens) are forced to live, exploited by a nigerian-mafia and controled by a omni-present military surveillance.
Second part of the movie has a interesting Cronenbergian aspect but Blomkamp looses the docu-fiction mean which makes the movie being much less amazing.

# Interview of Stephen Graham by Subtopia

Here is a very interesting interview of Stephen Graham by Brian Finoki (talented webmaster of subtopia) tackling the relationship of architecture and transcendental control in a warfare society as defined by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire.

# Iran's revolt / Time's article about Twitter

Read this article on Time.com about how Twitter is used to keep alive Iran's current revolt beyond censorship and repression. It reminds me of Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's polycentric networks (or swarms) of resistance.

picture: Tehran University's dormitory after militia's repression (Time.com)

# Decolonizing Architecture

From Gaza (last post) to the West Bank, from Foucault's disciplinary society to Virilio's control society, here is an occasion for your gray matter to work against Israeli State's way of using architecture as a weapon. (French and Dutch readers you can read this interview)
Decolonizing Architecture is a collective directed by architects Sandi Hilalm Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman (see former posts 1,2 and 3). This collective is organizing research groups to come up with ideas using architecture as a resistance.
This issue actually question the political aspect and the violence each architecture carries not only in the middle east but everywhere else in the world.

Here is a short text, proposing to artists, architects and designers to participate to this think tank:

The project Decolonizing Architecture, directed by architects Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman and located in Bethlehem/Palestine, is dealing with a complicated architectural problem: How to deal with the future remnants of Israeli colonial Architecture – colonies and military camps – at a time these would be unplugged from the architectural political power of Israel’s regime of occupation. Architecture is used as an “arena of speculation” about possible futures for Palestine, but the project assumes as well that a viable approach to this issue is beyond the professional language of architecture and planning and incorporates varied cultural and political perspectives.

We are seeking architects, designers and artists to join us for a period of intense work of between two and eight weeks. Those joining us would be received in a live-work residency and would benefit from various cultural and political engagements in Palestine.

If you are interested to join us please send your one page CV and work samples to Alessandro Petti (info [at] decolonizing [dot] ps) noting when and for how long you wish to come to Palestine.

*The project provides a residency – studio and living space – in a comfortable house in Beit Sahur/Bethlehem, the travel expenses as well as some daily living expenses would have to be covered by the volunteering architects/designers/artists.

# Closed Zone

This little animation movie was commissioned by Israeli NGO Gisha and designed by Yoni Goodman who was Waltz with Bachir's animation director (see former post). It shows how Gaza strip is the Closed Zone whatever the boundary is Israel, Egypt or the see, and the direct consequences of this terrible blocus which serve more the people who actually earn power from the war than those who are ready to negociate...

# FIGHT WITH TOOLS /// 1871 Paris' Commune

This article has a strong connexion with last one about the canyon street. As a matter of fact, Paris' Commune was one of the most important urban conflicts in European history. It stayed nowadays as a good example of people's revolution as it last for a too short time to create a disenchantment. People who theorised about this event are many (Marx, Lenin, Debord...)

During seventy two days of 1871’s spring, Paris city lived in secession from the National Assembly which just capitulated in war against the Prussians. Simultaneously the Commune defends itself against the national “versaillaise” army lead by Thiers and “play the game” of considering to exist for a long period. Thus is created a Central Comity whose representatives are originally from the working population.

As far as urbanism is concerned, Situationnists Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigem and Attila Kotanyi, one century after the Commune was declared, considered that "it has been in Human History, the only production of a revolutionary urbanism" which assumes as a principle that no building is innocent. That is how the Vendome column was solemnly destroyed on may 16th. In fact this column was the symbol of the first Empire’s (Napoleon Bonaparte) authority and the Bourgeois’ power.

This urbanism can be thus said to substract the alienation zones within the city, which was called by Situationnist, positive holes. The Commune’s story illustrate quite clearly the dilemma which can appear with this operation. In fact, on may 24^th, huge debates took place within the Central Comity to decide whether or not symbolic building should be destroyed before the national army win the conflict. That is how the City Hall, the Courthouse and the Tuilleries palace (which was never rebuilt since then) were burnt down but Notre Dame and the Louvre on the other hand stayed intact, because defended by artists collectives. Situationnist retrospectively judged that Paris’ cathedral has been saved because of “permanent aesthetic values belonging to museums’ spirit when other men legitimately wanted to access to expression this day by this destruction as a defiance to a society which was rejecting all their lives to silent.”

