Under Fire conference Seville 24-25 Nov

UNDER FIRE

conference

University of Seville
International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville
24-25 November 2006


Presentations by Friedrich Kittler, Gema Martin Munoz, Osfa/Jose Perez de Lama, Julian Reid, Pablo de Soto, Ana Valdes, Caleb Waldorf, and Eyal Weizman. Moderated by Jordan Crandall.

This Under Fire event generates multiple perspectives onto war and political violence – deriving from the fields of political science, sociology, visual art, architecture, and media theory. What emerges is an assemblage of disciplinary approaches to the study of armed conflicts, functioning at the level of both practice and theory, anchored in several key sites of contention – including Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Iraq, and the Strait of Gibraltar.

The conference is divided into two sessions. The first session begins by making the case for a biopolitical understanding of war – or violence understood in terms of the struggle over the political constitution of life – and suggests political grounds that must be established for posing anew the problem of "life." Next, it inquires into the (mis)representation of Islamic culture in the West, positioning the role that such representations play in the construction of otherness and the perpetuation of conflicts in the Middle East. And finally, it deconstructs the codes of suspicion, showing how a heightened sense of vigilance, generated by security culture, infiltrates contemporary ways of seeing. The second session inquires into the intersections of combat operations, urban space, and discourse – delving into the Israeli military's appropriation of poststructuralist theory in urban warfare. Following from this event's geographical specificity in southern Spain, it then presents tactical mappings of the Strait of Gibraltar, positioning the Strait as representative of larger global transformations and exploring the possibilities of counter-reconnaissance. And finally, it looks at the reality of hardware and communications networks, deriving from western military apparatus, provoking understandings of military operations in terms of their media-technological infrastructures.

Under Fire is an ongoing art and research project that delves into the structural, symbolic, and affective dimensions of armed conflicts. This instantiation of Under Fire is sponsored by the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville and the University of Seville. For further information please see http://underfire.eyebeam.org.

SCHEDULE

*FRIDAY 24 NOVEMBER*
11:00 am - 2:00 pm; 5:00 pm - 8:30 pm
University of Seville
Atula de Grados de la Facultad de Filologia
Palos de la Frontera s/n Sevilla


SESSION I:
REPRESENTATIONAL POLITICS

11:00
Introduction: JORDAN CRANDALL

11:15
JULIAN REID, Lecturer in International Relations, King's College, London
"Biopolitics of the War on Terror"

12:00
GEMA MARTIN MUNOZ, Director of Casa Arabe and the International Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Madrid
"Interpretations of Middle East Violence from Western Societies"

12:45
Respondent: ANA VALDES

1:00
Discussion

1:30
CALEB WALDORF
"Ecologies of Suspicion"


SESSION II:
THEORY, TACTICS, AND HARDWARE

5:00
EYAL WEIZMAN, Architect, Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, University of London
"Tactics of Lesser Evil"

5:45
PABLO DE SOTO, collaborator, hackitectura.net
OSFA/JOSE PEREZ DE LAMA, collaborator, hackitectura.net; Associate Professor, University of Seville School of Architecture
"Tactical Cartography of the Straits"

6:30
Respondent: ANA VALDES

6:45
Discussion

7:15
FRIEDRICH KITTLER, Professor of Media History and Aesthetics, Humboldt University, Berlin
"Media-Technological Infrastructures of War"

8:00
Respondent: JORDAN CRANDALL


*SATURDAY 25 NOVEMBER*
11:00 am - 2:00 pm
Atarazanas
International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville


Roundtable discussions:

JORDAN CRANDALL
FRIEDRICH KITTLER
OSFA/JOSE PEREZ DE LAMA
GEMA MARTIN MUNOZ
JULIAN REID
ANA VALDES
CALEB WALDORF
EYAL WEIZMAN



Biographies

Friedrich A. Kittler is a literary scientist and a media theorist. His works relate to media, technology, and the military. He is Professor of Media History and Aesthetics at Humboldt University-Berlin's Institute for Aesthetics. In 1993, he received the media arts prize for theory from the ZKM Karlsruhe (Zentrums fur Kunst und Medientechnologie); from 1995 to 1997, he headed a Federal Research Group on Theory and History of Media. His recent books include Eine Kulturgeschichte der Kulturwissenschaft (2000), Vom Griechenland (With Cornelia Vismann - 2001), and Optische Medien (2002). Earlier books include Discourse Networks, 1800/1900 (1987); Gramaphone, Film, Typewriter (1986); Literature, Media, Information Systems (1997).

