As part of this year’s Summer Season exploring walls, barriers and borders today, the Frontline Club hosted a preview screening of The Architecture of Violence on Wednesday 13 August. It was followed by a Q&A with director Ana Naomi de Sousa and protagonist, architect and activist Eyal Weizman, moderated by filmmaker Olly Lambert. The film is part of Rebel Architecture, a six-part Al Jazeera English documentary series profiling architects who are using design as a form of activism and resistance to tackle the world’s urban, environmental and social crises.
The film focusses on the architectural infrastructure of the West Bank, and the idea that architecture can be used as a form of violence, which at first, may not be obvious, as Weizman said:
“If you think about human rights violations, you think about soldiers, you think about politicians. You don’t really think about architects. If you want to make architects liable to violations of interntional law, the proof is in the drawing. . . . You see a settlements like Ariel . . . and you see it built as a wedge and you start understanding that the way it was designed was to cut a whole kind of north–south axis along the West Bank. The design, [the] line that was drawn on the plan of the architect, is where the crime is . . . because there is a conscious attempt or intent to produce material damage through architectural form.”
The film also explores Weizman‘s latest project, Forensic Architecture, which aims to use architectural knowledge as evidence in the investigation of war crimes and human rights violations.
“It is essential now to use architecture as a form of evidence [in court], at a time when most wars are happening in cities, where in fact not only most wars are happening in cities, [but] most people that die are dying inside buildings.”
Responding to a question about whether there are Palestinian attempts to counter the invasive effects of settlements, de Sousa replied:
“There are interesting stories and very interesting Palestinian architects like Naseer Arafat [featured in the film]. . . . Sandy Halal . . . also has [done] some very interesting work in the refugee camps all across the West Bank, which is about involving people who live in the camps in thinking about and imagining and acting out urbanisation of the camps, which is very interesting because the refugee camps are perceived to be temporary spaces and that temporariness is linked to the claim to the right to return. And so there is a sort of cultural resistance to the urbanisation of camps.”
However, as Weizman explains in the film, the undercurrent of architectural violence has often gone unnoticed:
“When you are travelling through the West Bank everything looks very banal and mundane and that’s its power. . . . [The wall] draws like a moth towards a flame all the photographers to work with that because it’s so visually obvious. But when you see a settlement, it looks like a suburb; the road, it looks like any road. When you see infrastructure systems – the same. This is where decoding is important, this is where you have to denaturalise processes that seem very natural.”
Talking about the wider implications of these ideas, de Sousa added:
“This idea that the built environment is a slow kind of violence, I think, is something that you see everywhere.”
Premiering on Monday 18 August 2014, Rebel Architecture features inspiring architects that are using design to tackle the world’s urban, environmental and social crises.
For further reading on the subject, see:
Carranza, L E. 2010. Architecture as Revolution: Episodes in the History of Modern Mexico.
Forensic Architecture, ed. 2014. Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth.
Segal R, Tartakover D and Weizman, E, eds. 2003. A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture.
Weizman, E. 2007. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation.
Weizman, E. 2011. The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza.
Weizman, E. 2012. Forensic Architecture: Notes from Fields and Forums.
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In a journey across the settlements, the roads and the Separation Wall of the West Bank, Eyal Weizman demonstrates how architecture is central to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and how his work on the architecture of occupation has led him to understand the discipline’s role in modern urban warfare.
Israelis and Palestinians explain how it feels to live in a landscape where everything, from walls and roads, terraces and sewage pipes, to settlements and surveillance are designed to ensure the separation of the two peoples, while simultaneously maintaining control.
This Al Jazeera Rebel Architecture preview screening will be followed by a discussion with director Ana Naomi de Sousa and protagonist and architect Eyal Weizman. Weizman will talk about his latest project Forensic Architecture, which makes innovative use of architectural and visual technologies to present architecture as evidence in the investigation of war crimes and human rights violations.
Directed by Ana Naomi de Sousa
Duration: 24′
Year: 2014
Premiering 18 August 2014, Rebel Architecture features inspiring architects that are using design to tackle the world’s urban, environmental and social crises.
