Event Date: Friday, March 30, 2007 Location: Upper Gallery, Meyerson Hall, 210 South 34th Street, University of Pennsylvania
Evasions of Power Conference Series
| Organized by
Katherine Carl, Aaron Levy, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss
Slought Foundation and the Department of Architecture, PennDesign, are pleased to announce "Territories," part of the Evasions of Power conference. This session will take place on Friday, March 30, 2007 from 11:30-1:00pm at the University of Pennsylvania, in the Upper Gallery of Meyerson Hall, 210 South 34th Street. This session will feature 10-15 minute presentations by Keller Easterling, Sanjay Krishnan, Laura Kurgan, Eyal Weizman, and Manuel Hertz, with a discussion to follow moderated by Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss.
This event is part of the “Evasions of Power” conference, a series of roundtable discussions exploring the relations between literature, architecture, and geo-politics. The photo-documentation on this webpage–of military forces from Montenegro transporting and installing a shrine on the Serbian border–exemplifies this intersection. The proceedings will take place in Philadelphia from March 30-31, 2007 and have been jointly organized by Slought Foundation and the Department of Architecture, PennDesign, in conjunction with the Centre for Architecture Research, Goldsmiths College, London, the
Department of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, the Department of English, University of Pennsylvania, and Eastern State Penitentiary historic site and museum, Philadelphia. Major support for Evasions of Power has been provided by the Graham
Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Departing from the usual academic convention of presenting knowledge in the form of straightforward talks or presentations, this project will include a series of roundtable discussions, debates and interventions of varying duration, with an integrated online presence. For more information about the “Evasions of Power” conference, please consult http://slought.org/series/Evasions/
Keller Easterling is an architect, urbanist and writer. Her book Enduring Innocence: global architecture and its political masquerades (MIT, 2005) researches familiar spatial products that have landed in difficult or hyperbolic political situations around the world. Her most recent book Organization Space: Landscapes, Highways and Houses in America applies network theory to a discussion of American infrastructure and development formats. Easterling is also the author of Call It Home, a laser disc history of suburbia; and American Town Plans. She has recently completed two research installations on the Web: Wildcards: a Game of Orgman and Highline: Plotting NYC. Easterling has been widely published in journals such Grey Room, Assemblage, Praxis, Harvard Design Magazine, Perspecta, Cabinet, Metalocus, ANY and JAE. Her work is also included as chapters and anthologies in numerous publications. She has lectured widely in the United States and internationally at such places as Princeton, Columbia, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, SCI ARC, Cornell, Syracuse, RPI, Pratt, Ohio State, UVA, University of Toronto and the Wexner Center. Her work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, the Architectural League, the Municipal Arts Society and the Wexner Center. She has received Graham Foundation Grants, NEA Fellowships, MacDowell Fellowships, Whitney Humanities Center Grants, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a Design Trust for Public Space Fellowship.
Sanjay Krishnan is assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. His book, Reading the Global: Troubling Perspectives on Britain's Empire in Asia (Columbia U.P, June 2007) is a study of the global as a discursive process instituted over the course of European imperial expansion in Asia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His essays have appeared in journals such as Boundary 2, Representations, and Novel.
Laura Kurgan teaches architecture at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she is Director of Visual Studies and the Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab (SIDL). SIDL is currently collaborating with the Justice Mapping Center on a project called "Graphical Innovations in Justice Mapping" in selected states -- Arizona, Kansas, Los Angeles County, Louisiana, New York, and Rhode Island. She has followed the declassification of satellite imagery and GPS technology in a series of research projects across the significant political events of the last decade. This work, which has been exhibited internationally, is collected in You Are Here: Post-Military Technology and the New Landscape of Satellite Images, forthcoming from Zone Books. Laura Kurgan also runs an interdisciplinary design practice in New York City, blending academic research with design, information, communication, advocacy and architecture. Most recently Laura Kurgan Design has been working with New Visions for Public Schools on the re-programming and master-planning of 21 existing large public school buildings into campuses of small schools.
