agora's blog

Refugees and borders, Palestine/Israel and the southern border

agora — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 12:38:01 +0000

Yesterday I acted as one of the volonteers translators at the presentation of the collective work presented by Indimedia Straits/Estrecho and some people working here supporting inmigrants passing to Europe.
Nieves Garcia Benito talked about how the Strait is now closely monitored by surveillance devices and the control is imposed on the air, on the water and below the water.
The Israelian architect Eyal Weizman, who wrote the essay "The Politics of Verticality",http://www.netartreview.net/weeklyFeatures/Weizman_English.html,
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-45-801.jsp, analyze the matrix of control (concept coined by the American/Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper (see interview with him at http://this.is/TheWall) and describe how the state of Israel want control the future Palestine state by controlling its air, its mark and its subterranean level.

Hakim Bey and "No Places"

agora — Sun, 22 May 2005 21:49:35 +0000

In a way the netphilosoph Hakim Bey and the anthropologist Marc Augé talk and write about the same thing when they formulate the concept of "No Places". Places which are "between", places where the wait and the action forms the place, transitory places, nomadic places, where activism and art meet and merge. Places where the hybridization of the content changes the forms and make the borders intangible and workable.
This is my phantasy about Tarifa and about Gibraltar, pockets of colonization where old gone empires keep the control and the key of the gates, as the Arabs and Jews expelled from Al Andalus and living in Marocco still keep the keys to their houses from the 16th Century.

Ana's blog and mapping the conflicts

agora — Sat, 21 May 2005 15:15:28 +0000

I wanted share the work we are doing with Eyal Weizman and Rafi Segal's "Politics of Verticality", linked to the Crusades as metaphor and the mapping of the conflicts.