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Political Ecology

Politics of Space, Environments and Bodies

Farah Alkhoury

TABLE OF CONTENT

VOCABULARY INDEX

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Life Support Ecosystem Advanced Studio 05 Crit: Andrés Jaque

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The Dymaxion House: Politics and Selfishness Transscalarities Crit: Caitlin Blanchfield

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War As Waste Land: The Ghostly presence of Depleted Uranium in Iraq Advanced Studio 06 Crit: Mark Wasiuta

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The Ma’dān Tribes of Iraq: A case for Environmental Refugees Conflict Urbanism Crit: Laura Kurgan

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Archipelago of US Borders Entangled Studios Crit: Marco Ferrari

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New World Embassy, Rojava_Critique of Parliaments Transscalarities Crit: Caitlin Blanchfield

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Untangling Hairiness Tools for Show Crit: Bika Rebek

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Preface

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End statement

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PREFACE

Political Ecology The Politics of Space, Environments and Bodies.

The collection of work in this book focuses on Land Ownership, Injustice, Environment, Warfare, Violence, Territoriality, Borders, Sovereignty, Toxicity, Chemical Modernity, Necropolitics, Imperialism, Colonialism, Occupation, Migration, Displacement and Entanglements. I have come to learn that the terms used to describe architectural operations and intentions, relate to specific histories, and ideological frameworks. Therefore, building a vocabulary for each project was as important as the act of designing. The use of the terms in themselves become an act of design.

The seven projects presented in this book are part case studies, part spatial interventions, and part atlas Project A Life supports Ecosystem, looks at the politics of land ownership, and provokes a movement that imagines the architecture of collective ownership and sharing among humans and non-humans.

Project B Is an essay that asks; What were the social implications of the Dymaxion house? And who were the consumers of the mass-produced product?

Project C War as Waste land excavates the toxic legacy of war in Iraq, in particular the invisible presence of depleted uranium (a by-product of nuclear fuel production) within Iraq’s environment.

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Project D The Ma’dan tribes in Iraq, studies the ecological degradation of the marshlands in Iraq, from the perspective of migration.

Project E Archipelago of US Borders interrogates the infrastructure of the United States defense industrial base in order to expose the contemporary scale of its military operations and the environments it occupies and coproduces.

Project F Constructs a critique of Parliaments through the case study of The New World Embassy by Jonas Staal.

Project G Uses hair as the building material to construct a virtual reality environment in which the anatomy of hair and its politics are explored.

This book is a beginning of a journey, investigating and interrogating the way in which architectural drawings, critical cartography, and other tools of representation can portray invisible operations and their political, environmental and social implications. The series of architectural interventions, devices, essays, maps, and arguments represented in this book are not attempts at remediation nor tries to solve problems. The seven projects presented here rather attempt to understand the scales and entanglements of space, objects, environments and bodies.

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Life Support Ecosystem Advanced Studio 05 Crit: Andrés Jaque Project Collaborators: Pabla Amigo & Magdalena Valdevenito

Life supports Ecosystem, looks at the politics of land ownership, and provokes a movement that imagines the architecture of collective ownership and sharing among humans and non-humans.

Life Support Ecosystem is an Architecture and urban movement tested in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in Cooper Square. Initially, the transition to collective ownership through a Land Trust System in Cooper Square took place in the 1990’s, following a series of events that threatened its inhabitants with slum clearance and displacement. The movement is driven by the idea that a society that functions under the basis of collective ownership requires its own spatial, material, and relational arrangements. Reflecting on the work of feminist writer Silvia Federici, the idea of “The Commons” has been adopted within the Life Support Ecosystem on the basis of cooperation and sharing among humans and non-humans. Five main spatial transformations has been tested in Cooper Square to nurture the soil, grow food, collect and threat the water, compost and establish various degrees of sharing.

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which soil is nurtured and harvested. The life support ecosystem caters to those who have been excluded from real estate hegemony in Manhattan or unwilling to participate in it, on the basis of cooperation and sharing among humans and non-humans. Food, water shelter, clothes, technology, knowledge and culture is shared within this common. This ecosystem attempts to gain a certain level of independence from the city’s infrastructures.

Though we may think of “owning” one’s own home, the reality is more often that of owning a mortgage.

The mortgage, more than an instrument to take on debt, is a means through which the home becomes embedded in global flows of financial capital.

However, the notion of fixed ownership does not take into account the evolution of relationships between people, and their changing financial, personal and bodily conditions. A society that functions under the bases of collective ownership requires its own spatial, material, and relational arrangements. One that focuses on Architecture as a life support ecosystem.

Growth in New York is presumed to be good to fuel global and local capital. However, the idea of constant growth in architecture assumes a simplified notion of site, as empty, without people or politics. The notion of an empty site is challenged in Cooper Square, in

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TRANSITIONING OF OWNERSHIP

TRANSITIONING OF OWNERSHIP The Cooper Square model is driven by the idea of establishing various degrees of sharing. The evolution of Cooper Square as an alternative model to the private real-estate market is linked to community planning since the 1950’s.

Initially, the transition to collective ownership through a land trust system in Cooper Square took place in the 1990’s, following a series of events that threatened its inhabitants with slum clearance and displacement led

by Robert Moses’ 1949 housing act. These projects created middle-class housing and displaced low-income communities in Manhattan. With the plan to construct the lower-east Manhattan Expressway, Cooper Square Community was targeted for Slum Clearance. The project would have erased an 11-block area, displacing over 2,400 tenants. In 1961 Cooper Square Alternate Plan was the first community plan in the city that fought against real estate speculations to preserve low-cost housing.

The Cooper Square Committee consisted of members 10

from the neighbourhood along with activist Francis Goldwin and Urban planner Walter Tabit, together they conceived an Urban Planning project for Cooper Square and its inhabitants. However in the mid-1970’s and 1980’s, following the fiscal crisis government funding for public housing projects diminished, and were in favor of private housing developments. Over four decades, the community has shrunk their area of focus multiple times.

In 1970’s the 11-block site was shrunk to 4 blocks, in 1986 they shifted their focus to preserving 21 buildings within Cooper Square.

By 2000, Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association owned these buildings while Copper Square Community Land Trust owned the land. This separated the ownership of the land from that of the building. The collective land ownership model was used as a legal instrument to establish the right to stay, through preserving affordable housing.

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SHARING

GRADIENTS OF SHARING The walls were transformed to be folded, dismantled, moved and repurposed to allow for multiple possibilities of organizing spaces. The spaces have become adaptable and fluid, where different housing configurations can exist depending on the household size. Each space here opens up to the shared corridor.

