In and Out of Education, panel with: Okwui Enwezor, Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal, moderator Walid Sadek, April 26th - 8 pm
IN AND OUT OF EDUCATION… What Can We Teach Nowadays
The disputed crisis of art education has been widely scrutinized, especially in Europe, over the last decade. Little debated, arts education in Lebanon needs careful examination and questioning keeping in mind the specificities of the local context. Despite several art degree-granting universities in Lebanon, the gap between what is being taught in academia and what is actually being practiced within the contemporary art scene is widening. However, this terrain hosts a continuous development of informal and experimental learning platforms: the city of Beirut is a sphere in which students, artists and professionals meet and exchange ideas in a constant process of everyday education. Individuals debate and seek new knowledge in relation to one another and within their surroundings. The theme ‘In and Out of Education … What Can We Teach Nowadays’ looks at the possibilities of reinventing and enhancing the specific ‘in and out’ situation of informal arts education in relation to Beirut. This theme also underlies an attempt to set up a new educational programme through Ashkal Alwan for Contemporary Arts - The Home Works Academy - which will use the city of Beirut and its wider context as its campus, its research topic, its platform and again the site from which ideas will sprout.
‘In and Out of Education…’ poses the question of how to develop an experiential approach to arts education, which not only offers a challenging and creative space within society but also responds to the city’s urgent questions and uses its wider context as its main curriculum. As part of this theme Ashkal Alwan will invite artists, thinkers and collectives who have actively engaged with artistic research and education to critically reflect on the question ‘What Can We Teach Nowadays’ .
seminar Rawabi: the Palestinian suburban dream
15 February 2010
12.30 a.m.
Al-Quds University , Rural Development Building
Abu Dis, Palestine
Seminar with Prof. Uri Davis (Al-Quds University)
“Manipulating Rawabi: Possible Implications of the JNF Donation of 3,000 to the ‘Greening of Palestine’”
lecture SASKIA SASSEN “Cities and the New Wars”
03 February 2010
09.30 a.m.
Conference Room, Presidential Suite
Al-Quds University , Sciences Building Complex
Abu Dis, Palestine
Cities and New Wars
When the city itself becomes a technology of war Asymmetric war makes visible not only the limits of power but also the limits of war. As it wires war into urban space, it makes the city itself a technology of war that obstructs the power of conventional armies in multiple micro-ways. The urbanizing of war and its consequences, whether the momentary explosion in Mumbai or the drawn-out conflict in Gaza, is part of a larger disassembling of traditional all-encompassing formats, notably the nation-state and the inter-state system. The consequences of this disassembling are partial but evident in large number of domains but it could also explain why cities are losing older capacities to transform potential conflicts into the civic.
Saskia Sassen is the Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, The Committee on Global Thought, at Columbia University (www.saskiasassen.com). Her new book is Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press 2008) and A Sociology of Globalization (Norton 2007). She wrote a lead essay in the 2006 Venice Biennale of Architecture Catalogue and has now completed for UNESCO a five-year project on sustainable human settlement based on a network of researchers and activists in over 30 countries; it is published as one of the volumes of the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS, Oxford, UK: EOLSS Publishers, www.eolss.net). Her books are translated into twentyone languages. Her comments have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, OpenDemocracy.net, Le Monde Diplomatique,the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek International, the Financial Times, among others.
symposium Architecture, Pedagogy & the Politics of Spatial Knowledge
Inaugural CAMP Conference
Abu Dis, Dheisheh Camp, Bethlehem, Ramallah, 12-13 January, 2010
Architecture, as agent of radical territorial transformation, and media, as producer of “imagined geographies,” have been key forces in shaping the political and cultural landscape of Palestine. The shifting intersection between architecture and media in zones of conflict needs continually to be re-conceptualized: architecture and media are not merely instruments of power, control and domination; they present themselves as diversifying modes of intervention and as tactical tools in struggles for equity and justice. We conceive of architecture and media as at once fields for analysis and vehicles for political action and social change. This inaugural conference aims to initiate a conversation about how to best organize CAMP as a hybrid institution committed equally to teaching and research. As a corollary focus, we want to think collectively about how to begin developing a rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum in urban and media studies, one that will engage students in thinking about architecture, media, and politics in diverse and productive ways.
