ARCHITECTURE AND VIOLENCE Architecture Elective Arch 1338 Helene Frichot Luke Flanagan s3053188
“ Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. “ -George Orwell
Index
Eyal Weizman _ Lethal Theory
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Michael Sorkin _ Up Against The Wall
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Giorgio Agamben _ Means Without Ends
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Hannah Arendt _ We Refugees
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Giorgio Agamben _ Homo Sacer
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Levien De Cauter _ The Capsuler Civilization
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David Harvey _ The Right To The City
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Peter Sloterdijk _ Foam-City
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Michel Foucault _ Space, Knowledge & Power
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Walter Benjamin _ Critique Of Violence
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Jaques Derrida _ On Cosmopolitanism
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Isobelle Stengers _ The Cosmopolitical Proposal
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Slavov Zizek _ Welcome to The Desert Of The Real
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Cells & Silos _ MUMA exhibition
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Essay Abstract _ Political Architecture
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Lethal Theory Eyal Weizman The article ‘Lethal theory’ by Eyal Weizman is quite a provocative piece, not simply due to the manner in which it is written, it presents arguments in a non-biased manner, but what is provocative about it is the thoughts and questions that it brings forward. The piece outlines the manner in which the Israeli Defence Force used an alternative methodology for their military tactics when organizing a strike on Nablus in April of 2002, and the theory that prompted this change in tactics. When planning this strike Brigadier General Aviv Kokhavi, a military tactician, re-assessed the typical typology of spaces within an urban environment, and in a sense, inverted the usage which is associated with each of these types. Public/private, interior/exterior, street/house; the meanings for all of these spaces were re-assessed. Kevin Lynch, an American urban planner, defined the following spaces within his book titled ‘The image of the city’1: Paths- streets, sidewalks, and other channels in which people travel; Edges- perceived boundaries such as walls and, buildings. Districts- relatively large sections of the city distinguished by some identity or character; Nodes- focal points, intersections or loci; Landmarks- readily identifiable objects which serve as external reference points. General Kokhavi and the IDF used edges as paths, creating openings and passages through walls and buildings, thus allowing them to avoid paths, nodes and landmarks such as streets, intersections, doors, and windows, and thus avoid attacks from their enemy. Deleuze and Guattari wrote about various spacial typologies within their book ‘A Thousand Plateaus’. Chapter 14, titled ‘The Smooth and Striated’ speaks about smooth and striated space, spaces of a static nature, and spaces of a fluid nature. Striated space relates to gridded, linear, state space, while smooth space relates to open, non-linear nomad space. It appears as though the IDF have used Military tactics which would usually apply to smooth space and applied them to striated spaces, allowing them to move through gridded areas of housing in a more ‘fluid’ manner. This type of military tactic highlights the fact that architectural and urban design theory does not necessary translate directly into architecture, but has room for translation; and while there is room for translation into architecture, there is also room for translation into other fields, such as military combats techniques; and also that this type of theory can be used as a justification. This type of warfare brings forward more than questions of spacial typologies, but questions of the right and liberties of the inhabitants of spaces. Soldiers crashing through the wall of the civilian population speaks of a massive violation of civil rights, and also of the manner in which the IDF view the occupants of this town, as people with no rights, there is no distinguishing between military and civilian. The third image on this page is symbolic of the manner in which this type of warfare operates; spaces are reversible, with buildings viewed as paths, and civilians viewed as military personnel. Theory has a tendency to be slightly ambiguous in that it can be translated to support a range of actions in practice. 1
Lynch, Kevin, The Image of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1960
