close up of Model, DAAR
DAAR Miska Vista
An international panel of speakers come together to discuss what decolonisation is today, what role architecture can play in transforming decolonisation processes and how political subjectivity should be re-thought from the vantage point of the displaced and extraterritorial refugee.
Curator and art critic, Okwui Enwezor, and historian and political scientist Ilan Pappe join DAAR members in conversation to mark the publication of their book Architecture after Revolution (Sternberg Press, Berlin 2013). DAAR (Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti and Eyal Weizman) is an art and architecture collective and a residency programme based in Beit Sahour, Palestine. DAAR’s work explores the radical condition of architecture at the moment of decolonisation - the very moment that power has been unplugged, when old uses are gone, and new uses not yet defined.
Architecture after Revolution presents an urgent architectural and political thought experiment: to rethink today’s struggles for justice and equality not only from the historical perspective of revolution, but from that of a continued struggle for decolonisation.
Speakers' Biographies:
DAAR (Decolonising Architecture Art Residency)
Their work combines discourse, spatial intervention, education, collective learning, public meetings and legal challenges. It proposes the subversion, reuse, profanation and recycling of the existing infrastructure of a colonial occupation. DAAR projects have been shown showed in various biennales and museums, internationally. In 2010 DAAR was awarded the Price Claus Prize for Architecture, received an Art initiative Grant, and was shortlisted for the Chrnikov Prize. DAAR members are Sandi Hilal, Alessando Petti, and Eyal Weizman.
Professor Pappé
Professor Pappé obtained his BA degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979 and the D. Phil from the University of Oxford in 1984. He founded and directed the Academic Institute for Peace in Givat Haviva, Israel between 1992 to 2000 and was the Chair of the Emil Tuma Institute for Palestine Studies in Haifa between 2000 and 2006. Professor Pappé was a senior lecturer in the department of Middle Eastern History and the Department of Political Science in Haifa University, Israel between 1984 and 2006.
He was appointed as chair in the department of History in the Cornwall Campus, 2007-2009 and became a fellow of the IAIS in 2010. His research focuses on the modern Middle East and in particular the history of Israel and Palestine. He has also written on multiculturalism, Critical Discourse Analysis and on Power and Knowledge in general.
Okwui Enwezor
Okwui Enwezor (born in Nigeria, 1963) is a curator, art critic, editor and writer, since 2011 he has been the Director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich. He was Artistic Director of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in South Africa (1996-1998), documenta 11 in Germany (1998-2002), Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo de Sevilla in Spain (2005-2007), 7th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea (2008) and the Triennal d’Art Contemporain of Paris at the Palais de Tokyo (2012).
Enwezor’s wide-ranging practice spans the world of international exhibitions, museums, academia, and publishing. He is interested in African, European, Asiatic, North and South American art of the 20th and 21st Century, in modern and contemporary art of the African countries and the contemporary art of the African diaspora. Enwezor’s research includes video and photography, archives theory, photographic documentation, photojournalism and museums history. He also studies theories on diasporas and migrations, of post-colonial modernism and the architecture and urbanism of postcolonial African cities.