It was crucial for the Cooper Square project to craft the discourse on the commons as a foundation of a noncapitalist economy. The land, water, air, the internet, languages, libraries and our collective production of past cultures are examples of commons. These are shared elements that affect all of us. This is done through designing various forms of sharing. We developed 14

architectural devices that imagines a society that is less dependent from capital.

The shop on the ground floor, were transformed into what we call “the neighborhood closet” where the community can share whatever they no longer need and feel that somebody else might need it. Food, clothes, furniture, domestic appliances, toys and books are shared in our neighborhood closet.

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FOOD The most significant feature of urban gardens is that they produce for neighbourhood consumption, rather than for commercial purposes. The gardens are not just a source of food security but are also centers of social activity, knowledge production, cultural and intergenerational exchange. The ground floor, terraces, and roofs are utilized for farming. Although the food we grow does not consist of our entire diet, it provides the 455 inhabitants of the community 30% of our diet. Crops are zoned and harvested according to sun exposure.

Tomatoes, Squash, Eggplants, Pumpkin, Melon, and onions are placed over the sunniest areas. While carrots, cucumbers, broccoli and beans don’t require much 18

sunlight, so we grow them where they can get 6 hours of sun each day. Lettuce, Kale, potatoes and blueberries just need 2 hours of sun a day, so we dedicate the shaded areas for growing those crops. Fruit trees occupy the spaces in between the harvest.

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WATER

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WATER Average annual precipitation has increased across New York State since 1900. On average, 17,206 gallons of water is needed to irrigate the gardens on the ground floor. The water used in showers and kitchens are treated and is used to provide 60% of the water needed in the gardens. Rather than using chemicals to treat the water, a living ecosystem is implimented within a series of 5 aquatic tanks for each floor containing microscopic algae, fungi, bacteria and snails, fish, shrubs, and trees that clean the water. This requires the inhabitants of this model to use soaps and detergents that do not contain ingredients that could harm the living water treatment ecosystem.

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Rainwater is collected over the roof in tanks, and used for irrigating the roof garden and herbs. The system of collectors, pipes, and storage make the movement of water visible on the façade. The remaining water is collected and used for the gardens. This system allows the New York block to be almost entirely independent from the city’s water system to irrigate and grow crops.

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COMPOST

COMPOST Over one-third of New York City’s residential waste stream is made up of organic waste that could be composted, including food scraps, food-soiled paper, and yard waste. Compost is a valuable fertilizer that returns nutrients to soil and helps plants grow. A device of compost stations over the facade turns the surface of the building into a living surface. Worms feed on the leftover food, releasing menirals that nurture the soil, along with humic acids that help plant growth and protect them

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from diseases. Worms require balanced moisture and a monitored temperature, that is why they span all over the façade, so they can be protected from direct sun and cold weather.

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EMBODIED POLITICS

EMBODIED POLITICS Here daily life is staged as a parliament.

The real estate market in New York City has a tendency to create dislocation, feeds on disasters and divides urban spaces by class and race. The life Support Ecosystem is provoked as a movement, that could be replicated in other land trusts in the city and further.

Today, there are 90 land trusts in New York and around 277 community land trusts across the United States. Land Trusts across NewYork are great spaces to implement the model of Architecture as a life support ecosystem, because they are already based on collective ownership.

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The Dymaxion House: Politics and Selfishness Transscalarities Crit: Caitlin Blanchfield

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1. Neder, Federico.

2008. Fuller houses: R. Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion dwellings and other domestic adventures.

Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers. _______________________

What were the social implications of the Dymaxion house? And who were the consumers of the massproduced product?

2. Marks, Robert W., and R. Buckminster Fuller. 1960.

The Dymaxion world of Buckminster Fuller. _______________________

The housing experiments by Buckminster Fuller were driven by several events that took place in the two decades following the 1920’s. The combination of the housing crisis, the emergence of the division between private home and public sphere, industrialization and new means of communication, took place in the context out of which the Dymaxion House was developed.1 Fuller developed a series of mass produced housing schemes that he conceived to be constructed in factories and transported like cars as assembled products.2 He was interested in the industrial progress at the time seen in the automobile and aeronautical industries and wanted to test this mode of production on housing, in particular the principle of measuring performance of the house according to its cost and weight. The housing experiments questioned the archetype of a house, its production, performance, efficiency and cost. However if we consider that the desire for efficiency is a negative by-product of capitalism then, what were the social implications of the Dymaxion house? And 32

who were the consumers of the massproduced product? This essay will focus on one of the Dymaxion experiments; the 1940 Dymaxion Deployment Units (DDU), that interchangeably moved between the domestic and military realm, in which the mass produced house was used as material technology of warfare, while also conceived as a suburban housing model.

domestic ambitions” that was of interest to Fuller. Fuller conceptualized the house as a “shelter”, one where the function of a house was to “defend from natural disasters, politics and selfishness.”3 Fuller’s idea of a house as a protective shelter implies that he wanted to construct a society that would always be ready to be at war. The dymaxion house was not just conceived conceptually by war, but it was also used as a material technology of warfare. The US military took notice of the project commissioning the production of a large number of DDU that were shipped to the Persian Gulf during WWII. Soon after, DDU went out of production because steel became prioritized for the production of weapons. However, when DDU was exhibited at MoMA in 1941, Fuller suggested that the unit could be transformed into a guest house or summer house after the war, and the house could easily shift between military and domestic realm. 4 Although the notion of housing for the military or for a family was interchangeable,

Fuller represented the domestic space very differently from that of the military deployment units. The all white, family house was still conceived to be inhabited by a nuclear family separating the living area, bedrooms into one grain bin and the function of the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom into another grain bin. Several illustrations were used to advertise the transformation of the deployable unit into a summer cottage.

These images show the performance of society within the interior spaces of the dymaxion house, representing the domestic roles of a typical suburban nuclear family.

The cultural notion of the suburban family home was also an invention of that time and experimental designers were a part of constructing that notion. Although the project was conceived as an alternative domestic model that defined housing as a shelter that acts as a refuge from “politics and selfishness”, it continued to imagine a traditional and fixed notion of society, the architecture became a material artifact of gender and racial inequity.