Up Against the wall Michael Sorkin The introduction to “Up against the Wall” by Michael Sorkin outlines the many impacts of the security wall between Israel and Palestine, ranging from the division of two cultures who have been in conflict, to the cutting off of family members from one another. This concrete wall symbolizes not only the breakdown of any type of negotiations between these two states, but the refusal to even live as neighbors. A wall such as this one is not merely about delineation of space, it entirely separates and detaches the two states of Israel and Palestine, and is symbolic as well as functional. The very nature of the wall is not the only aspect of the debate, there is also the fact that rather than separate a segment of the state for one culture to inhabit, it also encroaches upon that very segment which was delineated in 1947, and attempts to allocate more land for Israel. While this wall does separate two states, it also negates and dismisses a problem rather than try to find a solution. Quite a large amount of land has been allocated towards Israel since 1946. The green area on each map indicates Palestinian land, with the white indicating Israeli controlled land. The steady decrease in land controlled by Palestine can be seen between the first map (1947) and the fourth (2000). The final map shows the hope that one there will be no wall, and no division, only a single state of tolerance, the question is how to achieve this. A very interesting aspect to this wall is actually the resistance that people who oppose the wall are creating, and the fact that this resistance does not come in the form of a physical attack on the wall, but rather by means of art, graffiti, and political statements. The political statement with the phrase “Ich Bin Ein Berliner”, which translates to “I am a Berliner [or rather I am a donut]” is painted on the wall. This relates the Israel/Palestine wall to the Berlin Wall, and also uses the Berlin wall as an example for what will hopefully happen to this wall if an understanding is reached. The third image is also a political statement reading “To exist is to resist”. This seems to relate to the Palestinians who are living in this area, possibly on the Israeli side, and saying that by staying in that area, in their homes, with their families is to resist both the function of the wall, and its symbolism of detachment and intolerance. The wall also has graffiti pieces done by the artist Banksy painted on it. They speak of his stance on the wall being wrong, but also symbolise freedom and hope. The figures in the graffiti are both children, possibly indicating they are the more silent victims of a travesty such as this, they are being raised in a state of segregation, discrimination, and if this structure remains, of hate and misunderstanding of the ‘other’. Through this type of creative resistance more people will become aware of the impact of this wall, not only of the separation of the states, but on the people who live within this area.
Theory out of Bounds Giorgio Agamben Within his article entitled “Notes of politics”, Giorgio Agamben presents the argument that it is in fact a necessity to question the idea that an individual is bound to the state within which they are born, and also that rather than a refugee being in a state of exception, this very state of exception has in fact become the rule. Repatriation or naturalization are not the only possibilities for a displaced people, but rather, it should be considered that states or territories should be thought of as “aterritorial or extraterritorial space... within this new space, European cities would rediscover their ancient vocation of cities of the world by entering into a relation of reciprocal extraterritoriality”. Agamben writes that this model would allow two groups of citizens who were previously a part of separate nation-states to live within the same territory, not as two nation states, but as two political communities within a single region. “Only in a world in which the spaces of states have been thus perforated and topologically deformed and in which the citizen has been able to recognise the refugee that he of she is- only in such a world is the political survival of humankind today thinkable” Agamben suggests it is necessary to examine and re-think the nature of the world in which we live, we must re-think the connection between ‘nativity and nationality’, between the ‘human and the citizen’, and that refugees, rather than being a displaced people who are in crisis, are actually the ‘vanguard of their peoples’. The extent to which I agree with Agamben is limited by the fact that he writes within this same piece, “... human beings...are the only being for whom happiness is at stake in their living, the only being who’s life is irremediably and painfully assigned to happiness”. and within ‘we refugees’, Arendt writes “Man is a social animal and life is not easy for him when social ties are cut off... very few individuals have the strength to conserve their own integrity if their social, political, and legal status is completely confused”. It seems that if Agamben’s theory were to be actualized it may very well create this same type of confusion, redefining many aspects of our lives as we know them. This prompts the question of what type of life will we be living if we are in a state of refuge but still have our life assigned to the pursuit of happiness, but have also had our social, political and legal status confused?
