Art visual np2

Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti , the two founders of Decolonizing Architecture (with Eyal Weizman) will be presenting their work at Columbia University on November 10th (at 6:30pm). Their lecture entitled Profaning Colonial Architecture will introduce their strategy of re-using abandoned Israeli settlements in the West Bank for the future new state of Palestine. Their projects are therefore based on a pretty optimistic scenario (Israel leaving the West Bank (1) without destroying their own settlements as they did in Gaza (2)) but as said in a BBC article that a reader just sent to me, the colonization's impact on land is such that it can now be considered almost as irreversible which make Decolonizing Architecture's projects even more important.

Philosophers Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek and filmmaker Udi Aloni were invited yesterday in New York (peculiarly enough, hosted by St Paul's Church in Manhattan which seems to have an interesting priest) by the famous Jenin Freedom Theater (located in Jenin's refugee camp in the West Bank) in order to expose their thought about the current Palestinian situation. It would be hard for me to make a coherent summary of those three talks and I am unfortunately lacking of time to do so; however I wanted to report several points which were evoked yesterday: ALAIN BADIOU: - The Palestinian weakness is and has to be an affirmation of existence - Under the name of Palestinian lies something universal - Palestinians are being presented but not represented UDI ALONI (who wanted to talk as an "Israeli Jew"): - It is very important to distinguish which art if the official art and which one is the resistive one. Films like Waltz with Bashir or Lebanon are the official art. - ...

“ Thus, hostile urbanists or militias always conduct the battle towards the inside, or the domain of obstacles, the urban canyon. When it comes to urbanized war, every combatant must think like an obstacle –‘See everything from the perspective of an obstacle’. West then uses Parkour as the exemplary discipline in which the practitioner becomes as one with the obstacle during movement. Every soldier should be a traceur, a swerving projectile which has a deep sympathy with its physical obstacle .” Negarestani Reza. CYCLONOPEDIA. Complicity with anonymous materials. Melbourne: Re-Press 2008 We already wrote a bit about Parkour on boiteaoutils (link 1 and 2 ) and our fascination for this practice of architecture which attempts to consider every surfaces as a potential ground for the body. In his great Cyclonopedia (already evoked in a previous article ), the Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani evokes urban combat as the new paradigm of war in the Middle East. He establishes a material...

I just watched a television debate on the French television (thanks Maxime !) wondering if the current circumstances were allowing to think of a potential peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This enunciation of the problem mimic the one which has been the topic of the very recent negotiations between Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas in Washington. Even Abbas himself posed the problem as such: "Israel has to choose between peace or the colonization". HOWEVER, this enunciation is, in my opinion, symptomatic of the absolute refusal of the World to see what is the real situation in Palestine. Talking about peace implies that there is a war going on which is not the case by any mean. I affirm it; there is no war in Palestine. Frederic Taddeï, the animator of this debate killed the latter "in utero", when his first question to his six guests the following question: "Who is to be blamed ?" This very question implies a symmetrical conflict charac...

While walking on Ramallah's hills (near Beituniya), I once catch sight of peculiar buildings on further away hills. Those buildings are actually concrete structures which have been part of an interrupted construction between the two Palestinian villages of Ein Kinya and Mazra'a al-Qibliya and close from the Israeli settlement Talmon (that you can see on my second photograph). According to my source (thanks Dror !), it was very likely Palestinian constructions that have been stopped by the Israeli when the second Intifada (2000) started. If it is the case those abandoned structures are an architectural instant, symbol of the Israeli control over Palestinian lives. I even found another picture of them from another point of view (see the last photograph). If anybody has some more, I would be very interested to see and publish them.