3. Colomina, Beatriz.

2007. Domesticity at war.

Barcelona: Actar. _______________________ 4. Fuller, B. (1941). MoMA: Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Deployment Unit Exhibition. _______________________

In 1940, Fuller converted industrial corrugated-steel grain bins into housing units that could be airlifted around the world. He made minor modifications to the grain bins, by cutting a series of circular windows using acrylic plastic, similar to those used in airplanes (it was the first time this material was used outside of airplane manufacturing). The walls were insulated and the floor coated with masonite. Furniture, plumbing, shelving and equipment were lined to the circular walls. For Fuller the metal grains provided the perfect means for accelerating mass production. According to Architectural historian Beatriz Colomina, the house “integrated military and 7

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War As Waste Land: The Ghostly presence of Depleted Uranium in Iraq Advanced Studio 06 Crit: Mark Wasiuta

The project excavates the toxic legacy of war in Iraq, in particular the way in which war was the mechanism by which the waste byproduct of producing Nuclear fuel was deconcentrated within the United States and diffused in Iraq.

Since the 1991 Gulf war, Iraq has been a subject of a large-scale toxic warfare experiment. Operation Desert Storm, and the war interventions that followed in Iraq, provided the ground for the US-military to experiment with Depleted Uranium; a nuclear waste by-product that has been used within ammunitions as the weapon of choice for imperial adventurism and military operations.

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Western narratives around the Gulf war circulated imagery that misread the desert as an empty landscape that can be violated.

The project looks at the Gulf war as a site of chemical concentration, to investigate the ghostly presence of Depleted Uranium within Iraq. While television coverage of the war through 24-hour cable news cycle, such as CNN, produced mediated images of war and its weaponry systems, which was central to the social consumption of military power. In contrast, Depleted Uranium is a ghostly and invisible residue of the war, which remains little known and often deliberately obscured from view.

Four decades of war in Iraq has left the country with a concentration of toxicity within the environment: present in the soil, water, and air. From Uranium mines on the Colorado Plateau and Nevada to Uranium Enrichment plants in New Mexico; the waste byproduct of producing nuclear fuel (Depleted Uranium) was concentrated within military ammunition, to be used for the first time during the 1991 Gulf war. This movement of hazardous waste highlights the toxic legacy of nuclear waste dumping sites within the United States and consequently in Iraq.

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DEPLETED URANIUM (DU) In the 1970s, the United States Department of Defense became interested in using Depleted Uranium or DU metal in weapons because it was 2.5 times heavier than steel and 1.5 times heavier than lead.

Natural occurring Uranium is made up of two isotopes (Uranium-238 and Uranium-235). The variation in the concentration of the fissile Uranium-235 is what determines whether it is to be used as Nuclear fuel, or for military weapons. The waste-by product of uranium enrichment is Depleted Uranium (DU), contains 0.3% of the fissile U-235. The waste by-product is then concentrated within ammunition.

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Uranium Enrichment plants and their centrifuges are sites of political dispute, since a nation that owns one with the right knowledge would be able to produce Nuclear weapons. The U.S. Department of Energy operated facilities that produced DU as a waste byproduct of nuclear fuel, making DU widely available and inexpensive.

The various methods by which images of the war were seen and produced, either from the cockpit of a war machine or through the mediatization and mass production of war imagery, does not reveal the toxicity produced and still remains within Iraq.

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INSTITUTE OF WAR ARCHEOLOGY

INSTITUTE OF WAR ARCHEOLOGY Marking the presence of DU’s invisible diffusion, which remains little known and often deliberately obscured from view, can expand the frame of what a war economy includes and provide evidence of what may not be visible through the circulated imagery of the war.

The design intervention looks at the residue of war as archeological artifacts. Unlike War Memorials that nationalize narratives of war, the Institute of War Archeology studies the artifacts of war in order to learn how to live with the consequences of the war.

One of the most important artifacts of the war buried in Iraq is Depleted Uranium. This Artifact needs to be located, unearth, studied and its effects communicated.

The soil contaminated with Depleted Uranium is transported and piled between two major roads leading to Baghdad and Nasiriya cities, above depleted oil fields.

Using the same organizational system that the United states use to intervene in Iraq, through separating the war 44

into operations. The soil and sand piles are categorized based on the five operations in which depleted Uranium was deployed in Iraq.

Each pile contains within it a display of the artifacts from the location where the soil comes from. The process of reverse archeology, uses the material markers of US imperialism to show the depleted history of Iraq beneath the depleted uranium contaminated soil.

THE INSTITUTE OF WAR ARCHEOLOGY SYSTEMATICALLY SURVEYS IRAQ’S LANDSCAPE, IN ORDER TO LOCATE CONTAMINATED SOIL. THE CONTAMINATED SOIL IS THEN CONCENTRATED IN ONE LOCATION WITHIN IRAQ.

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RUMAILA OIL FIELD The institute of war archeology is located within Rumaila Oil Fields in South of Iraq, in Basra. The geographic region is in itself a concentration of war, by being the place where key elements of war existed; oil, border disputes, and contamination. Disputes over who has access to the Oil Fields is one of the major factors that determines the stability and security of the region.

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SOIL COLLECTION & CATEGORIZATION

SOIL COLLECTION AND CATEGORIZATION The sheer scale of the soil piles communicate the degree of contamination caused by decades of war and violence in Iraq. Because of the scale of this intervention circulation around the site is done by car.

The architecture becomes partially buried under soil as it gets distributed across the site using a gantry system. The soil is categorized at each step. Using a vacuum system the gantry moves across the delivered soil, categorizing it into different containers. The soil printing head then moves across the various piles, disposing the soil.

Soil contaminated with DU can be handled without causing harm if the alpha emitters are blocked. But it can be particularly harmful if minute particles are inhaled or ingested, this means that it is important to 60

introduce a method to avoid soil erosion. Similar to the method used to prevent desertification, a grid of straw is laid on top of the soil piles to prevent it from getting eroded.

Since this intervention sets up a mechanism for collecting and testing the soil. The soil residue can also be used to construct the walls of the institute. Soil and war artifacts are tested in labs using scintillation counters, and the building itself becomes an apparatus for viewing the artifacts of war.

In Iraq the spatial diffusion of the chemical within the country’s ecosystem along with its effects on humans and non-humans have been little analyzed and studied.

The testing labs study, document and categorize the material markers of the war.

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The Testing labs, auditorium, cafe and the residency, are partially buried under the soil, and the war artifacts are entirely buried beneath the contaminated soil sitting above spongy layers of depleted oil fields.

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REVERSE ARCHEOLOGY

REVERSE ARCHEOLOGY The process of reverse archeology, uses the material markers of US imperialism to show the depleted history of Iraq beneath the depleted uranium contaminated soil. Each soil pile contains within it a display of the artifacts from the location where the soil is excavated.

The artifacts seen from the dashboard of a car is similar to the way in which the war was experienced outside of Iraq from the safety of enclosed personal spaces.

