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Echoing Borders initiative at GSAPP

The workshop "Echoing Borders: the Shelter, the Camp, the City, and the State" ends in Istanbul after two intensive sessions in Jordan and Turkey since August 7th. Click here to register for the Echoing Borders Fall '14 seminar co-taught by Nina Kolowratnik and Nora Akawi with Madeeha Merchant! Scroll down for more information on the EB research initiative at GSAPP.

Iraqi Refugees: Navigating Territories of Conflict (section) Group work by Yolla Ali (AUS, Sharjah), Cecil Barnes (GSAPP, New York), Rasha Al-Sharqawi (GJU, Amman).

Syrian Refugees: Conflicted Trajectories: Transitioning Towards Turkey Group work by Xiaoxi Chen (GSAPP, New York), Albert Franco (GSAPP, New York), Ruby Muhandes (AUS, Sharjah).

Afghani Refugees: Risk Landscapes Group work by Deema Abu-Dalo (AUS, Sharjah), Yolla Ali (AUS, Sharjah), Sune Fredskild (Roskilde, Copenhagen), Rebecca Riss (GSAPP, New York).

Echoing Borders: the Shelter, the Camp, the City, the State:

For the first time since WWII, the number of refugees in the world surpasses 50 million. Since the outbreak of civil war in Syria in March 2011, an estimated 9 million Syrians have fled their homes taking refuge in neighboring countries or within Syria itself, leaving more than 40% of the Syrian population uprooted. So far, over 600,000 Syrian refugees fled to Jordan and 800,000 to Turkey. Addressing issues of mobility, fluidity, and transformation in contemporary politics, especially in relation to the place of the refugee in migration politics in the Middle East, requires a challenging of visualization tools: moving beyond the static representation of borders, territories and topographies of legal and authoritarian mechanisms into depicting their mobile reality.

The Echoing Borders summer workshop aimed at providing the necessary platform for understanding and analyzing spatial patterns within refugee flight trajectories and temporary settlement in response to war and conflict in relationship to changing migration policies in Jordan and Turkey. Through a series of conceptual spatial mappings and visualization exercises, student participants investigated the many valences of contemporary spatial politics in the region, by looking at the particular intricacies of refugee status and migration policy, tracing the trajectory of the refugee from the border to the camp or to the city, and identifying/visualizing the condition of waiting and suspension, sequences of conflict and insecurity, and the fluctuating notions of borders and citizenship.

Students experimented with and developed innovative forms of visual representation that were based on big data regarding specific waves of migration and related laws and policies in Jordan and Turkey on the one hand, and subjective narratives on the experience of forced migration on the other hand. Once the supposedly opposed scales of static factual data and of narrative experience of movement are juxtaposed, new readings of territories emerge. For example, the mappings included the tracing decision trees of Iraqi refugees in Jordan, the topographical landscape of visibility and risk (both legal and physical) of Afghani migrants’ trajectory through Turkey into Europe, or the different trajectories taken by Syrian refugees for the passage from Syria into refugee camps or cities in Turkey based on the strength of their social networks and financial means.

The summer workshop, held in Amman and Istanbul from August 7th to 27th, is part of the larger research initiative “Echoing Borders: The Shelter, The Camp, The City and the State” developed by Nora Akawi and Nina Kolowratnik through the Studio-X Global Network. To continuing building on the findings of the workshop, Nina Kolowratnik and Nora Akawi are teaching an Echoing Borders fall seminar at GSAPP (in collaboration with Madeeha Merchant of GSAPP’s Spatial Information Design Lab), focusing on the shifting notions of borders and citizenship and the spatial manifestations of migration and mobility within contemporary politics in Jordan and Turkey. In addition to critical research and writing, this seminar will use visualization methods to ask how architectural and spatial formulations can affect, register, and make legible the state, the subject, and conflicts between the two.

To conduct field research the seminar will travel to the Jordanian and Turkish border regions to Syria for 7 days in October 2014.

The visualizations developed through both the Echoing Borders summer workshop and Fall course will be included as a local contribution to the Studio-X Istanbul installment of Volume magazine’s traveling exhibition “The Good Cause: Architecture of Peace.” The exhibition will later travel in part to Studio-X Amman.

APPLICATIONS FOR THE ECHOING BORDERS FALL SEMINAR ARE OPEN!

Thanks to all contributing participants and faculty!

Zaatari Camp visit, Jordan

Baqa’a Camp visit, Jordan

Echoing Borders X-Talk series

Getting ready for final presentations!

