> KIOSK for Useful Knowledge

Space Control 1:
Israel, the Balkans, South Africa

In these seven dialogues the topics will be about cartography segregation, the use of architecture and urban or landscape planning as a strategic political weapon, as a form of a manifesting long-term waging of war. With the background of the increasing domination of political identity conflicts and their fundamental and absolute spatial concepts, the deconstruction of the geopolitical imagination as a politically motivated construction seems to be all the more necessary: space as resource and political currency is a tool of prime importance when dealing with political identity instrumentation. On the other side, beyond the political imagination, the central political facts are being created within this space, which in turn are being neutralized and naturalized by the built-up, physically manifested space.

This form of spatial politics is discussed using several case studies and their special topography. The geographical focus is on Israel and the topography of the conflict in the Middle East, the "Ethnographic geography" (Oren Yiftachel) of Israel, and the "Matrix of control" (Jeff Halper) that is being fixated upon the architecture in the areas occupied by Israel since 1967. For a few years now a public debate and reflections on the strategic planning processes and the political role of architects has taken place within Israel, in the context of the extreme social conditions between the liberal economy, a permanent state of war and strategic spatial politics.

The continuing Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are the central parts of the discussion; a majority of the Israeli architects is involved in the construction of these settlements.

Who came first?
Meron Benvenisti and Milan Prodanovic

Model State
Zvi Efrat and Eran Schaerf

About crimes that were committed at the drawing-board
Eyal Weizman and David Campbell

Eyal Weizman / David Campbell
Berlin, Villa Elisabeth 4.06.03
Photo: Thomas Aurin

About Arabic and Israeli routes, political landscapes and traumas.
The relationship between places and identities that are in a permanent
state of war.
Amos Gitai
(Filmmaker/Tel Aviv) and Friedemann Büttner
(Middle East Expert/Berlin)
Monday, June 2

Urban planning: About urban myths in Israel and liberal ideology &
design in the Netherlands.
Sharon Rotbard
(Architect/Tel Aviv) and
Roemer vanToorn
(Program Director of the Berlage Institute/Rotterdam)
Tuesday, June 3

About crimes that were committed at the drawing-board.
Eyal Weizman
(Architect/London, Tel Aviv) and
David Campbell
(Professor for International Politics/Newcastle)
Wednesday, June 4:

Architecture of violence in post-Apartheid Johannesburg and in East
Jerusalem.
Jeff Halper
(Professor for Urban Anthropology, BenGurion University/Jerusalem) and Lindsay Bremner
(Architect and
Professor for Architecture at the University of Witwatersrand/
Johannesburg)
Thursday, June 5

The morning after: post-war cities.
Meron Benvenisti
(Geographer, Historian,
Author/Jerusalem) and
Milan Prodanovic
(Architect, Professor for
Urbanism at the University of Novi Sad/Belgrade)
Friday, June 6

Paragraphs programme space: About the legal background of a territorial
conflict.
Alexandre Kedar
(Law Professor at the University of
Haifa) and
Eyal Weizman
Saturday, June 7

The Model State
Preproduced:
Zvi Efrat (architect, Tel Aviv)
Eran Schaerf (artist, Berlin):

Monday, 2 June - 7 June, 2003
Every day from 9 - 11 pm.
Villa Elisabeth, Invalidenstrasse 4, Berlin
With simultaneous translation from English into German.
Theme 1: Spatial Control is produced in collaboration with the Territories exhibition at KW