The material markers of war are buried beneath the contaminated soil. The demolished war machines located across targeted areas, and war imagery circulated globally through the media, are buried beneath the concentration of toxicity present in the soil and air. The war artifacts represent: 66

1. The Target as seen from the sky by military aircrafts and other war machines 2. The Targets after they have been hit 3. And The targets as seen through the media, for instance CNN’s broadcasted images of the Gulf war from the hotel room of Al-Rashid hotel in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Uranium mines in Nevada, enrichment plants in New Mexico and war Targets in Iraq make up the architecture of chemical modernity, through the global movement of hazardous waste.

The institute of War Archeology, excavates the contaminated soil, narrating the depleted history of Iraq, in order to learn how to live with the consequences of the war.

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The Ma’dān Tribes of Iraq: A case for Environmental Refugees Conflict Urbanism Crit: Laura Kurgan Project Collaborator: Aditi Mangesh Shetye

1. Nicholson, Emma, and Peter Clark. 2003. The Iraqi Marshlands: a human and environmental study.

London: Politico’s Pub. _______________________

The term ‘Environmental Refugees’ was used by the United Nations as a tool to pave a path for international intervention, disguised as restoration attempts, in order to gain access to oil fields within the marshlands in Iraq.

Once known as the largest wetland system in Western Eurasia, the Iraqi marshlands consist of distinct but adjacent marshes, the Central Marshes, Hawaizah Marshes and Hammar Marshes, providing habitats for several Marsh Arab tribes and a variety of non-human populations. Located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Southern Iraq, the marshlands are aquatic landscapes that are historically inhabited by the Marsh Arabs, also known as Ma’dān. Living in homes on floating islands, both made up of reeds, the livelihood of the Ma’dān consisted of fishing, rice cultivation and breeding livestock, and was highly attuned to flood environments of the marshlands.

The unique geographical location of their habitat, however, made them vulnerable to exploitation for military, political and economical gain, through agricultural irrigation and oil exploration within the country as well as hydro-infrastructural operations in neighboring countries.

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Since the 1950s, an estimated number of 500,000 Marsh Arabs or Ma’dān have been marginalized, through the process of modernization, eliminating the way of life that they have relied on for decades.1 Since the early 1990’s, the constant draining of the Marshes through the construction of dams, warfare and droughts, radically altered the environment of the Marsh Arabs. This placed the Ma’dān under constant threat of forced migration, leading to their internal displacement within Iraq, or movement to refugee camps mostly within Iran. In May 2001, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) published a report titled “Mesopotamian marshlands: the demise of an ecosystem”, which states that “given that the flight of Marsh Arabs was triggered by massive environmental deterioration, there is a strong case for them to be considered as Environmental Refugees.”2 Prior to that, in 1994 the UNHCR provided a case for

Swamp-dwellings Madan in the Hor by Georg Gerster.

Science Source 1973 _______________________

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the displacement of the Marsh Arabs to be labelled as “Environmental refugees”.

Since the 1980’s the term “Environmental Refugees” have been popularized to link the issue of environmental change with human migration. The use of the term “Environmental Refugees” to define the migration of the Marsh Arabs, has been used prior to the debate on the legal use of the term “Environmental Refugees” by many policy makers.

The Marsh Arabs or Ma’dān The Marsh Arabs or Ma’dan have been natives to the Marshes prior to the demarcation of Iraqi borders by colonial Britain. The categorization of the Marsh Arabs, as a distinct marginalized community,

was brought about through the process of colonization and modernization of Iraq. Since the British-led modernization schemes of Iraq in the 1950’s, the Marsh Arabs or Ma’dān’s habitat and ecosystem has been a target for draining to give way to infrastructural development such as the Al Nasiriya Dam and Al Rumaila Oil Field. the British controlled Iraq Petroleum company, produced films and imagery that depicted southern Iraq, where the Marshes are located, as a “living reminder of the past’’. This depiction of the marshlands and its inhabitants, were adjacent to images of hydro-infrastructural projects and oil refineries. The word “Ma’dan” was synonymous with “pre-modernity”, and hence they were forged in the development

2. Partow, Hassan. 2001. The Mesopotamian marshlands: demise of an ecosystem.

Nairobi: UNEP. _______________________

Timeline showing migration trends of Marsh Arabs along key events _______________________

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imagination of a nascent Iraqi state and its alliance with western consultants.

An accurate count of the population of the Marsh Arabs in Southern Iraq, historically and currently have not been done. Internally displaced people are more difficult to count than refugees who cross borders. The British NGO AMAR, formed to provide aid to Marsh Arab refugees, estimated that half a million people lived within the Marshlands prior to its draining in 1991. By the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, the Human Right Watch estimated that there were 250,000 Marsh Arabs remaining within the region.

During the Iran-Iraq war, the marshes were turned into a battle zone. Iranian troops used the Marshes to penetrate into Iraq.

Shi’a troops in the south of Iraq rebelled against Saddam’s government, and used the Marshes as a hideout place. The Marshes were therefore, subject to the regime’s retaliation, and constant bombings.3 By 2003, UN reported that around 10,000 Marshes Arabs remained, while 100,000 or 200,000 Marsh Arabs were internally displaced, 100,000 left the country as refugees to nearby refugee camps in Iran, such as the Servestan and Khuzestan camps.

Furthermore, a severe drought in 2008, led to further depletion of the Marshes.

Drainage of the Marshlands The Marshlands have held a strong ecological significance in Iraq’s history beginning from the country’s process of modernization in the 1950s, the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, through the tumultuous presidency of Suddam Hussein in the 1990s, and into the current instability of the region.

The Marshlands key location between the Tigris and Euphrates River basins made it susceptible to the process of modernization brought on by the development of several dams for hydroelectric power both within and outside the Iraqi borders. Since the 1950s, developments like these have placed

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several Ma’dān tribes under constant threat of relocation as changes of flow from both the rivers affect the overall water levels and vegetation within the marshes. Several dams built within Iraq, and its neighbouring countries, Syria, Turkey and Iran, affect the water flow to the marshes. The dams were built either for irrigating agricultural land, flood control, or hydropower. The map below identifies the several dams that were built along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers since the 1950s that have had direct effect on the Marshlands and it’s tribes. The marshlands continued to be targeted for draining in the 1970’s to ‘reclaim’ the wetlands for agricultural irrigation purposes. Since the 1980’s, Turkey prioritised hydroelectric development, as well as combined the building of the dams in a giant irrigation and energy project called GAP. This project affected the water flow to downstream countries which inturn resulted in the decrease of the water level within the Iraqi Marshland.3 Environmental conditions within the marshlands reached its worst during the presidency of Suddam Hussein who used water control from the rivers as a political tool. Based on a design to construct a Third River by British engineer Frank Haigh in his Haigh Report for the Iraqi Government in 1951, a 565 km long canal (known as the Nasiriyah Drainage Pump Station) between Euphrates and Tigris was constructed during the 1990s in order to desalinate the Euphrates water, effectively draining water from the Central Marshes into the Persian Gulf. By the end of the decade, nearly 90% of the Marshlands were depleted, with only a partly inact region between the Iran-Iraq border remaining intact as it was fed by river flows beyond Iraqi control, making the marshes unable to sustain the livelihoods of the Ma’dān tribes.4 Although deliberate acts of aggression by the Iraqi government drained the economy of the Marsh Arabs, this was not the only