Echoing Borders workshop final presentations

Faculty:

Nora Akawi, Nina Kolowratnik, Merve Bedir, George Katodrytis with Emre Alturk, Ahmad Barclay, Ayse Cavdar, Jawad Dukhgan, Saba Innab, and Madeeha Merchant.

Participants:

NEW YORK (GSAPP): Cecil Barnes, Xiaoxi Chen, Albert Franco, Anna Oursler, Rebecca Riss SHARJAH (AUS): Deema Abu-Dalo, Alya Akkad, Yolla Ali, Ibrahim Ibrahim, Ruby Muhandes, Asil Zureigat AMMAN/CAIRO: Rama Al Rifaie, Shireen Khamees, Hadeel Khawaja, Manar Moursi, Rasha Al-Sharqawi ISTANBUL (BILGI): Gupse Korkmaz, Ceyda Pektas, Burak Sancakdar MILAN (POLITECNICO): Ilgaz Kayaalp COPENHAGEN (ROSKILDE): Sune Fredskild

Guest Speakers, Collaborators, and Critics: Nasser Abourahme, Luigi Achilli, Yaşar Adanalı, Rana Beiruti, Lilet Breddels, Güler Canbulat, Didem Danış, Sammy Goldenberg, Vanessa Iaria, Ismail Haroun, Jared Kohler, Emel Kurma, Marina Otero Verzier, Samar Maqusi, Alice Massari, Madeeha Merchant, Philipp Misselwitz, Samar Muhareb, Lucas Oesch, Ceren Ozturk, Johannes Pointl, Garrett Rubin, Ege Sevinçli, Alice Su, Bertan Tokuzlu, Kate Washington

Collaborating Institutions: Archis (NL), Bilgi University (Istanbul, Turkey), American University of Sharjah (Sharjah, UAE) Visualizing Impact (Beirut / Amman)

ECHOING BORDERS: THE SHELTER, THE CAMP, THE CITY, AND THE STATE. THE SPATIALIZATION OF FORCED MIGRATION IN JORDAN AND TURKEY

The workshop ECHOING BORDERS: THE SHELTER, THE CAMP, THE CITY, AND THE STATE addresses the necessity for understanding and analyzing the evolution of ‘temporary settlements’ in relation to the place of the refugee in contemporary migration politics in the region.

Since the outbreak of civil war in Syria in March 2011, an estimated 9 million Syrians have fled their homes taking refuge in neighboring countries or within Syria itself, leaving more than 40% of the Syrian population uprooted. So far 600,000 Syrian refugees fled to Jordan and 800,000 to Turkey. Since 2011 Turkey established 22 camps for 200,000 Syrian refugees, Jordan just opened its third camp for Syrian refugees, Azraq camp, with a capacity of 130,000 people.   While other important academic endeavors attend to the urgent need for improved planning methodologies and design approaches of temporary settlements in response to war and conflict, in this workshop we will focus on the architectural typologies of temporary refuge (both in the camp and in the city), as reflections of the shifting notion of citizenship.  Participants will work with architects, geographers, anthropologists, lawyers, journalists and graphic designers on mappings and data visualization exercises of migration patterns in the region, and of the trajectories from the border to the camp or to the city, operating according to a joint timeline for both Jordan and Turkey based on the main events of war and conflict causing forced migration to both countries.  The workshop will contribute to the GSAPP Studio-X global research series on Security Regimes, which examines global spaces of exception.

Echoing Borders Public Programming:

Syrian Refugees in Jordan: Housing Solutions and Living Conditions by Alice Massari, Un Ponte Per… Thursday, August 7, 2014 3pm Public Seminar / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Wild Jordan

Forgotten Migration: The Impact of Media Focus on Refugee Status and Settlement by Alice Su, freelance journalist/Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting Friday, August 8, 2014 7pm Public Seminar / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Wild Jordan

A Lasting Temporariness: Palestinian Refugee Camps in Jordan by Luigi Achilli, Institut Français du Proche-Orient Amman Friday, August 9, 2014 8pm X-Talk / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Wild Jordan

Migration and the Evolution of Amman by Saba Innab, Architect/Artist Saturday, August 10, 2014 8pm X-Talk / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Wild Jordan

Visualizing Impact: Infographics with a Cause by Ahmad Barclay, Visualizing Impact Monday, August 11, 2014 8pm X-Talk / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Wild Jordan