For more information about this chapter of France's history click here.

# FIGHT WITH TOOLS /// Canyon street/Armin Linke

In a little more than one month, next G20 summit will happen in London. These pictures has been shot during G8 summit in Genoa in 2001 by Armin Linke. They show how much streets can be used as controled canyons. A lot of western cities has been replanned during XIXth century for this kind of purposes. Napoleon the 3rd/Haussmann Paris is obviouly an example of that. No more narrow network maze within urban fabric, only wide axis police can easily control. History war used to happen outside of the cities or at its periphery at least, new conflicts are now almost exclusively happenning within cities.

# Eyal Weizman's books

Currently, more than ever, architects should take time to read Eyal Weizman, as a complement of what we are observing everyday in mass media about Gaza's conflict. News has a rythm, research has an other one. What is currently happening in Israel/Palestine is crucial and depending on the country we are living in, we are not informed in the same way.
Let's recall that Eyal Weizman is a isreali architect based in Tel Aviv and London, and for several years now, he has been studying how architecture was used as a weapon by Isreali governement and army against Palestinians.
A civilian occupation: The politics of Israeli architecture, I already wrote about in a past post, tackles the problem of Israeli settlements in the West bank as a sneaky civil then military expansion of the Israeli territory.
Hollow Land updates this same issue, and you can find in it this incredible article called Walking through walls (it was pubished in French as A travers les murs. L'architecture de la nouvelle guerre urbaine) I also already posted in the past.
I did not read Chicago and Weizman is not exactly its author (it's actually a photographic book by Adam Broomberg & Olivier Chanarin) but he participated to its redaction. This book observe this fake Arab village, Israeli and American soldiers built to train themselves for Middle East conflicts.
I hope that anybody would understand this is not some crapy propaganda, I'm trying to make, but an emphasis on real precise issues which needs to be solved for an aggreement of peace between two legimitate states.

# Eyal Weizman / A civilian occupation: The politics of israeli architecture

Remember this post ? I was telling that I was about to write another about this book, A civilian occupation: The politics of Isreali architecture (Une occupation civile: La politique de l'architecture israelienne), and I actually never did.

This book has been designed and edited by Eyal Weizman, an isreali architect (who graduated in the AA) who center his work on the denunciation of israeli politics about settlements. In fact, Palestine West Bank is more and more colonized by jewish fundamentalists who therefore use architecture and urbanism as a strategical weapon. I am not really skilled to write about this issue althought I've seen by myself these outrageous secured settlements, but the best thing is definetely to read this book which gather analysis from architects, film director, photographers and journalists (all from Israël).

Here is also a website about an architecture research called Decolonizing Architecture supervised by Weizman (a palestinian friend of mine is actually preparing her architecture thesis through this research, I hope to get some pictures and texts sometimes)

And, as the former post was written in French, I found this translation of Weizman's article about Aviv Kochavi (Isreali General) who created military strategy of Walking through walls. Read it ! It's really really interesting

# Just a line on a map...

In september and october 2006 was voted the Secure Fence Act by the US Congrete and Senate which "allows for over 700 miles of double-reinforced fence to be built across cities and deserts alike between California and Texas in areas that have been prone to illegal drug trafficking and illegal immigration. It authorizes the installation of more lighting, vehicle barriers, and border checkpoints, while putting in place more advanced equipment like sensors, cameras, satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles in an attempt to watch and control illegal immigration into the United States. Officials say that it will help cut down on the number of illegal vehicles that go back and forth across the border bringing illegal drugs." (White House communication)

How crazy it is to observe that a wall is just a line on a map but what is resulting from this line are the most consequential political decisions acting on life of thousand of people. I could have put some more pictures of Berlin Wall, Cisjordan Wall or the Indian-Kashmir Wall, but I think that this "line effect" can be also observed on smaller scales, and architects have to be deeply aware of it.

# Bunker suisses par Leo Fabrizio

Qui a cru que la Suisse était un pays pacifique ? Bon vous me direz Si vis pacem para bellum et effectivement...
En tout cas c'est une approche littérale et pour le moins intéressante du camouflage et mimétisme en architecture