3. Adriansen, Hanne Kirstine.

2004. What happened to the Iraqi Marsh Arabs and their land?: the myth about the Garden of Eden and the noble savage. Copenhagen: DIIS. _______________________

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factor that contributed to the displacement of the Marsh Arabs. The construction of dams upstream, Warfare, droughts, oil extraction or the contamination of water due to chemical warfare agents all contributed to the displacement of the Marsh Arabs.

False color composite imagery below show the progression of drainage on the marshes till their almost complete depletion by 2000.

Map of Dams built along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. _______________________

Matrix of Dams along the Euphrates and Tigris that have direct effect on the Marsh water levels. _______________________

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However, the depletion of the marshlands was used as a political tool by the United States Government as justification for the invasion of Iraq. One of the seven crimes for which Saddam Hussein was charged with was what the United States government referred to as the “genocide of marsh residents” and the destruction of the Iraqi marshes. What followed was the discussion of the “environmental” restoration of the Marshes which was essential to the narrative of US imperialism.5 The Displacement of the Marsh Arabs: A case of Environmental Refugees The term “Environmental Refugees” was first popularised by Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute in the 1970s, and further developed

by El-Hinnawi in 1985 and Meyers & Kent in 1995 (among others). The term was coined prior to the more recently popularized term “Climate Refugees”, in which “Environmental Refugees” is defined as: A. People who had to leave their habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a potential environmental hazard or disruption in their life-supporting ecosystems.6 B. Persons who no longer gain a secure livelihood in their traditional homelands because of what are primarily environmental factors of unusual scope.6 Furthermore, El-Hinnawi describes three main types of environmental refugees: 1. Those temporarily dislocated due to disasters, whether natural or anthropogenic.

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2. Those permanently displaced due to drastic environmental changes, such as the construction of dams 3. Those who migrate based on the gradual deterioration of environmental conditions.

Unlike the term “refugee” which has been internationally recognized during the 1951 UN convention, the categorization of “Environmental Refugees” has been contested and to date has no legal standing.

Internally displaced persons (IDP) are explicitly excluded as refugees, since refugees lack protection from their state and therefore seek international aid. In some cases “Environmentally displaced people” may seek protection from their state.7 The Marsh Arabs were both internally displaced within Iraq, or were moved to refugee camps in Iran. The significance of a legal definition for the displacement of the Marsh Arabs, was both important in providing international aid, since they lacked the protection of the state.

There was one exception by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the categorization of Environmental Refugees; “ when acts of environmental destruction, such as poisoning of wells, the burning of crops, or the draining of marshlands are methods purposefully used to persecute, intimidate or displace a particular population”8 Therefore, under this exception the Marsh Arabs were one of the few cases that were labelled with the contested term of “Environmental Refugees”.

4. Adriansen, Hanne Kirstine. 2006. The Iraqi Marshlands: Is Environmental Rehabilitation Possible?. Papers and Proceedings of Advanced Geography Conferences.

Issue 29. Pg 214. _______________________ 5. Guarasci, Bridget Lauren.

2011. Reconstructing Life: Environment, Expertise, and Political Power in Iraq’s Marshes 2003-2007.

Dissertation Abstracts International. 72-08. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan. _______________________ 6. El-Hinnawi, Essam. 1985.

Environmental refugees.

Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme. _______________________ 7. Westra, Laura. 2009.

Environmental justice and the rights of ecological refugees. London: Earthscan. _______________________ 8. Falstom (2001), op cit Note 20, p22, note _______________________

Even though the terminology is important in addressing the degradation of an ecosystem, as a result of human actions, the Refugee status does not address the root cause of the degradation that led to the migration of its human and non-human inhabitants.

The exception within the terminology of “Environmental Refugees” was used by 77

the United Nations as a tool to provide evidence and justification for international involvement within Iraq’s economically valuable resources. The UN conventions fail to mention that beneath the Marshes lay several “supergiant” oil fields. Since the Marsh Arab’s recognition as Environmental Refugees, the community has been displaced within refugee camps, and their current status is little known. The Marsh Arabs lack both the right to their indegenous land and water, and the legal status to object to the oil extraction within the territories they inhabited for thousands of years.

International Interest In the early 2000s, restoration efforts for the wetlands were being advocated by many Iraqis in exile. Initiatives like Green Iraq campaigned for the reflooding of the marshlands through the destruction of dams built by Hussein, in the hope to revitalize the lost ecosystems and bring about the re-entry of the Marsh Arabs into the wetlands.

In her dissertation, ‘Reconstructing life: Environment, Expertise, and Political Power in Iraq’s Marshes’, Bridget Lauren Guarasci, Ph.D. and Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Frank and Marshall College, identifies how the restoration initiative by Green Iraq began receiving international funding once the Marshes were titled as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and how international ecological surveying by UNEP of the site created data and maps that began to attract private sector stakeholders in the process of conservation.

Maps like the ones below show the increase in the number of oilfields in the country since the US led occupation. They highlight unique locations of ‘supergiant oil fields’ in and around the Marshlands, which drew a lot of funding from international oil companies like Shell and Exxon Mobil in the hopes to get access to the oil resources through conservational attempts.

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False Colour Landsat Imagery of the Marshlands in 1985 _______________________

False Colour Landsat Imagery showing the drainage of the Marshlands in 2000 _______________________

False Colour Landsat Imagery showing the “restoration” of the Marshlands by 2020 _______________________

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Al Huwaizah Marsh : A closer look at restoration efforts As mentioned earlier, several international organizations participated in the efforts to restore the marshes. The location of oil fields within the marshes led to peculiar partnerships between conservation organizations and international oil companies that wanted access to the resources in the region.