1,000,000
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Map of Jewish aterritoriality by population
We Refugees Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt, in her piece entitled “We Refugees”, gives quite an interesting insight into the history of the Jewish people. Although it does not specifically mention it, Arendt engages with the term homo sacer (Giorgio Agamben)1; this articles speaks of the human being which has been stripped of all rights, of all identity, and has been set apart from society. This gives a personal perspective of the manner in which the Jewish people have been endlessly shifted from place to place, and have endeavoured to always remain optimistic about the nature of their aterritorial existence. “In order to forget more efficiently we rather avoid any allusion to concentration camps or internment camps we experienced in nearly all European countries- it might be interpreted as pessimism or a lack of confidence in the new homeland” The above paragraph truly does speak of the homo sacer, the individual who not only has been set aside from society and has had all of their identifying characteristics removed from them, but also the individual who does not dare to mention their history for fear that it will effect their future; instead they look only to the future. To be what is described as the homo sacer is to be within a hopeless situation, to be without the protection of a nation or homeland, to be without the security that this identity provides. It is to be a refugee within the state of exception. “Instead of fighting... refugees have got used to wishing death to friends an relatives...we have seen how quickly eloquent optimism could change to speechless pessimism. As time went on we got worse and worseeven more optimistic and even more inclined to suicide” The Jewish people retain a strong sense of optimism, until it reaches a certain point, after which the only freedom which is still available to them is embraced. Suicide. It seems that through this article, what Hannah Arendt is saying is that the Jewish population need to embrace their identity, to embrace their history, to understand that to be of a people, and to have a history whether it is positive or negative does not make you an outcast from society; what will continue to make you an outcast is to tirelessly try to assimilate into a society. These people who are endlessly driven from place to place represent the ‘vanguard of their peoples- if they keep their identity’. 1
Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998).
Homo Sacer Giorgio Agamben Within the piece ‘The sovereign and bare life’, Giorgio Agamben examines not the existence of the camp, or even the detailed operation of the camp, but rather he examines how such a thing can occur, what processes must be administered in order for such a terrible phenomenon to take place, what creates such a condition,and also the ways in which it can occur within what are considered everyday settings. Within this piece we find a term which has been a constant within the writing being examined,’the state of exception’, a term which constitutes the replacement of the conventional law of a nation-state with a temporary standing state of martial law, within a situation which is considered to be of danger to the security of the state. This implementation of a state of exception is the first step in achieving the ultimate goal for the Nazi’s in Germany, it constitutes the stripping of all rights and liberties from the person and removing from them the status of citizen, leaving them only with bare life; the separation of the Zoe’ and the Bios, and the removal of the Bios in order to leave only naked life, the life of an animal. This state of exception was initially put into place in order to suspend specific articles of the German constitution which relate to human rights and liberties in a time of emergency; this state of exception which is by definition a temporary act, was then reintroduced and enacted upon the German people under the title ‘Decree for the protection of the people and the state’, or ‘shultzhalf’; indefinitely in order to permanently suspend those same articles of the constitution relating to liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of expression and telephone and postal privacy. It is at this point that we come across the camp; the condition which is created when the state of exception is implemented, under a different name, and instated in a permanent manner. The camp as a condition operates by its very definition, outside of the traditional realm of the law, and therefore, the traditional laws of a nation-state do not apply to this condition. Here we find the bio-political body, the voice of a leader who’s words are not translated into law, but become law in themselves; there is no longer a need for criterion upon which a rule is instated, but the voice of the leader becomes the criterion, the rule, and the decider of application; or as Agamben puts it, “a juridical rule that decides the fact that decides the application”. The leader within this state becomes the judge, jury, and the executioner by means of his words. The camp becomes a space which functions outside of all conventional law and application, within it exists the homosacer, the person who has been stripped of all rights and liberties indefinitely, and through this process, no longer retains any of their human characteristics, allowing all events to take place. Within the camp the carrying out of orders is not a translation of rule into actions as a result of criteria, but rather, it would appear that fact, rule, action, and outcome are all one thing. There is no crime, for there is no law and no criteria; events which take place within the condition of the camp merely happen, in the same way that, “Neither an order nor an instruction for the origin of the camps exists: they were not instituted; one day they were there”. This piece outlines the manner in which exclusion takes place within a society, the ways in which people are excluded from a population in order to produce an outcome. In the final paragraph Agamben relates this to the manner in which poorer classes of people are excluded by means of development, and relegated to ‘bare life’. We see this in many forms within contemporary society, gentrification of an area in order to create an intended outcome, design and policy in order to create exclusion, racial discrimination, exclusion of minorities and homeless. The camp is not a place, it is condition which can be created within a myriad of situations though the implementation of policy by bodies of government, and the inactivity of the population.