The newly-founded partnership between Al-Quds University and Bard College to establish the first liberal arts college in the West Bank offers a unique opportunity to build new conceptions of architecture and media into innovative undergraduate programs in media, urban studies, and human rights. Building on the combined scholarly and institutional resources of CAMP, the IMM (Al-Quds), the HRC (Al-Quds) and the HRP (Bard), the two core objectives for the January conference are thus: 1) to bring together a network of architects, scholars, lawyers, urban planners, artists and human rights practitioners to begin to shape collectively the intellectual and political mission of the incipient Center for Architecture Media and Politics (CAMP) 2) we aim to draw on the ideas and expertise of conference participants to generate insight into how we might give shape to undergraduate programs that will transform how architecture, media, and human rights are taught in the occupied West Bank.
January 12: Al Quds University, Abu Dis Campus
(Medical Sciences Building, Presidential Suite, Seminar Room)
9.00-9:30 Welcome: Coffee and Tea
9:30: 10:00 Introduction: Alessandro Petti & Robert Weston (co-directors of CAMP)
SESSION 1: Spatial Practices within a Colonial Regime
10:00-11:00 Key Note Lecture: Said Zeedani (Al Quds), “The Psychology of the Checkpoint”
11:00-11:15 Discussion
11:15- 11:30 Coffee Break
11:30 -12:15 Palestine, Power Unplugged: Decolonizing Architecture Collective (Beit Sahour)
12:15- 12:45 Respondent: Omar Yousef (Al Quds), Yazeed Anani (Birzeit University)
12:45-13:45 Lunch
CAMP Participants are cordially invited to proceed to an affiliated conference organized by the Human Rights Clinic (Al-Quds University). Main Theater.
14:00-16:00 Accountability Now! A Symposium on Human Rights and International Justice
Professor Richard Falk – UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights on Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967 (via videoconference)
Raji Sourani , Director, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Gaza Strip (via videoconference)
Adv. Ingrid Jaradat – Director, Badil
Nada Kiswanson, UN Advocacy Officer, Al-Haq
January 13: Dheisheh Refugee Camp (Al Feneiq Center)
9:00-9:30 Coffee Welcome
9:30-9:45 Opening Introductions: Robert Weston (Al-Quds Bard), Sandi Hilal (UNRWA)
9:45-10:15 Welcome by Mohammed al-Laham, Al Feneiq, Palestinian Legislative Council
SESSION 2: Right and Rites of Return
10:15-11:00 Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, director BADIL, “Durable Solutions for Palestinian Refugees”
11:00-11:45 Sandi Hilal & Alessandro Petti: “Practices of Return”
11:45- 12:15 Respondent: Thomas Keenan (Human Rights Project, Bard College),
Nasser Aburahme (UNRWA), Saleh Hijazi (Al Quds)
12:15-12:45 Discussion
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:15-15:30 Guided Walk through Dheisheh
SESSION 3: On the Pedagogical Mission of CAMP
15:30-17:00 Shaping the Pedagogical Mission of CAMP: Roundtable Discussion Chaired by Robert Weston and Alessandro Petti
Participants: Said Zeedani (Al-Quds), Lucy Nusseibeh (Al Quds), Mohammed Al-Laham (Al Feneiq), Research Architecture (Goldsmiths, London), Ozge Ersoy (Curatorial Studies), Gilles Peress (Magnum) Max Kenner (Bard Prison Initiative), Nasser Aburahme (urban planner) Saleh Hijazi (Human Rights Clinic), Yazeed Anani (Birzeit), Omar Yousef (Architect), Cedric Parizot (Anthropologist), Nicola Perugini, (Anthropologist), Philipp Decorte (UNHABITAT), Farhat Mohaoi (Riwaq), Munir Fasheh, Muhammad Jaradat (coordinator BADIL Campaign Unit), Toufic Haddad (Badil), Thomas Keenan (Bard), Islah Jad (Birzeit), Diego Segatto (designer); invited guests.
17:15- 18:00 Presentation: Munir Fasheh, “The story of ongoing learning journey in Shufat camp ”
(photo by A.M.)