Eyal Weizman is an architect based in Tel Aviv and London. He is a founder and director of the Centre for Architecture Research at Goldsmiths College in London. Weizman has taught architecture in the Bartlett School of Architecture in London, at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and at the Technion in Haifa, and has extensively published and presented around the world. He has conducted research and a map-making project for the human-rights organization B'tselem on violations of human rights by architecture and planning in the West Bank; he ultimately derived a film and two books, A Civilian Occupation and The Politics of Verticality, from this work.
Manuel Herz is an architect based in Cologne and Basel. He studied at the RWTH Aachen and the Architectural Association, London and taught design studios at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan Stockholm, the Bartlett School of Architecture London and the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam. He has executed a number of architectural projects in Germany and Israel, among them the Municipal Museum of Ashdod, with Eyal Weizman and Rafi Segal, a conversion of an historical industrial complex into exhibition spaces in Cologne and the project “Legal / Illegal”, a mixed-use building which received the ‘German architecture prize – concrete’ and was exhibited at the Biennale of Architecture in Venice 2004. His current projects include the Jewish Community Center in Mainz. He has published internationally on issues concerning the performative power of the architect within the contemporary economical and political framework, on issues regarding the relationship between Judaism and space, and is currently working on the theme of the architecture of NGOs - architecture of humanitarian relief. His most recent exhibition “Reconsidering Utopia(s)”, developed with Ines Weizman, questions the denigration of a utopian spirit and the role of architecture as a social catalyst in visionary projects of the sixties, and was shown at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. He is currently working on his PhD at Goldsmiths Center for Architectural Research, London.
Teddy Cruz' work dwells at the border between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico, where he has been developing a practice and pedagogy that emerge out of the particularities of this bicultural territory and the integration of theoretical research and design production. Teddy’ Cruz has been recognized internationally in collaboration with community-based nonprofit organizations such as Casa Familiar for its work on housing and its relationship to an urban policy more inclusive of social and cultural programs for the city. He obtained a Masters in Design Studies from Harvard University and the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome. He has recently received the 2004-05 James Stirling Memorial Lecture On The City Prize and is currently an Associate Professor in public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD in San Diego.
Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss is a lecturer in the Department of Architecture, Penn School of Design, and research architect at Herzog de Meuron Architect in Basel. He was educated at Harvard University and the University of Belgrade. He has taught architecture design studios at Penn School of Design, Columbia University, Parsons School of Design, and Pratt Institute, and has held seminars in contemporary architecture and geopolitics. His recent book “Almost Architecture," published by The Akademie Solitude (Stuttgart) addresses the role of architecture and post-socialist urban condition in Serbia under the Milosevic regime. He has realized a number of design projects in New York City, among them Swiss Institute Contemporary Art, Thread Waxing Space, and Participant Inc. contemporary art galleries, as well as architecture for the Gina Gibney contemporary dance group performing in New York’s St.Marks Church. His current project includes Kuda.org Stadium - center for recreation and new media in Novi Sad. His work was presented at the Royal Institute of British Architects, London, Dokumenta of Architecture Denmark Copenhagen, Columbia School of Architecture, Whitney Museum, Mutations, Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Urban Drift, TN Probe Tokyo, The Stroom, Manifesta 4, 2nd Tirana Biennial, Transformers Gallery, Werkleitz Biennial, Van Alen Institute, Talking Cities, Akademie Solitude Stuttgart, and Open Source Architecture Graz. He is currently working on his PhD at Goldsmiths Center for Architectural Research, London.
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To Cite this Page using MLA Style:
Keller Easterling, et al. "Evasions of Power, Session 2: Territories." Slought Foundation Online Content.
[30 March 2007;
Accessed 9 May 2008]. <http://slought.org/content/11350/>.
This program was made possible in part through the generous sponsorship of Centre for Architecture Research, Goldsmiths College, London, the Department of Art History, University of Pennsylvania, the Department of English, University of Pennsylvania, and Eastern State Penitentiary historic site and museum, Philadelphia. Major support for Evasions of Power has been provided by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Media sponsorship provided by Archinect.