The Majnoon Oil Fields located within the Hawaizah Marshes is the world’s third largest. In 2009, UK’s Royal Dutch Shell and Malaysia’s Petronas Oil companies were awarded a license for a joint venture to operate the Majnoon Oil fields. By 2011, Shell had partnered with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Wetlands International to ensure that oil and gas development on the Majnoon oil field would not cause further damage to the marshlands. Satellite imagery today shows that the marshes have been re-flooded to almost 70% of their original size. The False Image composite time lapse below shows the process of restoration over the decades of the 2000s till today. It may seem that restoration efforts were successful to bring back enough water into the marshlands to re-introduce ecological biodiversity and socio-economic activities of Marsh Arabs.

However, that is not the case. A report published by the United Nations Integrated Water Task Force for Iraq in 2011 focused primarily on the restoration of the Marshes and stated that the conservation efforts needed ‘to go hand in hand with social and economic development, ensuring sustainable livelihoods for the people of the Marshlands’.

However, most of the economic development within the marshes was brought on from oil exploration efforts within the existing oilfields. Since production of oil is waterintensive, and access to water within the marshes was already limited, oil companies

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began to use water injection infrastructure to increase pressure by using sea water.

Even though partnerships like that between Shell and IUCN promoted implementation of socially responsible exploration measures, impacts groundwater and soil quality of the new water injection technologies had yet to be fully assessed at the time of their implementation.

A recent study of the water quality in the Marshes in 2017, shows the high levels of salinity present within the marsh environment. Several factors contribute to these results, such as the limited flow of water from upstream projects, but also the introduction of groundwater into the marshes by oil companies in order to re-flood the marshes through their conservational efforts. Brackish groundwater increased the salinity of the marshlands consequently affecting the level of vegetation that is currently growing within the marshes.

Comparative Landcover Classification of Al Huwaizah Marshes from 1985 and 2020 above shows the reduction of marsh vegetation despite full re-flooding of the Marshes . It becomes evident through this comparative study why we have yet to see proportional re-entry of the Ma’dan Tribes within the region despite almost 7080% of the marshes being re-flooded. The conditions of the marshes today are unable to provide the quality of water and soil for the cultivation of vegetation and the rearing of cattle, both which are integral to the livelihoods of the Ma’dan tribes.

Conclusion The geographical significance of the Marshlands of southern Iraq, has made the Marshes susceptible to the process of modernization, irrigation, warfare, drought and oil extraction. As a result the Marsh Arabs have become a marginalized community in Iraq leading to their forced displacement both internally within the 79

country, and to refugee camps in Iran.

Their early identification as Environmental Refugees did not render itself to be beneficial to the Marsh Arabs due to the unclarity of the terminology. The term ‘Environmental Refugee’ was instead used as a tool to pave a path for international intervention disguised as restoration attempts to gain access to valuable resources within the marshlands.

The categorization of Marsh Arabs as “Environmental Refugees” meant that the solutions leading up to the restoration of the Marshes were environmental in scope, aiming to bring back water to the territory through the process of oil exploration.

Consequential effects of the process led

to unfavorable environmental conditions that have been unable to sustain fishing, cultivating and rearing practices of the Marsh Arabs proving the disproportionate re-entry of the Marsh tribes to the Marshes despite its reflooding. Although important to address effects of climate change and environmental degradation on communities, the terminology of ‘Environmental Refugee’ does not address the question of stewardship and indegenous right to land and water, leaving the interest and rights of the Ma’dan over the territory they inhabit to be second tier to the interests of larger global parties.

Comparative Landcover Classification showing the reduction of marsh vegetation despite full reflooding of the Marshes. _______________________

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Archipelago of US Borders Entangled Studios Crit: Marco Ferrari

The project interrogates the infrastructure of the United States Defense Industrial Base in order to expose the contemporary scale of its military operations and the environments it occupies and co-produce.

The Defense Industrial Base is a global infrastructure that reinforces and supports the planetary expansion of US borders through military bases and installations.

Understanding the configuration of this infrastructure is a key step towards the understanding of US imperialism in the 21st century.

In his essay Keyword: Infrastructure, anthropologist Ashley Carse outlines the way in which the vagueness of the word “infrastructure” was adopted by NATO in 1949, as a generic term to denote all fixed installations that enable operations of military forces. The term “infrastructure” in the post-war era became thus intertwined with military coordination, logistics and international economic development. However, the notion of infrastructure as a tool for world-making implies the violent and colonial nature of its conception, design and coordination.

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cables. Its footprint coincides with a global archipelago of ports, airfields, radar, missile testing facilities, warehouses, barracks, suburban towns, golf courses, and toxic industrial sites. Its impact extends beyond its sovereign boundaries. Forty-three components of various military installations are identified in the atlas, while a deeper investigation into three case studies shows different forms of territoriality through which US bases operate across multiple scales and entanglements.

The three case studies that will be presented are: 01 HYPERLOCAL_Confiscated land in Afghanistan, 02 HYPERLOCAL_Toxic Outflow of Military Bases in Okinawa, Japan 03 HYPERGLOBAL_The Ecology of surveillance and data collection *The maps and drawings were produced as part of the Atlas of New American Index.

The magnitude of the infrastructure of the US Defense Industrial Base extends beyond warfare, operating across spatial networks, material devices, and intangible technologies; across the air, water, and land, from orbiting satellites to submarine optic fibre This Diagram Shows the distribution of United States military bases. The US borders cannot be defined only by their land and water limits, but coincide instead with the US military infrastructural presence at a planetary scale—a neo-colonial archipelago of nearly 800 bases in 70 different territories and countries.

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GENERAL & SYSTEMIC INTRODUCTION

US Military Bases Distribution and Concentrations 1900-2015

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US Military Bases Distribution and Concentrations 2019

SYSTEMIC INTRODUCTION Early U.S. military bases were entwined with the frontier project of removing Indiginous communities from their land and protecting colonists who settled there. This 1917 map shows the early expansion of military bases across the continent leading to the development of the Union pacific railroad.

Following the Spanish-American War, the US established military bases outside its continental borders. The expansion was based on a military concept known as

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“the loss of strength gradient” or the belief that the nation’s military power is dependent on its geographic distance from its proclaimed enemy. Around 200,000 US personnels were distributed worldwide, but the number excludes personnels deployed for contingency operations. US Military Bases consists of a global archipelago of ports, airfields, radars, missile testing facilities, barracks, suburban towns, golf courses, and toxic industrial sites, and its influence extends beyond its sovereign boundaries.

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Concentration of Bases at the Strait of Hurmouz

Concentrations of US military bases form networks and ecologies of control within certain geographies. For instance, within the strait of Hormuz the concentration of bases control the flow of petro-chemicals, in the interest of American economy.