]]>Tuesday 30 July 2013, 7:00 PM – Side by Side
For almost one hundred years there was only one way to make a movie: photochemical film. Over the last two decades a digital process has emerged to challenge this initial form of filmmaking. At a moment when digital and photochemical filmmaking coexist, Side by Side explores what has been gained, what is lost, and what the future might bring.
Tuesday 6 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Pirate Bay: Away from Keyboard
The largest and most famous torrent website in the world, The Pirate Bay, quickly became one of many antagonists of the entertainment industry. The three Swedish founders face $13 million in damage claims by the media establishment. TPB-AFK chronicles a historic drama beyond the copyright debate and tells a human story torn by cyberwar.
Tuesday 20 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Human Scale FULLY BOOKED
The Human Scale: it’s a ticking time bomb. In the next 40 years the number of people living in cities will nearly double. There is not enough time to build the necessary infrastructure to accomodate all of us. According to revolutionary Danish city planner Jan Gehl, even the largest of megacities must be re-thought, re-designed and re-sized to the human scale.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Andreas M. Dalsgaard
Tuesday 27 August 2013, 7:00 PM – Google and the World Brain FULLY BOOKED
Google and the World Brain connects the central story of Google Books with fundamental issues related to the Internet – privacy, copyright, data-mining, downloading and surveillance. Through interviews with experts from across the world we learn about the implications of one of the most ambitious and simultaneously controversial projects ever conceived on the Internet.
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Ben Lewis.
Tuesday 3 September 2013, 7:00 PM – Rewind This! BOOK NOW
Home video changed the way the world consumed films. Low cost equipment and the rise of VHS created unprecedented opportunities for the film industry. Rewind This! looks at media consumption, zero budget filmmaking, unchecked global piracy and an exploding film industry, through the rise and fall of VHS. Developments that laid the foundation for today’s digital culture.
Tuesday 30 July 2013, 7:00 PM – Side by Side
Tuesday 6 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Pirate Bay: Away from Keyboard
Tuesday 20 August 2013, 7:00 PM – The Human Scale BOOK NOW
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Tuesday 27 August 2013, 7:00 PM – Google and the World Brain BOOK NOW
Tuesday 3 September 2013, 7:00 PM – Preview: Rewind This! BOOK NOW
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The Human Scale: it’s a ticking time bomb. In the next 40 years the number of people living in cities will nearly double. There is not enough time to build the necessary infrastructure to accomodate all of us. According to revolutionary Danish city planner Jan Gehl, even the largest of megacities must be re-thought, re-designed and re-sized to the human scale.
Director Andreas M. Dalsgaard travels around the world to explore how Gehl’s vision of a human megacity – intimate, lively, safe, sustainable and healthy – is being implemented in places like New York, Chongqing and Christchurch. Thinkers, architects and urban planners across the globe question our assumptions about modernity. Against the backdrop of powerful shots of urban landscapes, they explore what happens when we put people at the heart of our planning.
Directed by Andreas M. Dalsgaard
Duration: 77′
Year: 2012
This screening is part of a summer season looking at the way technological changes are shaping the way we document the world and interact with it. See the full programme here.
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The Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw was a despised gift from Stalin and after the fall of communism, some suggested pulling it down. Today, the palace is still standing, and is home to a theatre, a concert hall, a cinema, a swimming pool, and hundreds of offices.
Director Tomasz Wolski takes us on a cinematic journey through what is more than just a building: The Palace of Culture and Science is both a reflection of Poland’s everyday life and its rich history. Wolski also shows how the building is kept alive, how the Soviet machines are still working 50 years on.
Urszula Chowaniec, Ph.D., teaches at University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies, where she is also head of eMigrating Lanscapes, a project on literary and artistic representations of emigration. She is currently writing a book on the notion of displacement as seen in literature in post-communist Poland.
Directed by Tomasz Wolski
Duration: 82′
Year: 2012
The evening will start with the short film Returns (PL)
On 10 April 2010, one of the most important dates in modern Polish history, 96 people, including the Polish president and government representatives died in a plane crash near Smolensk. They were on their way to Russia to participate in a ceremony commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, the mass murder of Polish officers carried out by the NKVD. Returns shows the preparations for the commemoration ceremony, resulting in a film as surreal as the events themselves.
Directed by Krzystof Kadlubowski
Duration: 7′
Year: 2010