The Capsule and the Network Levien De Cauter Within the essay ‘The Capsule and the network’ Lieven De Cauter writes about the manner in which human beings, over a period of time, and due to a number of circumstances, have built a series of false environments in order to protect ourselves from the exterior world. These capsules become a series of skins between ourselves and our exteriority, and we, the inhabitants of these skins, become voluntary prisoners of them. Within these capsules we create an environment of inclusion, and thus, an exterior of exclusion; the more we live within this environment, the greater the fear of its exteriority. As De Cauter writes, “When fear and the mechanism of defensible space take over, the result might be another sort or ironclad rule: fear leads to capsularisation, and capsularisation enhances fear”. The further we encapsulate ourselves within our own artificially created realities, the more the exterior of this reality becomes an aspect of life which we no longer understand. This fear of the unknown, combined with our capsular reality, forces us to exclude that which we do not understand. La Cauter writes, “The rise of migration, legal and illegal, and the exponential growth of the refugee problem, will mean the rise of biopolitics: the crude inclusion and exclusion of unwanted bodies as mere animal life”. Within our capsular reality we create the camp, the space of exclusion of all those which we do not understand. While we do not necessarily create the homosacer, we do operate within our own reality in a manner which disregards the welfare and life of those outside of it. Through the creation of our capsular reality we relegate those within its exterior to naked life through disregard of their zoe’. This archipelago of hyperealities which is created by our capsular civilization becomes a series of deeply internalized spaces, with operate with disregard for the exterior. The hope, however, is that the concept of the capsule is one which is local; its exterior will always be greater than the interior and therefore the capsular reality is in fact the minority. The question which is posed is that of whether the network is a more dominant reality than the capsule? Is our individual segregation greater than that of our fear of the exterior, our fear of the network, and those within it. Georgio Agamben writes within his essay ‘Theory out of bounds’, “Man is a social animal and life is not easy for him when social ties are cut off... very few individuals have the strength to conserve their own integrity if their social, political, and legal status is completely confused”. Man is a predominantly social creature, and cannot for the most part, live a life of separation from our context. While man is still a social creature and the creator of this capsule society, this interior environment cannot dominate over the network within its exteriority.
iCapsule block out the world with interiority
The Right to the City David Harvey Within the piece ‘The Right to the City’, David Harvey explores the methods by which members of the public are manipulated and excluded in order to create subjugation by a ruling or governing body. Throughout the essay Harvey sites examples of the use of design, for the most part urbanization and large scale development, as a means by which governments can reduce their capital surplus, and in doing this, force terrible acts of creative destruction and violence upon their people. This essay essentially questions peoples rights to take ownership of, live in, and re-create an urban space; “The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: it is a right to change ourselves by changing the city…The freedom to make and re-make our cities is, I want to argue, one of the most precious and neglected of our human rights”. In saying this I believe that Harvey means that the right to the city is a right which we not only neglect, but have allowed to be taken away from us; it is a right which we have allowed to be almost entirely allocated to the rich and elite classes within societies, leaving the middle and lower classes open to exclusion. If we really need and example of this in contemporary society we need only to look to America and the financial crisis in which banks were handed bail out packages to re-finance [while operating within a competitive market of capitalism] while at the same time foreclosing homes of families who had defaulted on loans which had purposefully been given at impossibly low interest rates. The trend of gentrification and subjugation is traced through history, with examples given of France, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, as well as areas of Asia and Europe; We can see the variety of methods by which uprisings can be quelled and people returned to a position which is seen as fit by the upper classes and ruling bodies. “Increasingly, we see the right to the city falling into the hands of private or quasi-private interests” The problem, I would say, with the right to the city falling into the hands of these types of institutions is that they are not looking out for the welfare of the people who are living within the area, they are governed only by the laws of the government, and those of capitalism. They have an intended demographic in mind which they are trying to appeal to, and besides achieving the goal of appealing to that socioeconomic group, the only concern is profit margins. There are no duties felt which ensure a sense of empathy for those being excluded. [on the right to the city] “The democratization of that right, and the construction of a broad social movement to enforce its will is imperative if the dispossessed are to take back the control which they have for so long been denied, and if they are to institute new modes of urbanization. Lefebvre was right to insist that the revolution has to be urban, in the broadest sense of the term, or nothing at all”. Within this last paragraph Harvey hints at the manner in which the people can take back a right which has been stripped from them, and denied them for so long; the same manner as rights and power are always taken, by means of a revolution started by the classes who are being affected the most. This is not to say that a revolution must be a violent assault upon a governing body or institution[no-one needs to be be-headed], but can be an urban scale, organized revolt against the manner in which power and space within a society is allocated to the ‘haves’ and constantly both taken from, and exercised over the ‘have-nots’.