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HYPERLOCAL_ CONFISCATED LAND

Combat Outpost Bases in Afghanestan

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PANJWAI FORWARD OPERATING BASE, AFGHANESTAN

Forward Operating Base Entry Control Point Afghani National Army Station Contractors’ Housing

Fuel Point

Communication Post Mortar Pit

Shooting Range

Motor Pool

Military Working Dogs

Helicopter Landing Zone School House GYM

HYPERLOCAL: THE CASE OF CONFISCATED LAND IN AFGHANISTAN Decolonization movements in the 1950s and 60s led countries to negotiate the presence of US military Bases through the Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA; a framework for occupation of land set up

by NATO in the 1950s. This framework gives US troops immunity from prosecution for crimes committed and environmental damage created within the countries they occupy.

US occupation of Afghanistan through SOFA in 2002 enabled the accelerated expansion of military bases and outpost bases. A military outpost refers to combat outposts or forward operating bases that are stationed at a distance from the main larger occupying force.

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Afghanistan, US Bases occupied a network of main bases such as Bagram Airbase, and a series of outposts within farmlands, enabling the military to secure key lines of communication and infrastructure. Bagram airfield was an existing military infrastructure since the soviet occupation, the infrastructure was under constant transfer from one colonial power to another. However, to build new military outposts US Armed vehicles drove into fields, either occupying the land or negotiating temporary leases with Afghani farmers. These agreements were often vulnerable to manipulation by Afghanistan’s government. Villagers feared the Americans would mistake them for the Taliban, while also being under threat from profiting from the occupier. Many villagers were internally displaced, migrating to cities.

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MILITARY BASES WERE A TOOL TO SEIZE CONTROL OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION Since Afghanistan is the source of more than 90% of the world’s opium supply. This implies that military bases and its land agreement, not only inevitably creates displacement but also becomes a tool for crippling economies and controlling global supply chains.

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US Military Base Boundaries, Okinawa, Japan

60% of the island’s fresh water comes from the perimeter of the US military bases, where eleven dams retain this water within a military area, with all the risks of contamination and toxicity that this entails.

Opponents of the relocation plan to move U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from a crowded neighborhood to a less populated coastal site would not only be an environmental debacle but also ignore local wishes to remove the base.

Okinawa City

During the 1998-2015 period, leaks totaled almost 40,000 liters of jet fuel, 13,000 liters of diesel and 480,000 liters of sewage.

Unites States Marine Corps Air Station Futenma

United States Training Waters & Airspace

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HYPERLOCAL_ TOXIC OUTFLOW

United States Kadena Amminition Storage Area

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Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan

US Military Bases in Okinawa, Japan

Okuma Military Beach and Golf

Le Jima Auxiliary Airfield

Northern Training Area

Camp Schwab Camp Hansen Kadena Amminition Storage Area

Camp Courtney

THE TOXIC OUTFLOW OF MILITARY BASES IN OKINAWA, JAPAN The contemporary toxic leakage of United States bases across the world, is systemically enabled by its legal framework. In the case of Okinawa Island, where 70% of the US military presence in Japan is concentrated. Issues of chemical toxicity in soil, and water are rooted in the six-decade status of Forces Agreement signed at the same time as the US-Japan security Treaty in 1951.

Toxic materials such as cadmium, mercury, PCBs, lead, arsenic and jet fuels flow into water systems and soil. US military bases retain water through dams, in which 60% of the island’s fresh water comes from the perimeters of US bases. Since the US military prohibits access for soil and water testing within the bases, the public only 96

learns about base pollution when damage to the local community is caused by an incident that transcends the boundaries of the base, leading to anti-base environmental movements.

Due to the status agreement that facilitates military bases, the US government does not hold accountability of environmental contamination even after the bases become demilitarized.

Kadena Air Base

Camp Foster Marine Corps Air Station Futenma

Naval Radio Transmitter Facility

Naval Base White Beach

Camp Kinser

Naha Military Port

US Marine Corps US Air Force Training Waters & Airspace Facilities US Navy US Army

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Data collected such as satellite images, in themselves do not hold justification of violence. The use of the data as manufactured evidence as in the case of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, was facilitated through the architecture of United Nation’s white, bureaucratic chamber halls.

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HYPERGLOBAL_ ECOLOGY OF DEVICES

“My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.” February 5, 2003 U.N. Security Council

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HYPERGLOBAL_ECOLOGY OF SURVEILLANCE AND DATA COLLECTION The Department of Defense divides the world into 9 combatant commands establishing an ecology of surveillance and data collection. Referring back to the concept of “the loss of strength gradient” The ecology of media devices generates borders of visibility and invisibility controlling the flow of data, language, chemicals, resources and images.

The United States owns the largest number of Military Satellites, twice as many as China and Russia. While Satellites provide visibility to any part of the world, they are also important nodes for unmanned aerial systems or drones.

Shooting targets without setting foot into the warzone, results in a new architecture of warfare, through its creation of invisible borders, since targets can be seen at any point and time. For instance, during drone attacks

in Afghanistan and Iraq; Drone pilots’ control rooms in Nevada transmit signals through fiber optic transatlantic cables to the US base in Ramstein Germany, where a satellite farm sends signals up to a satellite based over the area that can communicate with American drones in Afghanistan. Due to the curvature of the earth a single satellite would significantly delay the time it takes signals to travel. Therefore, the base in Ramstein became an important node for the instant transfer of signals and commands.

3 Satellites Launched 3 Satellites Launched 30 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 2 Satellites Launched 4 Satellites Launched 66 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 2 Satellites Launched 2 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 6 Satellites Launched

Drones loiter around the target in Afghanistan for days tracking mobile phones and radio signals. A drone strike results in over 10 times more deaths than the intended target. The sheer number of drone bases within Africa and the middle east extends the United States’ invisible border, emphasizing the infrastructure’s reliance on a planetary scale network.

3 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 4 Satellites Launched 3 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 3 Satellites Launched 2 Satellites Launched 5 Satellites Launched 3 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 35 Satellites Launched 5 Satellites Launched 1 Satellites Launched 3 Satellites Launched

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MANIFESTO

MANIFESTO: GLOBAL RECONFIGURATION OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE I challenge the US military’s notion of “Infrastructure as world-making”. The word infrastructure has been used by NATO since 1949 to enact military projects through the coordination of physical installations or bases at a planetary scale, representing the interest of a single nation.

If the violence produced by the agents of this infrastructure is distilled or removed, then what is left is a highly sophisticated ecology of devices present in nearly 800 sites across seventy territories and countries worldwide.

