Politics / Space

“What is Settler Colonialism?”
Event 1: Politics / Space
Friday, November 10, 2023
10:30am–12:30pm, Avery 504
Join in person or on zoom

In light of the climate at our university and in recognition of our school’s past initiatives, students across the PhD programs at GSAPP, and with the support of the Post-Conflict Cities Lab and Masaha, decided to put together a series of teach-ins that offer a space to discuss, openly and critically, the manifold intersections between settler colonialism and design. ‘What is Settler-Colonialism?’ brings together young scholars into weekly conversations that work through questions on the politics of space, the valences of technology and the composite relations at play in settlement.

Nora Akawi, Assistant Professor, The Cooper Union

Nora Akawi is a Palestinian architect, and an assistant professor at The Cooper Union, New York. She focuses on erasure and bordering in settler colonialism and works at the intersection of architecture with border studies, cartography, and archive theory. Prior to joining The Cooper Union, Nora taught at Columbia University’s GSAPP, where she was the director of Studio-X Amman since 2012, and the founding director of the Janet Abu-Lughod Library and Seminar since 2015. She curated Al Majhoola Min Al-Ard (this earth’s unknown) at the Biennale d’Architecture d’Orléans (2019), and co-curated Sarāb: Wadi Rum, a festival of experimental electronic music and performance from the Arab worlds (2019), and Friday Sermon at the Biennale Architettura in Venice (2018). She co-edited the books Friday Sermon (2018) and Architecture and Representation: The Arab City (2016). Together with Eduardo Rega Calvo, in 2019 she co-founded the interdisciplinary research and design studio Interim Projects.

Léopold Lambert, Editor in Chief, The Funambulist

Léopold Lambert is the editor-in-chief of The Funambulist. He is a trained architect, as well as the author of four books that examine the inherent violence of architecture on bodies, and its political instrumentalization at various scales and in various geographical contexts. He is the author of Weaponized Architecture: The Impossibility of Innocence (dpr-barcelona, 2012), Topie Impitoyable: The Corporeal Politics of the Cloth, the Wall, and the Street (punctum, 2016) and La politique du Bulldozer: La ruine palestinienne comme projet israélien (B2, 2016). His new book is called States of Emergency: A Spatial History of the French Colonial Continuum (Premiers Matins de Novembre, 2021).

Additional events in the series are:

• Event 2: Machines
  Friday, November 17, 12pm
  
• Event 3: Settlement / Camp
  Friday, December 1, 12pm
  
• Event 4: Refusal
  Friday, December 8, 12pm