Foam City Peter Sloterdijk It appears that through this essay, Peter Sloterdijk, is stating a challenge for architecture in contemporary society, to create spaces within which the masses, or rather, the individuals within society who have formed into an ensemble to create foams, can gather. “Considering the comparatively looser aggregation of their symbionts, moderns collectives are confronted with the challenge of creating spacial conditions that enable both the isolation of individuals, and the concentration of the isolated entities into collective ensembles of cooperation and contemplation. This calls for a new commitment on the part of architecture”. To create a spacial arrangement which accommodates both the individual as a singularity and also the individual as a member of a ensemble is the challenge of contemporary architecture. To create spaces within which gatherings can occur, or possibly demonstrations in regard to political conditions. The challenge is how to create these bases without using the basis of classical configurations. At the beginning of the essay there is an exploration into the various competitions and projects which strived to creates spaces for the assembly of the people, to bring together the masses within a national assembly, as well as the variety of means by which populations have taken control of a space in order to create an assembly there. However, as we move further through the essay, the manner in which the state quickly took control over this assembly and turned it into a choreographed exhibition intended to create a “collective enthrallment” for the purpose of consensus is demonstrated. This is the state of pseudo-inclusion. When it was realized that any type of gathering of the masses, specifically in the streets, could be a threat to the government, the initiative to suppress them is taken. To give the term ‘Mob’ to groups of people gathering in the streets is to classify all people as a potentially problematic or violent, and thus allowing the governing political body or bourgeoise to control them. “Already the constitution of 1791 attempted to suppress gathering in which the attendant crowd wanted to articulate itself as a political society of the people, and thus a part of incarnate sovereign”. This essay gives a view on the manner in which contemporary cities became ‘foam cities’, highly individualized spaces within which people operate of solitary universes which possibly share a common boundary. It is an explanation of a point of view regarding the means by which people became very singular to the point where there is no ‘society’ anymore, but rather moments of ensemble. It explores the process by which populations attempted to become a part of the sovereign power, and form a democratic society, and where quickly suppressed; and I believe lastly, it is a challenge toward the people within a society to take initiative and have influence over institutions, and also towards architects to create the spaces which can both initiate and accommodate this, with a new configuration. The term foams relates to the episodic clustering of individual islands within a certain set of circumstances in which they share a common wall or boundary.
Space, Knowledge, and Power Michelle Foucault Within this conversational piece Michelle Foucault explores spacial relations within society, and further to this, relationships of power and the exercise of freedom and liberty. He deals with ideas of the city and the state, and the manner in which the city became a model for the way that the whole state is governed rather than being the exception to open space, “The model of the city became the matrix for the regulations that apply to the whole state”. The concept of power is explored, but not in a general manner, it is explored in the sense of spaces, populations, their relationships, governing bodies, and the manner in which this concept of power is exercised over a society. Specifically Foucault examines spacial and architectural projects as a means by which power is exerted and liberty and freedom are exercised. “Liberty is a practice. So there may in fact, always be a certain number of projects whose aim is to modify some constraints, to loosen, or even break them, but none of these projects can, simply by its nature, assure that people will have liberty automatically, that it will be established by the project itself. the liberty of men is never assured by the institutions and laws intended to guarantee them. this is why almost all of these laws and institutions are capable of being turned around- not because they are ambiguous, but simply because ‘liberty’ is what must be exercised”. In saying this, Foucault is quite simply stating the manner in which freedom and liberty operate; the very nature of them- they are not concrete values which can be either given or taken away, they are possessed in a dormant state by all people within society, and can be exercised at any moment which calls for them. Within both the exercising of freedom and liberty, or the exercising of power over a population, the intention of an architectural, or spacial project is not the fundamental defining character, but rather the manner in which the project operates within a society. The intention of the project can provide the means by which liberty can be exercised, but cannot guarantee liberty itself; and in just the same way, a project can create the exclusion of a population, but as long as there is the idea of freedom then the population has the ability to rebel and exercise freedom and liberty. Perhaps most importantly within this essay, Michelle Foucault outlines that communal life and power are intrinsically linked through space. He writes, “Space is fundamental in any form of communal life; space is fundamental in any exercise of power”. Communal life relates to the interaction of individuals with a society, and the manner of interaction is through space, and therefore, in order to exist within a society, an individual who is a part of, and wishes to interact with a larger population is always going to have to comprehend, contend and possibly struggle with these concepts of freedom, liberty, and power.
