Today it is above all space that is in motion. There is a global struggle for old, celebrated spaces such as sales markets or political and cultural zones of influence. At the same time, new, much-discussed, virtual and metaphorical spaces are emerging, which until recently were not perceived as such and which promise to give an idea of the future ‘geography’ of society and the public. In contrast, the project Space Control is an excursion into the territories of surveillance.

The talks in Israel/Palestine take their starting point: For some years now, the political role of architects and planners has been intensively discussed under extreme social conditions between liberal economy, permanent state of war and strategic spatial policy. The Israeli protagonists of this debate meet international experts at the KIOSK:  From the territorial appropriation by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, who can make the soil uncultivable by planting pine forests and declare it “state land” on the basis of an outdated Ottoman legal basis, to ethnic division cartography in Bosnia and post-apartheid architecture in South Africa, the current and new strategic functions of planning and architecture are discussed. In these territories, the planning of space is subject to the logic of control. It sketches and designs models of coexistence, movement and thought, as well as imaginary worlds organized by the “eye of power”: be it the ideal city of the Renaissance, Haussman’s boulevards in Paris or the eye of the surveillance camera. The gaze follows the lines of fire of the cannons.

OF ARAB AND ISRAELI ROUTES, POLITICAL LANDSCAPES AND TRAUMAS. OF PLACES IN A PERMANENT STATE OF WAR.
Amos Gitai, filmmaker, Tel Aviv and Friedemann Büttner, Middle East expert, Berlin

Ronald Düker, Summary (DE)

URBAN PLANNING: ABOUT URBAN MYTHS IN ISRAEL AND LIBERALAE IDEOLOGY & DESIGN IN THE NETHERLANDS
Sharon Rotbard, architect, Tel Aviv and Roemer van Toorn, programme director of the Berlage Institute, Rotterdam

The Israeli architect and publisher Sharon Rotbard in a discussion with Roemer van Toorn, head of the programme department of the well-known Berlage Institute in Rotterdam. At the beginning of the discussion, Rotbard and van Toorn will give an overview of current architectural practice and the state of discourse in Israel and the Netherlands. Van Toorn describes the new developments in Dutch architecture using the terms of a “second” or “reflexive” modernism – whose pragmatic ideology he criticises as a new conservatism, which he calls “Fresh Conservatism”. He also refers to the radicalism proclaimed by the leading Dutch architects, which is basically a fixation on consumer culture and has little or no connection with social living conditions and movements. Using Tel Aviv as an example, Rotbard describes the structure and ideology of an architectural narrative, a counter-mythology to “innovative” Dutch design and its architecture. Rotbard describes the history of Tel Aviv as a “white city”, the dominant mythology for several decades. This urban self-description presents Tel Aviv as a city that was architecturally influenced by the architects of the Bauhaus, as a prime example of modernism, which sees itself as a kind of “Paris of the Mediterranean”. Rotbard describes how this mythology was constructed and the political agenda behind its establishment – in fact, Rotbard claims that Tel Aviv’s urban reality has little or nothing to do with the Bauhaus and its ideology, consequently he calls this now invisible reality, which has been concealed by the “White City”, the “Black City”. This term also stands for Tel Aviv’s relationship to its non-European Jewish immigrants from Arab countries and to the city’s roots in a former cultural centre of Palestine, the Arab city of Jaffa. This introduction forms the starting point for a broader discussion of the relationship between architecture and ideology. Using Rem Koolhaas as an example, both will discuss the critical potential of architecture and architectural discourse. Rotbard asserts that Koolhaas’ works and his conceptual designs have always been affirmative, while van Toorn insists that, at least in the early works, the critical potential clearly outweighs this. Rotbard describes the significance of Koolhaas’ method and its political significance for the architectural discourse in Israel, and how an “innovative” architectural management of a territorial war can be derived and justified from it – a practice that builds on the ruins of a destroyed culture and does not solve problems, but only organizes and cements them. Building on this, both discuss in return the possible emancipatory potential and the effectiveness of architecture ‘beyond’ political instrumentalisation.

ABOUT CRIMES COMMITTED AT THE DRAWING BOARD
Eyal Weizman, architect, London, Tel Aviv and David Campbell, Professor of International Politics, Newcastle

The dialogue between David Campbell, Professor of International Politics at the University of Newcastle and Eyal Weizman, Israeli architect, is about cartography as a political practice and the future of the territorial nation state. Campbell examined and theorized the partition plans of Bosnia and Herzegovina and is the author of numerous essays on the political role and moral implications of international diplomacy. In this context, he deals with ethnically-based and nationalistic identity politics and political cartography. Weizman is known for his spatial analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Their conversation begins with a debate on national identity as a territorial figure and on the concept of the border as a fundamental myth of the idea of nationality. The question that is posed at this point is whether “division” in the case of national and/or ethnic conflicts can be a sustainable solution at all or whether it does not contain the core of future conflicts. Can such a model be implemented at all without serious violation of civil and human rights? What scenarios can be derived from the events in Bosnia-Herzegovina for possible scenarios in the case of Israel-Palestine? For example, can the ‘two-state solution’ currently being sought by the majority be implemented without ‘ethnic cleansing’? The basis of these questions in the discussion is that the underlying idea of a homogeneous body of states (territory, people, state) is being questioned. What other models of state and citizenship can be thought of? What role does the international political system play? Against this background, the discussion turns to the role and applicability of international law. Eyal Weizman raises the question of whether architects/planners and cartographers could be held legally responsible for the consequences of their work, for example for the violation of international law and human rights, as in the case of the construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Which legal authority is responsible for such activities? Based on the difficulties that become apparent here, both then discuss the alternative scenario to the two-state solution, the development of a common state system for Israelis and Palestinians on a democratic basis.