Gema Martin Munoz is Director of Casa Arabe and the International Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies in Madrid. She has a PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies and carried out the postgraduate studies in Cairo University (Egypt) for three years and numerous research stays in Algeria, Morocco, Tunis, Jordan, Iran, Israel and Palestinian Territories. She has been visiting Professor in Harvard University, Roma Tre University, Colegio de Mejico, La Habana University, Institut for Political and International Studies (IPIS) of Teheran (Iran). Her research interests include the sociopolitical situations in Middle East countries; Islamist movements and Muslims in Europe. She is editor of Islam, Modernism and the West: Cultural and Political Relations at the End of the Millennium (1999) and author of Arab State: Crisis of Legitimacy and Islamist Reactions (2000) and Iraq, a Failure of the West (2003). She is also the author of various publications, including: Aprender a conocerse, Percepciones sociales y culturales entre Espana y Marruecos (Madrid: Fundacion Repsol-Fondation Hassan II pour les Marocains Residant a l'Etranger, 2001); El Estado Arabe: Crisis de legitimidad y contestacion islamista (Barcelona: Ediciones Bellaterra, 2000); El Islam y el Mundo Arabe: Guia didactica para profesores y formadores (Madrid: Publicaciones de la Agencia Espanola de Cooperacion Internacional, ICMA, 1996, 2nd edition 1998); Mujeres, desarrollo y democracia en el Magreb (Madrid: Ediciones Pablo Iglesias, 1995).

Jose Perez de Lama, aka osfa is an architect and Associate Professor at the University of Seville School of Architecture. With Sergio Moreno and Pablo de Soto, he forms the core of hackitectura.net, a collaborative network that undertakes practical and theoretical research into the emerging territories of information and communication technologies, new social networks and the traditional physical space. hackitectura.net has produced such events as la multitud conectada (“the connected multitude”, La Rabida, Huelva, 2003) and fadaiat 2004 and 2005 (Tarifa - Tangiers). It also took part actively in Euro May-Day-Sur 05, and promotes Indymedia Estrecho.

Julian Reid is Lecturer in International Relations at King's College, London. He taught previously at the University of Sussex and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Lancaster, an MPhil in International Political Economy from the University of Amsterdam, and a BA in War Studies from King’s College London. He is the author of The Biopolitics of the War on Terror, to be published in the Reappraising the Political series (edited by Jon Simons and Simon Tormey) in late 2006 by Manchester University Press. He is currently working on a second book, The Liberal Way of War, which focuses on the relations between war, liberalism, and biology

Ana Valdes is a writer, an activist and a social anthropologist, working in the space between texts, images and social networks. She has been active in the fields of art, literature and activism for many years, driving together with the visual artist Cecilia Parsberg the artist run network Equator, http://this.is/Equator. Her latest project is called Crusading, the investigation of the meeting between Islam and Christianity, http://www.crusading.se.

Caleb Waldorf is an artist currently pursuing his MFA in the Visual Arts Department at the University of California, San Diego. Caleb graduated in 2001 from the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied the History of Art and Religious Studies. From 2002 to 2004 he worked at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies where he was an Events Coordinator and a Researcher for the Information, Technology, War and Peace project. Caleb’s artwork and research focuses on representation, the aesthetics of information technology, and violence. He explores how the politics of vision shape and are shaped by cultural, technological, and discursive forces as well as how the body/spectator/observer is a continuing confluence of these multitudes. His current research looks at the intersection of terrorism, personal media and subject formation in the United States post-9/11.

Eyal Weizman is an Architect and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths College, University of London. His architectural projects include the rebuilding of the Ashdod Museum of Art, stage sets for the theatre, and several prizes in architectural competitions. Weizman has worked with a variety of NGOs and Human right groups in Israel/Palestine. The exhibition and the publication A Civilian Occupation, The Politics of Israeli Architecture he co-edited/curated was based on his human-rights research. These projects were banned by the Israeli Association of Architects, but later shown in New York, Berlin, Rotterdam, San Francisco, Malmoe, Tel Aviv and Ramallah. Weizman has taught, lectured and organised conferences in many institutions worldwide. His books include The Politics of Verticality [forthcoming with Verso Press], A Civilian Occupation, Territories 1,2 and 3, Yellow Rhythms and many articles in journals, magazines and books. Weizman is now a Contributing Editor for Domus Magazine (Milan) and for Cabinet Magazine (New York).