Critique of Violence Walter Benjamin The critique of violence is one which must have certain criteria ascertained before it can proceed, Walter Benjamin writes that “a critique of violence can be summarized as that of expounding it’s relation to law and justice”. Firstly, Benjamin explores that which constitutes “Law”, and defines two distinctly different types of law; Natural Law and Positive Law. Natural Law “perceives in the use of violent means as no greater problem than a man sees in his ‘right’ to move his body in the direction of a desired goal. According to this view, violence is a product of nature.” “Positive Law ... sees violence as a product of history. If Natural Law can judge all existing law only by its ends, so positive law can judge all evolving law only in criticizing its means. If justice is the criterion of ends, legality is that of means”. In writing this, Benjamin is contending that Positive Law is one which is concerned with the legality of means, and that Natural law is one which is concerned solely with that of ends. He sums up each in saying “...Positive Law is blind to the absoluteness of ends, Natural Law is equally so to the contingency of means”. In exploring these values and their meanings, Benjamin is searching for the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate violence, and in order to do so, he must produce a ‘historico-philosophical’ view of law. Benjamin is of the opinion that it was the last war which changed the manner is which violence can be asserted, he writes in this piece, “If in the last war the critique of military violence was the starting point for a passionate critique of violence in general- which taught at least one thing, that violence is no longer exercised and tolerated naively”. it was this action of violence in war time which prompted people to critique the use of violence within the military sphere, and question both the means and the ends of it, in terms of violence as a means to natural ends, and also in terms of both of its functions as lawmaking, and law preserving. Benjamin’s critique involves categorizing all valid violence as either law-making or law preserving, if it does not fit into either of these categories then it forfeits all validity. After investigating and examining violence in its many forms, Benjamin ultimately comes to the conclusion that a critique of violence lies within the philosophy of its history, and along with this, that all law making and law preserving violence is pernicious1, and that sovereign violence is divine violence. It appears as though a critique of violence is also a critique of power, who holds it, who wields it, and how it is executed.
1 –adjective 1. causing insidious harm or ruin; ruinous; injurious; hurtful: pernicious teachings; a pernicious lie. 2. deadly; fatal: a pernicious disease. 3. Obsolete . evil; wicked.
On Cosmopolitanism Jacques Derrida What is cosmopolitanism? What is it to be cosmopolitan? Is it to exist without borders, not as a citizen of a state or country, but as a citizen of the world as Socrates wrote? Derrida relates this idea of ‘cosmopolitanism’ to the much contentious issue of refugees, and the ‘city of refuge’. Derrida Writes from the perspective of one which is a part of the international parliament of writers, a body which, by its very name, relates to the nature of the state; or rather, could be held up and become a lens through which the nature of the state, and its policies, is examined. Derrida Writes, “In reviving the traditional meaning of an expression [parliament] and in restoring a memorable heritage to its former dignity, we have been eager to propose simultaneously, beyond the old word, an original concept of hospitality, of the duty (deviour) of hospitality, and of the right (driot) to hospitality”. In reading this we can begin to understand a potential meaning for the term ‘cosmopolitanism’, not as a person, or a place, but as an ideal which should be incorporated into the considerations of the state. Derrida references Arendt for her writing regarding the nature of refugees within the two great upheavals within modern European history. It was within this era that the two mean traditional means by which refugees were dealt with, Repatriation or Naturalization, had to be reconsidered. The nature of the city and state must be reconsidered due to the fact that it would seem, by Derrida and Arendts perspective, to be incompatible with the circumstances of that time [and it would seem, with contemporary times]. “let us not hesitate to declare out ultimate ambition, what gives meaning to our project: our plea is for what we have decided to call the ‘city of refuge’”. Derrida approaches this topic of discussion not from an exclusively philosophical standpoint, but examines the issue of hospitality and refugees in terms of policy and international law of the nation state. In this sense it does have a similarity to Hannah Arendt and Georio Agamben, however, rather than looking at refugee status as being of an avant guard position amongst a people, it examines more so the manner in which state law and policy has over a period of time outcast the refugee from society, and that rather than abolishing all borders between countries, we need to consider the status of people in terms of a citizenry of the world, rather than of countries of borders and exclusion. Upon reading this piece it would seem that rather than the ‘city of refuge’ being a defined space for people of a refugee status to take shelter, that the ‘city of refuge’ could become an international law relating to the treatment, accommodation, and hospitality of people who are considered to be of refugee nature prior to being accepted as citizens of a state, or that they need not to be accepted as citizens in order to live in one place.
