Eyal Weizman book reading
Topic(s): Announcement | Comments Off on Eyal Weizman book readingDate/Time: 28/09/2007 12:00 am
This event organized by Alwan
Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation
Book Reading by Eyal Weizman
Friday, September 28, 2007 7 PM
Free and open to the public
Refreshments will be served
Groundbreaking exposé of Israels terrifying reconceptualization of
geopolitics in the Occupied Territories and beyond
Hollow Land is a groundbreaking exploration of the political space
created by Israels colonial occupation. In this journey from the
deep subterranean spaces of the West Bank and Gaza to their
militarized airspace, Weizman unravels Israels mechanisms of control
and its transformation of the Occupied Territories into a
theoretically constructed artifice, in which natural and built
features function as the weapons and ammunition with which the
conflict is waged.
Weizman traces the development of these ideas, from the influence of
archaeology on urban planning, Ariel Sharons reconceptualization of
military defense during the 1973 war, through the planning and
architecture of the settlements, to contemporary Israeli discourse
and practice of urban warfare. In exploring Israels methods to
transform the landscape itself into a tool of total domination and
control, Hollow Land lays bare the political system at the heart of
this complex and terrifying project of late-modern colonial
occupation.
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. He is an
editor-at-large of Cabinet magazine, and received the James Stirling
Memorial Lecture Prize for 20067.
From the Reviews of Hollow Land:
Eyal Weizman brilliantly deconstructs Israels yoking of
traditionally humanist disciplines and discourse to the service of
its campaign against the Palestians. This book is chilling but
essential reading. Ahdaf Soueif, author of The Map of Love
Hollow Land is a remarkably original work that confirms Eyal
Weizmans indispensable role as a critic of the sinister and
ubiquitous instrumentality of space in contemporary politics and
life. Michael Sorkin
A startling exercise in what it means to think through the
axiomatics of occupation, capture and subjection. Achille Mbembe,
author of On the Postcolony
Hollow Land is a remarkable achievement. Scholarly and poetic in its
epic reach, and narrated with the clarity of vision and sensibility of
an artist, Hollow Land is destined to become a classic. Karma
Nabulsi, Oxford University
has a keen eye for design, space and structure,
bringing a refreshingly new perspective to a topic hitherto ruled by
journalists, historians and social scientists. The result is one of
the most original books on Israel to appear in years % a vision of
the conflict that only an architect could have provided. Israeli
planners, Weizman claims, no longer think of the West Bank in
two-dimensional terms; instead, they have re-imagined the land as a
multilayered system akin to an architect’s project model % The book’s
prognosis is desperate and gloomy, but Weizman supports it with
prodigious documentation, rare interviews and a remarkable eye for
the politics of design. His chapter on Jerusalem’s architectural
bylaws, for example, is a masterpiece of political analysis…
Weizman’s architectural approach makes Hollow Land a tonic for even
the most jaded observers of the Israel-Palestine tragedy… The
quality of analysis is truly exciting. James Ron, The Nation
…Weizman, an Israeli-born architect who is the recipient this year
of the prestigious Stirling Prize for architecture, will open a series
of lectures this fall at the Canadian Center for Architecture in
Montreal. The talks are pegged to the release of Hollow Land:
Israels Architecture of Occupation, a chilling book in which he
explores the way the military selects targets in bombing and
fortifying cities and how those strategies can re-emerge in civilian
planning practices during peacetime. His analysis is ideally
timed… Nicolai Ouroussoff, New York Times (September 10, 2006)
In Hollow Land, Eyal Weizman has taken Said’s thesis to a
new level, generating extraordinary, and at times surreally
uncomfortable, conclusions… Weizman’s book is of salutary
interest. Jay Merrick, The Independent
A fascinating interpretation of the Israeli situation that argues
architecture and planning are being used as weapons in a war by
other means … It is a detailed foray into a highly complex
situation…highly stimulating… Pamela Buxton, Building Design
Weizmans forensic rigour in analysing the methodology [of
occupation] is without equal. Hollow Land is a bleak but essential
book. Robert Bevan, RIBA Journal
surpasses Saids essentially two dimensional vision with a
3D Sensurround revelation of a land in which architecture,
infrastructure and town planning have become strategic military
apparatus as important as tanks and special troops. This is an
engrossing, debatable and suitably disorientating treatise. Jay
Merrick, Architects Journal
The freshest and most eye-opening analysis of the Israeli occupation
of Palestine to have been produced for some time. The power of insight
which this work achieves, its focus on the material and literally
concrete reality of occupation, is frankly astonishing. New
Humanist
DIRECTIONS:
Alwan For the Arts
16 Beaver St, 4th Fl
New York, NY 10004
16 Beaver between Broad and New Streets, one block east of Whitehall
Street and Bowling Green.
TRAINS:
4, 5 to Bowling Green
J/M/Z to Broad St.
R,W to Whitehall St.
1 to Rector St. or South Ferry
2, 3 to Wall St.
A, C line to Broadway-Nassau
BUSES: M1, M6, M9, M16, M20.
BIKE: Hudson Rvr. Greenway, East Rvr. path, Liberty St., Broadway,
Water St.;