X-TALK #12:
Archipelago in Amman: Two Conversations on the Politics of Bodies and Space
Léopold Lambert (Architect, Writer, and Editor of The Funambulist)
in conversation with:
Rahel Aima and Ahmad Makia (The State);
Dena Qaddumi (Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies)
Archipelago in Amman:
Two Conversations on the Politics of Bodies and Space
The editorial line of both The Funambulist and Archipelago interprets architecture as the discipline that organizes bodies in space. There is therefore a need for us to examine the politics of bodies and space both generally, and more specifically. The first conversation, with Rahel Aima and Ahmad Makia (chief-editors of The State), will attempt to articulate both guests’ disciplinary backgrounds (respectively anthropology and urban design) in order to define how design conditions the exercise of structural racism of all forms. The second conversation, with Dena Qaddumi (architect and co-editor of Arena of Speculation), will be more specific to Doha and Palestine, addressing the potential instrumentalization of space in favor of our own political manifestos. The third part of the event will be dedicated to an exchange between the participants and the audience around the ideas developed in these two conversations. The event will be recorded and published on Archipelago.
Léopold Lambert is an architect, writer and editor of the blog The Funambulist (http://thefunambulist.net/), which considers architecture as the discipline that organizes bodies in space and attempts to articulate questions around this definition since 2007. Throughout 2014, he has been recording interviews with thinkers/creators of the world each week and publish them on the blog’s podcast platform, Archipelago (http://the-archipelago.net/). He is also the author of “Weaponized Architecture: The Impossibility of Innocence” (dpr-barcelona, 2012) that examined the inherent characteristics that make architecture a violent political instrument, in particular in occupied Palestine. His next book, “Topie Impitoyable: The Corporeal Politics of the Cloth, the Wall, and the Street” (Punctum Books, 2015) constitutes a sequel to this first book, with particular care to the notion of the body.