“ I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the World.� -Socrates
The cosmopolitical Proposal Isobelle Stengers Cosmopolitical Cos`mo*po*lit”ic*al a. Having the character of a cosmopolite. [R.] --Hackluyt. Cosmopolite cos·mop·o·lite –noun 1. a person who is cosmopolitan in his or her ideas, life, etc.; citizen of the world. 2. an animal or plant of worldwide distribution. Cosmopolitical Proposal “How can we present a proposal intended not to say what it is, or what it ought to be, but to provoke thought, a proposal that requires no other verification than the way in which it is able to ‘slow down’ reasoning and create an opportunity to arouse a slightly different awareness of the problems and situations mobilizing us”. “The proposal thus corresponds to a form of self-regulation but has the advantage of presenting the “self” as an issue, of giving its full significance to the unknown element of the question: What would the researcher decide “on his/her own” if that “his/herself” were actively shed of the kinds of protection that current decisions seem to need”. Ethos_ the way of behaving, peculiar to a being. Oikos_ the habitat of that being. To act in a cosmopolitical manner in relation to political ecology is to remove any preconceptions in relation to a given issue, changing the states role, and to resist engaging with anything which transcends the issue in its concrete environment. The purpose of the cosmopolitical proposal is to create a utopian vision [heterotopia], or a vision of the future which does not transcend issues of our current oikos, but rather one that identifies them. The cosmopolitical proposal could be considered as a methodology for creating a heterotopia, in that “it proposes an interpretation that indicates how a transformation could take place that leaves no one unaffected; in other words, it calls into question all the ‘one would just need to’ statements that denote the over-simplistic victory of good over evil”. The cosmopolitical proposal is a theory of linked networks within the world, and the knowledge that these points in the network do no function independent of each other, which could be a consideration in order to promote question within the proposal. The purpose of the cosmopolitical proposal, as stated in the very first paragraph of the essay is to, “...present a proposal intended not to say what it is, or what it ought to be, but to provoke thought, a proposal that requires no other verification than the way in which it is able to ‘slow down’ reasoning and create an opportunity to arouse a slightly different awareness of the problems and situations mobilizing us”. it would appear that the cosmopolitical proposal is not merely a methodology for reaching a goal, it certainly is not the goal itself, it is not a utopian vision which dismisses current issues, but a proposal which is intended to promote critical thought, and the questioning of things from different perspectives.
Welcome to the desert of the real Slavoj Zizek Through the writing ‘welcome to the desert of the real’, Zizek investigates a number of aspects of life which bring us closer to ‘the real’; the event which brings us to the spectacle, or the messianic event. This could be likened to the sublime, that which is immense, daunting and intimidating, but also intriguing at the same time. We search through our virtual world in order to attempt to locate ‘the real’ within the myriad of effects and visualizations which attempt to recreate it. in doing this what is coming into our realization is that the world in which we live is in fact fake, there is a very distinct separation between our world and the world outside, or as Zizek writes on the manner in which no graphic footage was shown of the 9/11 attacks, “is yet further proof of how, even in this tragic moment, the distance which separates Us from Them, from their reality, is maintained: the real horror happens there, not here”. This virtualisation of our society, as zizek writes is most exemplified in the movie, “the Matrix” which tells the story of the hero who is released from the virtual world into the ‘real’ reality. We see in a number of mediums, film and images, the spectacular explosions of buildings, crashes of jets, and killing of people, and are in a sense anesthetized to it; however, it is this exact anesthesias towards it that meant that when the planes actually hit the world trade centre buildings, we were jolted out of our virtual world and entered the ‘real’ reality, and in much the same way that the character Neo acted, we gazed upon a world that we were unfamiliar with. Within this unfamiliar world we need to be able to distinguish not only that which is real and that which is fantasy, but as Zizek writes, only humans are able to present that which is real as being fake. Towards the end of the piece Zizek writes about both the ‘real thing too horrible for us to look directly upon’, and homo sacer, but does not directly link the two. Perhaps this terrible thing that lies beneath all of the fantasy within our world is the homo sacer; it is the person left after all of the fantasy and false meanings have been taken away. Remove everything from yourself but bare life, all worldly objects, all connections, and we are left alone in a foreign place, and, perhaps this is the desert of the real.