Transnational Livelihoods and the Iraqi Displacement in Jordan by Vanessa Iaria, British Institute in Amman / University of Jordan Tuesday, August 12, 2014 11:30am Public Seminar / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Wild Jordan

Prefiguring the State: The Refugee Camps of the Western Sahara by Manuel Herz, ETH Zurich / Manuel Herz Architects Wednesday, August 13, 2014 8pm X-Talk / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Wild Jordan

The Physicality of Displacement – ‘A Place of Impossible Space’ by George Katodrytis, American University of Sharjah Friday, August 15, 2014 8pm X-Talk / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Wild Jordan

Turkey’s Law on Refugees by Bertan Tokuzlu, Faculty of Law, Bilgi University Sunday, August 17, 2014 7pm X-Talk / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Studio-X Istanbul

Mobilities, Social Networks and Urban Space: The Case of Iraqi and Syrian Migrants in Istanbul by Didem Danış, Department of Sociology, Galatasaray University Tuesday, August 19, 2014 11am X-Talk / Echoing Borders workshop Location: Studio-X Istanbul

Supporting Refugees in Turkey by Emel Kurma, Helsinki Citizens Assembly. Response by Ayşe Çavdar, Journalist Tuesday, August 19, 2014 7pm X-Talk Location: Studio-X Istanbul

A Conflictual Architectural Language: Notational Systems as Productive Destabilizer in the Socio-political and Human Rights Field by Nina Kolowratnik, GSAPP, Columbia University X-Talk Location: Studio-X Istanbul

Liminal Space: the Complexity of Displacement by George Katodrytis, Faculty of Architecture, American University of Sharjah Thursday, August 21, 2014 7pm X-Talk Location: Studio-X Istanbul

Reporting from Amman by Nora Akawi, Studio-X Amman Friday, August 22, 2014 7pm X-Talk Location: Studio-X Istanbul

Towards an Architecture of Peace Lilet Breddels, ARCHIS Tuesday, August 26, 2014 7pm X-Talk Location: Studio-X Istanbul

Camp City: Urbanization of Refugee Camps by Philipp Misselwitz, Faculty of Architecture, TU Berlin Wednesday, August 27, 2014 7pm X-Talk Location: Studio-X Istanbul

FACULTY: Nina Valerie Kolowratnik (Columbia University GSAPP), Nora Akawi (Studio-X Amman), Merve Bedir (Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture / L+CC), Selva Gürdoğan (Studio-X Istanbul / Superpool); with Emre Altürk (Bilgi University Faculty of Architecture, Istanbul) and George Katodrytis (American University of Sharjah Faculty of Architecture).

DATES: Amman: Aug 7 -17, 2014 Istanbul: Aug 17 - 27, 2014 LOCATION: Amman, Jordan Istanbul, Turkey PARTNER INSTITUTIONS: Archis, NL Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE Visualizing Impact COLLABORATORS Nasser Abourahme, PhD Candidate, Columbia University MESAAS Luigi Achilli, Research Associate at Institut Français du Proche-Orient, Amman Ahmad Barclay, Visualizing Impact Lilet Breddels, Director Archis, Amsterdam Ayşe Çavdar, Journalist, Anthropologist, Adjunct Instructor at Izmir Economy University, Doğuş University, Istanbul and Bilgi University, Istanbul Didem Danış, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Galatasaray University, Istanbul Bertan Tokuzlu, Assistant Professor, Department of Law, Faculty of Law, Bilgi University, Istanbul UNHCR- Turkey Emel Kurma, Helsinki Citizens Assembly, Istanbul Jawad Dukhgan, Program Coordinator, Studio-X Amman, GSAPP Manuel Herz, Visiting Professor, ETH Zürick / Principal, Manuel Herz Architects Saba Innab, Architect / Artist, Visiting Research Fellow at Studio-X Amman LabSamar Maqusi, UNRWA / The Bartlett, UCL Samar Muhareb, ARDD-Legal Aid, Amman Madeeha Merchant, Spatial Information Design Lab, Columbia University GSAPP Phillip Misselwitz, Professor, Chair of International Urbanism and Design, Dept of Architecture, Technische Universität Berlin Alice Su, Freelance Journalist, Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting