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This manifesto calls for a Global reconfiguration of the infrastructure and the architecture of the defense industrial base to serve the interest of the “commons”, hence the bases would not belong to any single sovereignty, but to the parliament of climate change.

Transforming all the military bases worldwide to an archipelago of devices that can address challenges at planetary scale, such as climate change.

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PARLIAMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE The architecture transforms into a network that serves the needs of the climate institute, becoming sites of local participation and debate, serving the larger parliament. The isolated bases become integrated within their local context, making the actions within the reconfigured bases visible.

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New World Embassy, Rojava_Critique of Parliaments Transscalarities Crit: Caitlin Blanchfield

1. Renée In der Maur, Kristine Jærn Pilgaard, Jonas Staal, and Bo Krister Wallstrøm, eds. New Worlds.

Norway: KORO/URO, 2016. _______________________

How does a parliament designed as a cultural and artistic performance operate differently from one that assembles bureaucratic representation of a state?

The New World Embassy: Rojava, designed and conceived by visual artist Jonas Staal in collaboration with the democratic self administration of Rojava in northern Syria, redefines the parliament as public space. As part of the 2016 Oslo Triennale titled “After Belonging”, the embassy operated in the form of a summit for two consecutive days, where representatives of Rojava convey their alternative political model of democracy as a stateless state. An architectural installation placed at the Central Hall at Oslo City Hall in Norway, performed as a temporary embassy for the stateless democracy of Rojava.1 A matryoshka doll (russian doll) of institutions created a strange paradox in which the parliament, as a trope of nationhood, was being used as a tool to question the structure of nation states. However, how does a parliament designed as a cultural and artistic performance operate differently from one that assembles bureaucratic representation of a state?

Staal conceptualizes the structure of nationstates, as one that enacts a specific “selfconsciousness as citizens” through the 116

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2. Staal, Jonas. “IDEOLOGY = FORM.” e-flux, 2016. _______________________

performative acts that are demanded by the state, such as voting and paying taxes.2 The performance of citizens becomes the normative reality that feeds into the monopolies of power.

The state asserts the right to use military force, kill, incarcerate, and orchestrate social structures through a set of centralized laws, legislations and regulations. On the other hand, Rojava follows the principles of “democratic confederalism”, decentralizing the distribution of power into the scale of neighbourhoods. Leopold Lambert states that this canton mode of governing can radically shift political practice through engaging the scale of the body with that of the territory. Lambert implies that if bodies exist within the governance of smaller territories than their ability to move around if they disagree with the system is much more feasible.3 The idea of the neighbourhoodbased form of governance is undoubtedly provocative, however freedom of mobility may be entangled with other forms of restrictions, such as family ties, social norms, income and job security. Nevertheless, stateless democracies reject the traditional

3. Lambert, Léopold. “Scales and Intensity of Governance: Rethinking Parliaments Through the Bodies,” May 22, 2015. _______________________

performance of citizenship that is enforced by nation-states. Through cultural practices Staal directs attention to an alternative political model of democracy, through the “assemblage” of people, debates, activism, performance, art and architecture.

Staal defines the concept of art as the knowledge and practice of visual literacy, or what he calls “morphology of art”.

Morphology relates to form or structure of things, hence for Staal if we engage in a morphological analysis of parliaments, we could define a parliament as an arena or a theatre in which power is choreographed and performed through a specific number of actors, symbols, and spatial configurations. What makes up a parliament is the assemblage of people, debates and conversations that take place which have the potential to impact the world.1 However, whether the parliament takes the form of a square or a circle from a morphological perspective creates a variation within the composition of the assembly. Rather than the assembly taking place within an existing building, or simply within the central space of Oslo City Hall, the architecture of the New World Embassy creates an alternative

space in which the material reality follows the ideology of the stateless state. Since Embassies have a certain level of autonomy from their host state, a material separation between the Oslo hall and the Rojava’s assembly becomes necessary. Through his art practice, Staal refers to the Theory of Performative Assemblies by Judith Butler, which he describes as the practice of linking art, theater, performance, activism and politics, which all comprise of what he calls “assemblism”.4 Butler argues that politics are not confined to take place only within public spaces but also within the homes, streets, neighbourhoods, or virtual spaces not defined by the private realm of a house or public realm of a square. According to Butler, architecture and material objects are part of any form of bodily public action, such as the movement of people which is inscribed by the morphology of space.5 Perhaps the assemblage of the parliament is not only a product of the installation within Oslo city hall, and the narratives that were conveyed, but it is the forms of actions taken to produce the space, the publications and the various forms of media that accompanied the ideologies advocated by the representatives of Rojava.

4. Staal, Jonas.

“Assemblism.” e-flux, 2017. _______________________ 5. Butler, Judith. 2015.

Notes toward a performative theory of assembly. _______________________

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Untangling Hairiness Tools for Show Crit: Bika Rebek

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Hair is used as the building material to construct a virtual reality environment in which the anatomy of hair and its politics are explored.

Hair is fundamentally linked to gender, race, class, status, age, generation, religion, group membership, familial ties, and politics. The project “Untangling Hairiness” takes a mundane element “hair” and transforms it into the main focus of the virtual world inorder to begin to untangle an aspect of body politics.

The online virtual reality platform Mozilla hubs is used as an educational tool, in which visitors are invited to transform into hair accessories, in order to enter three different virtual classrooms each untangling a distinct aspect of hair that may be overlooked in the physical world.

Under a microscope, a forensic analysis of hair follicles cannot be used to determine the sex of an individual, however as a social construct hair is gendered, and often culturally demarcates the masculine and the feminine. Hair drives this binary through the degree of hairiness or hairlessness within various parts of our bodies. The hairlessness norm endorses the assumption that a woman's body is unacceptable if unaltered; its very normativity points to a socio-cultural presumption that hairlessness is the appropriate condition for the feminine body. The three virtual classrooms will explore these issues through a set of curated objects such as videos, images, gifs, and digital models.

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END STATEMENT

I would like to end by acknowledging and condeming the continuous annexation of Palestinian land by isreali settler colonizers. I am sympathetic to the Palestinain cause because I know what displacement feels like. The worldwide movement against the ongoing annexation of Palestinian land, and the formation of Architects and planners Against Apartheid, and other antiracism, social justice and political liberation movements show the scale of the Architectural systems, devices and technologies that enable violence and iniquity. With that I continue to strive to use the tools, skills and knowledge I have acquired as an architect and researcher to advocate for social and environmental justice.

FARAH ALKHOURY_ GSAPP 2021

Image of a Model made during Summer Workshop Model Fiction with Josh Jordan.

Political Ecology

Politics of Space, Environments and Bodies

Farah Alkhoury