ZONES OF CONFLICT: UNEVEN GEOGRAPHIES
Research Workshop #3
University College London: Cruciform Lecture Theatre 1, Gower Street,
WC1E 6BT
24 January 2009, 3:30pm-8:00pm
www.ucl.ac.uk/zones_of_conflict

Organized by T.J. Demos (UCL, History of Art) in partnership with Eyal
Weizman (Research Architecture, Goldsmiths)

EVEN AS GLOBALISATION represents a space of increased mobility, it has
engendered transnational forms of economic, social and political
inequality. For Rosalyn Deutsche such "uneven geographies" have meant
disenfranchisement and dispossession; for Mike Davis they predict a
"planet of slums." Cities and nations have created formidable borders
and spaces of enclosure, maintained through heightened networks of
security, ever threatened by terrorism. This workshop will consider
how artists and architects have translated these divisions into new
representational strategies of analysis, as well as invented new
methods to negotiate these trends and creatively challenge their
negative effects.

Admission: this event is free and open to all.

PARTICIPANTS:
YATES MCKEE (New York)
Yates McKee is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art History,
Columbia University. An alumus of the Whitney Museum Independent
Program and frequent participant at 16 Beaver Group, his writing has
appeared in venues including Grey Room, The Journal of Aesthetics and
Protest, Parkett, and October. He is an associate editor of
Nongovernmental Politics (Zone, 2007), and coeditor, with Meg McLagan,
of The Visual Cultures of Nongovernmenal Politics (Zones,
forthcoming). He is at work on a genealogy of sustainability in
ecological art, design, and activism since the 1970s, as well as a
study of the post-secular in contemporary art, with special reference
to the 'pofane illuminations' of Paul Chan.

JOHN PALMESINO (Basel)
John Palmesino is an architect and urbanist. He is co-founder of
PALMESINO RÖNNSKOG Territorial Agency, a practice involved in the
management of international innovative transformations of the
contemporary inhabited landscape and its architecture.
Territorial Agency has developed the Markermeer Plan, an integrated
vision for the future of the Markermeer, in the Netherlands. After the
'Unfinishable Markermeer' plan developed in 2005, the Markermeer Plan
addresses a number of environmental, architectural, planning, and
policy issues in a collaborative environment with a team of
interdisciplinary experts.
Palmesino leads the research programme of ETH Studio Basel-
Contemporary City Institute and is a founding member of Multiplicity,
a research network dealing with contemporary architecture, urbanism,
arts and general culture.
He is currently researching the implications of neutrality in the
relation to polities and territorial and architectural transformations.

ALESSANDRO PETTI (Bethlehem)
Alessandro Petti is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research
Architecture, Goldsmiths College, UCL, and is based in London and
Bethlehem. He has co-curated different research projects on the
contemporary urban condition, including Borderdevices, Uncertain
States of Europe, and Stateless Nation, and his work has been
presented in various biennales and museum exhibitions. He has written
on the emerging spatial order dictated by the paradigm of security and
control (Archipelagos and Enclaves, Bruno Mondadori 2007), and is
currently working on a research project entitle Atlas of
Decolonization, an architectural documentation on the re-use, re-
inhabitation and subversion of colonial structures, including those in
Israel’s Occupied Territories.

ADANIA SHIBLI (Ramallah and London)
Born in Palestine in 1974, Adania Shibli has been publishing regularly
in literary magazines in the Arab world and in Europe. Her first
novel, Masas, was published in Arabic in 2002 (Adab Publishing House,
Beirut, Aces-Sud Publishing House, France). Her second novel, We are
all Equally Far From Love, was also published by Al Adab. Shibli has
twice been given the Young Writers' Award, Palestine, by the A.M.
Qattan Foundation. Her writing has been translated into many
languages, with English translations of her stories appearing in the
anthology Qissat, and in the magazines Words Without Borders,
Documenta (where "Out of Time" originally appeared), and Banipal. She
contributed an essay to a book on Palestinian artist Emily Jacir.
Shibli is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of East
London, where she is researching media coverage of the 'War on Terror'.

EYAL SIVAN (London)
Eyal Sivan is Reader in Media Production at the School of Social
Sciences, Media and Cultural Studies, University of East London. He is
a filmmaker, producer and essayist, born in Haifa, Israel. After
working as a professional photographer in Tel-Aviv, he left Israel and
settled in Paris in 1985. Sivan has directed more than ten feature-
length documentaries about political issues and produced many others,
which have been shown widely at international film festivals and art
exhibitions, and have won numerous international awards, including the
Cinéma du Réel Price at the Centre Pompidou in Paris for his first
film Aqabat Jaber, Passing Through about displaced Palestinian
populations; and the Adolf Grimm Gold price in Germany for his work
about the Eichmann case,The Specialist. Sivan is currently director of
the film production company Momento! and the film distribution company
Scalpel in France, and is member of the editorial board of La Fabrique
(Paris).

SRDJAN WEISS (Philladelphia)
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss is an architect and founder of Normal
Architecture Office as well as a founding member of the School of
Missing Studies. His books include Almost Architecture, which explores
architecture vis-à-vis emerging democratic processes, andLost Highway
Expedition Photobook, which examines rapid urbanization of Europe's
South East. Weiss is currently preparing a book on architecture of
Balkanization. He recently collaborated with Herzog & de Meuron
architects in Basel and was selected by them as one of 100 architects
to design a villa in the new city of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, master-
planned by Ai Weiwei. Weiss has presented his work in museums and
universities internationally. He lectures at Harvard University,
University of Pennsylvania and Temple University and is currently
based in Philadelphia (see: www.thenao.net).

EYAL WEIZMAN (London)
Eyal Weizman is Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at
Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has worked with a
variety of NGOs and human right groups in Israel-Palestine. After
graduating from the Architectural Association (AA) in London, he
worked with Zvi Hecker in Berlin. He is now in private practice in
partnership with Rafi Segal. Their projects have included rebuilding
the Ashdod Museum of Art and the exhibition and publication A Civilian
Occupation. Weizman conducted research and a mapmaking project for the
human rights organization B'Tselem on violations of human rights
through architecture and planning in the West Bank. His books
published include Yellow Rhythms (010Publishers Rotterdam, 2000),
three co-edited catalogues for the exhibition Territories (2003-2004),
A Civilian Occupation (Verso, 2003), and Hollow Land: Israel's
Architecture of Occupation (Verso, 2007). Weizman is an editor-at-
large of Cabinet magazine, and received the James Stirling Memorial
Lecture Prize for 2006-7.

Discussion will be moderated by organizer TJ DEMOS