Join us on Thursday, July 17th at 7:45 PM for Iftar at 9:00 PM for Pelin Tan's talk at 7iber Cafe 69 Muath Bin Jabal St. Jabal Amman, First Circle RSVP REQUIRED! [email protected] TRANSVERSAL INSTITUTING On Refugees, Alliances, and Labor In this talk, Pelin Tan, architecture faculty member at Mardin University Artuklu, near Syrian/Iraqi border, also running a forensic architecture graduate research and course, will be addressing refugee conditions, the urgency and design of camps, and related co-existence of public spaces, forensic of extrajudicial killing (faili meçhul) excavation, and communities in conflict territories along the border. Furthermore, she will introduce The Silent University where she is a research fellow practicing a methodology of transversal instituting, towards alternative pedagogy, instant alliances, and modalities of co-existence. The Silent University rhizomatically reaches widely to issues about citizenship, education, institutionalism, borders, war, refugeehood, documents/documenting, urban segregation, commons and others. Thus it applies alternative research methods that involve artistic research and deconstruct common methodologies. Pelin will describe an assemblage method and affective labor in mapping extra-territorialities and refugee conditions. The basic question is: How can collective experience of the trans-local production of knowledge and of instant alliances lead to the creation of common spaces for uncommon knowledge? ABOUT PELIN TAN: Pelin Tan is a sociologist, researcher and writer based in Mardin, and an Associate Professor and Vice-Dean at the Faculty of Architecture, Mardin Artuklu University. She completed her post-doctoral research on "artistic research" at the ACT/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tan is co-director with Anton Vidokle of the "2084" series of films on the future of art history. Tan was the associate curator of Adhocracy team, Istanbul Design Biennale, 2012. She recently edited a special issue on “refugee/camp” of the Artuklu Architecture Faculty journal to be published in October, 2014. Forthcoming book: ARAZİ/TERRITORY (Critical Spatial Practice Series, Eds. MM & NH, Sternberg Press, 2015)

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points: X-Talk by Rayyane Tabet

X-Talk

Monday, January 20, 2014 6:30pm

Jadal, Amman

The Trans-Arabian PipeLine Company (TAPLine) was established in 1946 as a joint venture between Caltex, Esso, and Mobil. In 1983, the line could no longer sustain the pressure from layered and adjacent political interests and the company was dissolved. Today, it sits hidden six feet underground, the objects used to render the company released into a raw form.

Since 2007 Rayyane Tabet has been looking into the rise and fall of this oil company through these leftover forms and has developed works that analyze the transformation of the region since the end of World War II through the specter of this decommissioned utilitarian tool.

Join us on Monday November 25th, 2013 at 6:30PM for the book launch and public presentation of The Atlas of Jordan by Dr. Myriam Ababsa, focusing on ancient spatial resiliences and new territorial dynamics, with an introduction by Prof. Philippe Lane, Cultural Counsellor at the French Embassy in Jordan. The event will be held at the Columbia Global Centers | Middle East: 5 Mohammad Al Sa'd Al Batayneh Street King Hussein Park, Amman Myriam Ababsa is an associate research fellow in social geography at the French Institute for the Near East (at the IFPO in Amman). Her work focuses on the impact of public policies on regional and urban development in Jordan and Syria. She holds a PhD in geography from the University of Tours, France (2004).

GSAPP's Karla Rothstein (Associate Professor and Death Lab Director) is traveling to Amman this week with a group of five students for a research visit on the practices of burial in highly dense urban environments. In addition to a desert excursion and field visits, they will be meeting with religious leaders, municipality officials and representatives of both the UNHCR and UNRWA to discuss the question of temporality: the permanence of death and burial in contrast with the temporality of the refugee camp. They will also hear about "How to Build Without a Land", a project by artist/architect Saba Innab. Students will be posting their work on the studio blog here. Also as part of this visit, we invited Moataz Faissal Farid (co-founder of Zawia), to present his work on Cairo's City of the Dead. His presentation will be followed by an informal conversation with Karla Rothstein.

The city, as it is; is an eclectic collage of superposed states; it involves overlapping images of co-existing urban situations. Both the physical existence of the city as a built texture and the social geography of urbanity form a superposed morphology. Cairo’s “city of the dead” is a significant example of this urban superposition, where two very distinct states of existence overlap each other, an extraordinary coexistence of life and death. Cairo's "city of the dead" is partly a cemetery, with its monumentality and sacredness, and partly a vibrant city quarter with around one million dwellers living within its limits. For those who are not living in the “city of the dead”, it is a graveyard with inhabitants. For the inhabitants themselves, it is the city, an enactment of their being. The lecture will demonstrate thoroughly the unique case of Cairo’s "city of the dead", its founding and evolution. Moataz Faissal Farid will analyze the larger context where it lies, the city growth around it, the cultural and religious traditions of burial in Egypt, and how all this affected the life and the architecture inside the "city of the dead", and finally it will question the validity of various ideas and ongoing development projects in the area.

