[artinfo] City of Collision Book Launch and Panel

[by way of Janos Sugar]

THE ACADEMY OF ARTS, THE UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS BERLIN AND THE
ALLIANZ CULTURAL FOUNDATION INVITE YOU TO THE LAUNCH OF

CITY OF COLLISION

Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict Urbanism

Edited by Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets
Birkhäuser Publisher for Architecture

6pm - 9pm
21st of August 2006
Academy of Arts
Pariser Platz 4
Berlin

BOOK PRESENTATION: 6.00pm

Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets: Almost eight decades of violent
urban conflict have transformed Jerusalem into an extreme spatial
configuration. From a Western perspective, Jerusalem is often
regarded as unique: a place where colonial and terrorist violence
blur distinctions between the military and the civilian. But as
cities worldwide are increasingly subject to dramatic new security
policies and preventative measures against real or imagined threats
Jerusalem, as a laboratory of conflict urbanism is in fact closer
than we think. CITY OF COLLISION presents a vivid picture of a city
in a permanent state of destruction and reinvention, hostage to
political planning, collective fear and physical and mental walls but
also strategies of resilience, individual exchange and transgression.
Thirty new essays by leading Palestinian, Israeli, and international
architects, artists, sociologists and political commentators open up
different perspectives on the complex and ambivalent urban reality of
contemporary Jerusalem. CITY OF COLLISION also features specially
commissioned photographs by Bas Princen and Polly Braden and is
illustrated with over forty new detailed thematic maps. Philipp
Misselwitz is an architect and writer based in Berlin currently
running an UN research project on Refugee Camp Development. Tim
Rieniets is an architect and teaches at the ETH in Zurich (for more
information about the book see attachment).


-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
LECTURES: 6.30 – 7.30pm

Sari Hanafi (Professor of Sociology, American University of Beirut)
Peter Marcuse (Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University, New  York)
Eyal Weizman (Architect and writer, Goldsmith College, London)


-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
PANEL DISCUSSION: 7.30 – 9.00pm

Victims, Weapons or Mediators? Recent transformations in the
relationship between conflict and cities

A panel discussion will explore the condition of contemporary cities
in a world where distinctions between the military and the civilian,
between real and constructed threats, between security measures and
socio-economic or ethnic segregation are increasingly blurred.
Considering North-American, European and Middle Eastern Cities, the
panel will discuss how cities increasingly struggle to maintain urban
settings for the mediation of difference and diversity. Can the
extreme spatial segregation of Jerusalem be considered as a prototype
for a future urban condition? Can the city that produced such radical
conflict urbanism also serve as a laboratory for practices that
undermine, erode and transgress this condition? Participants of the
panel include Sari Hanafi, Peter Marcuse, Eyal Weizman, Peter
Zlonicky (Professor for Urban Planning, Munich). The panel will be
moderated by Philipp Misselwitz and Tim Rieniets 
(editors of CITY OF  COLLISION).

  For further info contact:
Philipp Misselwitz
misselwitz at studio-uc.net
+49 177 4107168