What I call Palestinian Archipelago is the group of "islands" within the West Bank in which since the Oslo Accords (1993) Palestinian have security and civil control (Zone A) and security control joint with the Israelis (Zone B). The rest of the area in the West Bank (Zone C) is completely under Israeli control and composes the "Mare Magnum" all around those islands. I thus worked on a map that would expresses this maritime vision of Palestine. Feel free to click on it, the resolution is pretty high. PS: Thanks to a reader's comment, I now know that somebody (Julien Bousac) already got this ready and made a clearer map out of it .

picture: Gaza after the 2008 Israeli Siege. Getty Images Here is a small text I recently wrote about the notion of urbicide. It includes a digest of Eyal Weizman's lecture about Forrensic Architecture I had the chance to attend both in New York and in Bethlehem. Despite of the fact that this strategy has been always occurring in history, the notion of urbicide has been invented by the former Mayor of Belgrade, Bogdan Bogdanovic after the wars of Yugoslavia between 1992 and 1996. One could define it as the act of destroying buildings and cities that do not constitute any military targets. Urbicide is rather an act that is supposed to affect the very life of the population in such a way that war cannot be ignored by anybody. This technique is being used in symmetrical wars like the Second World War and the Blitz in England on the one hand and the systematic bombing of German cities by the allies on the other hand. However, urbicide is also fully present in asymmetrical wars with ...

Ma'ale Adummim is an illegal Israeli settlement near the Palestinian town of Abu Dis (in the East Jerusalem's region). It is one of the largest settlement of the West Bank and hosts around 34000 settlers. The settlement like a lot of others is situated on the top of a hill in order to gain geographical and topographical advantages against the Palestinians.

Hebron is a city in the Southern part of the West Bank. Its particularity is that Israeli settlers are both living around the city but also WITHIN the old city center. For example the market street (see pictures above and below) is surmounted by settlers who do not hesitate to throw rubbish or even acid and molotov cocktails on the Palestinian population underneath. Most commercial activities have been shut down by the Israeli soldiers and a whole part of the old city (including the Khalil Al-Rahman Mosque which is extremely important for the Muslims) is controlled directly by the Israeli Defense Forces. Around the city, Israeli settlements are situated very close from the road and Palestinian villages. Even settlers' agricultural fields are fenced and surveyed by observation towers...

Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank are a mean to prevent, control and filter Palestinians’ movement on their lands. They also constitute a good reaction to the political situation: when the conflict is particularly tensed, they are used as much as a “risk control” as a way to oppress Palestinians and limit or dissuade their movements. Several types of checkpoints exist. Those that are set on the line of the Wall imply a control of every vehicle and every pedestrian (buses’ customers are requested to go off and walk), their goods, their passports, permits etc. Some other checkpoints are spread all over the West Bank (mostly at every entrance of cities) and control a more or less important amount of vehicles depending on the soldiers’ mood and orders.

picture: Ma'ale Adummim (East Jerusalem's region) ـJewish settlements within the West Bank are violating the article 49 of the Geneva Convention (see previous article ). However, thinking that they simply occupy a land they do not own would be observing them in a very superficial way. In fact, they constitute a very important weapon in the Israeli strategy of oppression towards the Palestinian. All the scales and categories of building engineering are involved in this strategy; nothing is left to chance by Israeli planners, engineers and militaries. The geographical dimension, to begin with, is studied to disturb as much as possible Palestinian life. In fact, several settlements by their location and their occupation are splitting villages from their fields or blocking exchange between the villages. The topographical aspect of settlements are probably the most essential dimension: They occupy the top of the hills in order to maintain a constant supervision of their surroundings...

The Palestinian refugee camps which are present in most cities of the West Bank and the Gaza strip are precarious pieces of urbanism similar to slums that host the village population that was living on the territory that was given to Israel in 1948 by the United Nations. Duheisha is one of those camps in Bethlehem hosting currently around 10 000 people. The main problem with refugee camps is that every new building, construction, renovation are ratifications of the situation and seen as a resignation to it. The architecture developed there is thus very handmade, almost accidental sometimes but creates a surprising form of beauty.

A wall having by definition two sides (and that is what his violence is about), here is the sequel of the last article: the exact other side of the wall (you can tell with the Mosque' minaret on the two articles' fourth picture) within the West Bank in Abu Dis. It is important here to insist on the fact that the wall is absolutely not matching with the 1949 armistice Green Line and thus split an Arab district of East Jerusalem, sharing DE FACTO its people between Israeli sub-citizens on one side and Palestinians who are not authorized (for most of them) to go to Jerusalem on the other side.