Joining us in Amman this week is Amale Andraos' studio "Architecture and Representation: the Lens of Diplomacy". Inspired by and in response to the studio, Studio-X Amman presents the public symposium:

ARCHITECTURE AND REPRESENTATION on Saturday October 5th, 11AM - 6PM

with: Senan Abdelqader (SAA, Jerusalem), Yasser Elsheshtawy (UAE University, Al Ain), Makram El Kadi (L.E.FT, New York), Shahira Fahmy (SFA, Cairo), Ahmad Humeid (Syntax, Amman), and Bernard Khoury (DW5, Beirut).

For more information, see the event page on the GSAPP Events Calendar.

Collecting Architecture Territories is a research project that reflects on the relationship between architecture and collecting, considering architecture both as an agent that organizes, supports and informs various contemporary collecting practices, and as an object of collection in its own right. A key hypothesis of the project is that the present explosion of the museum can no longer be understood solely in museological terms, but can be productively recast by thinking its relationship to the ongoing definition and redefinition of geopolitical, cultural, and financial territories.

Collecting Architecture Practices Summer 2013 workshop is led by GSAPP's Mark Wasiuta and Craig Buckley with Adam Bandler and Jordan Carver, at Studio-X Amman Lab and the Columbia Global Centers | Middle East - in partnership with Darat al Funun, the American University of Beirut, and the Sarjah Art Foundation.

This event is a result of a collaboration with the American University of Beirut's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Arts and Humanities Initiative.

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George Arbid is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the American University of Beirut. He received his Doctor of Design degree from Harvard University Graduate School of Design and his Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures en Architecture from the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts. Prior to his stay at Harvard, he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the History, Theory and Criticism Program at MIT. He is author of the forthcoming book Karol Schayer architect, a Pole in Beirut (Birkhaüser, 2012). Arbid’s published architecture practice in partnership with Fadlallah Dagher includes the Shabb and Salem residences, the latter having been nominated for the Aga Khan Award in 1998.

Craig Buckley teaches architectural history at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, where he is also the Director of Publications. His research interest concerns relationships between architectural practice, new genres of publication, and politics in the postwar period. His writing and criticism have appeared in the journals such as October, Grey Room, Log, and Perspecta, among others. Recent books include Dan Graham’s New Jersey (edited with Mark Wasiuta), a translation and facsimile of the magazine Utopie Utopie: Texts and Projects 1967-1978, (edited with Jean-Louis Violeau), and Clip/Stamp/Fold: The Radical Architecture of Little Magazines 196X-197X (edited with Beatriz Colomina).

Lamia Joreige is a visual artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Beirut. She uses archival documents and fictitious elements to reflect on the relation between individual stories and collective History. Lamia Joreige is a co-founder and the co-director of Beirut Art Center, a non-profit space dedicated to contemporary art in Lebanon

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi is Assistant Professor in the Civilization Sequence Program at the American University of Beirut. She studied Oriental Studies at Oxford University (DPhil 2005) and Comparative Literature and Arabic Studies at the Free University of Berlin (MA 2000). Her research interests are in modern literature and art in the Arab world, interrelations of word and image, politics and art, collection and museum studies, gender studies, cultural memory and history. Her publications include: Reading across Modern Arabic Literature and Art (Reichert, 2012); (ed. with John Pedro Schwartz), Museums, Archives and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World (Ashgate, 2012).

Mark Wasiuta teaches at GSAPP, Columbia University where is co-director of the Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices in Architecture program and Director of Exhibitions. He is partner in the International House of Architecture. He studied at the University of British of Columbia, Princeton and Harvard Universities. He has curated, among other exhibitions, Dan Graham's New Jersey, Environments and Counter Environments: Experimental Media in Italy the New Domestic Landscape and No Longer Art: Salvage Art Institute. He is co-editor and co-author of "Dan Graham's New Jersey," Current projects include a book based on the exhibition, "Environments and Counter Environments: Experimental Media in Italy the New Domestic Landscape," and "Air Urbanism" a publication of projects and essays on the history of air and smog in Los Angeles.

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