Networks Cells and Silos MUMA The exhibition ‘cells and Silos’ is a collection of artworks which examine the nature of the contemporary world which we live in, they look at the connection and isolation, and connected isolation in society. Natalie Bookchin’s ‘Mass Ornament 2009’ is perhaps one of the most interesting pieces in the exhibition. It is a collection of YouTube videos taken from the internet of people dancing in their own living rooms and bedrooms, and once compiled together with an audio track played over it, illustrates the synchronised movements of the people in the videos; this compilation is a very example of the manner in which people in society are connected today, even when acting in total isolation in their own houses. It is an illustration of the interconnected nature of spaces today, of virtual spaces connecting real spaces. This similar interconnection of spaces is shown in Heath Bunting’s work ‘The Status Project’, however, rather than creating a piece which illustrated a point through the interpretation of the viewer, Buntings work is a more literal diagramming out of connections between aspects of society in a spacial sense. He examines not only literal connections, but aspects of life that connect people to one another. If this connection were to be illustrated physically in a three dimensional sense, it would be through Koji Ryu’s series ‘Extended Network’. This series of models created with pipes and straws shows the connections made between points in space, and also the manner in which connections can be made through the interior of spaces created. These forms avoid having a defined interior and exterior, but rather seem to exist within a space which can fold between the two, redefining spaces and their connections. While most of the pieces within the exhibition look at the connections between people, or places, Sandra Selig’s piece titles ‘Heart of the air you can hear’, seems to look more at the manner in which space is distorted by the connections which are being made through it. Space and time are stretched and pulled, distorted and morphed by the connections which are made between spaces in contemporary society. Time between connections is increased and decreased, with the concept of distance being almost obliterated entirely .due to technology. This piece looks at relative distances between spaces, and the fold at the centre seems to exist somewhere between the actual reality of distance, and the instantaneous transmission made possible by technology. Cells and Silos, through a collection of artists interpretations, explores networks within contemporary society and culture. This exploration ranges between the virtual and the real, with explorations into the connections, and also the nature of the space itself.
Essay Abstract POLITICAL ARCHITECTURE The state and the People. The governing of a country and the significant buildings from which this is administered are two aspects of civilisation which are intrinsically linked to each other. Since the ancient greek and roman times it has remained an important aspect of government that the power of the institution be displayed through the buildings from which the country or city state is being ruled. many government buildings through the ages have been modelled on temples to the gods such as the parthenon and the pantheon, which prompts the question of what this type of architecture symbolises in contemporary times. these buildings which became archetypes for the classical and neo-classical styles, were built as monuments to power and exclusion, informed by principles of proportion to define beauty, in order to create a structure fit for the gods, or rather the governing bodies that particular time. political governing systems and structures have undergone drastic changes over the course of the centuries, shifting between monarchies and the sovereign, dictatorships, communism, and democracy, but the question being posed within this essay is how the architecture of these institutions has shifted or signified the intentions of the governments of the time, the inclusion or exclusion of the people from the governing process, and the connection or disconnection of the governing bodies to the people being ruled. this essay aims to examine the current political structure in australia, the democratic parliament and its meaning, how this has changed over time, the relationship between the government and the masses, and the disconnection signified by its institutional buildings. Along with this analysis this essay will examine the manner is which certain governments are attempting to combat this type of polar disconnection between people and government, between the interior and the exterior of the building.