ARCHITECTURE OF VIOLENCE IN THE JOHANNESBURG OF POST-APARTHEID AND IN EAST JERUSALEM
Jeff Halper, Professor of Urban Anthropology, Ben Gurion University, Jerusalem and Lindsay Bremner, Architect and Professor of Architecture at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Ronald Düker, Summary (DE)

PARAGRAPHS PROGRAM THE SPACE: ON THE LEGAL BACKGROUND OF A TERRITORIAL CONFLICT.
Alexandre Kedar, professor of law at the University of Haifa and Eyal Weizman, architect, London, Tel Aviv

In this dialogue, Eyal Weizman and the Israeli lawyer and Professor Alexandre Kedar discuss the legal background of the territorial conflict Israel/Palestine. In which way is territorial policy exercised by legal means, how are legal processes involved in military or quasi-military scenarios? Kedar, an expert in the field of land law in Israel/Palestine and its multiple historical stratifications, will begin by presenting a number of legal terms and concepts that still play an essential role in the territorial conflict within Israel and the occupied territories today. He points out that legal means are used in a complementary way to military force. Building on old Ottoman land law as well as colonial law from the time of the British protectorate, the State of Israel developed a number of legal mechanisms that became a part of the settlement and land grabbing and now complete fragmentation of the occupied territories. On this basis, Weizman describes the activities of Israeli planners and architects in interaction with military and political authorities and highlights how legal ‘text’ becomes territorial or architectural form. Kedar and Weizman discuss several court cases on territorial law and citizenship. Kedar himself played a crucial role in a famous case that allowed a Palestinian family to buy back former family property within Israeli territory.

THE MODEL STATE
Zvi Efrat, architect, Tel Aviv and Eran Schaerf, artist, Berlin

The dialogue between the Israeli architect Zvi Efrat and the Israeli-born artist Eran Schaerf, who now lives in Germany, negotiates the relationship between model and reality. Zvi Efrat begins the conversation with a story about his little daughter who is unable to draw the borders of the state of Israel, a paradigmatic situation, as he claims. After one hundred years of Zionism and 55 years after the founding of the State of Israel, Israelis are still not able to define the geographical and political outlines of the state – Zvi Efrat calls this phenomenon, alluding to the psychological term “borderline disorder”.
Efrat explains how his daughter is conversely able to draw a precise map consisting of security zones and danger zones of urban space – a constantly changing, military-civilian cartography, which in turn is symptomatic of today’s Israel and its spatial-psychological configuration. He further explains how this indeterminacy and disruption of the principle of the border has its roots in the history of Zionism – as a utopian narrative that bases its physical reality on text, not form. Efrat and Schaerf then discuss the relationship between ‘text’ and ‘place’, starting with Theodor Herzl’s description of the ‘Jewish state’ and later in relation to the project of colonizing Palestine. Building on this, they discuss the construction phase of the State of Israel after its foundation in 1948: Only a few months after the foundation of Israel, a general master plan for the new state was presented, which, among other things, envisaged the construction of a complete infrastructure, the building of 30 new cities and more than 400 agricultural settlements within a period of 15 years. From an architectural point of view, the period from the founding of the state to 1974 was a laboratory of extremes – in the blending of strategic territorial objectives and innovative modernist architecture. Efrat emphasizes that the problem with this master plan from today’s perspective was its handling of the local conditions – he imagined the land as a “tabula rasa”, as an emptiness that had to be filled and a form that had to be reorganized. At this point, Zionist and modernist ideologies merged. The discussion ends with a debate about the role and function of architects and architecture today – as a quasi-military territorial weapon within the current “borderlineisorder”.

KIOSK/КИОСК
KIOSK for useful knowledge. Space control 1

Concept & Programme: Hannah Hurtzig, Anselm Franke (Tulip House)
Concept, design KIOSK: Stephen Craig
Audiovisual conception: Production One/cine plus
Construction: a-mano joinery, Karlsruhe
Archivist: Philipp Schmidt
Excerpts: Ronald Düker
Technical coordination: Jochen Massar

Replacement City Office

Production management Tulip House: Katharina von Wilcke
Organisational management: Ellen Hofmann
Project dramaturgy: Christoph Gurk and Bettina Masuch
Press and public relations: Kirsten Herkenrath
Assistance PR and Organization: Jenny Helch
Finances: Anke Marshal
Internship: Theresia Bock, Nora Korecky
Housekeeper: Gerry Gutsche
Catering: Bouffe Gourmante

The KIOSK is part of the ErsatzStadt project
ErsatzStadt is an initiative project of the German Federal Cultural Foundation in cooperation with the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and is directed in alternating presentations by two curator teams: metroZones (Jochen Becker and Stephan Lanz) and Tulip House (Anselm Franke and Hannah Hurtzig)

Raumkontrolle1 was created in collaboration with the exhibition Territories at KW, Berlin
Location: Villa Elisabeth, Invalidenstrasse, Berlin, 2003