Panel Discussion: “Dressing / Undressing the Landscape” with DS22 tutors Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari, Rich Mix, Saturday, March 9, 14:00-16:00

How can communities outside the Middle East, including diaspora, engage in influencing the decolonization of public space and architecture?

Alongside the exhibition, a panel discussion on the Arab cities of Mosul, Baghdad, Riyadh, Ramallah, Beirut, Damascus and Gaza will take place to unpack their vanishing landscape and the way it is being ‘Dressed and Undressed’. Notions such as Home, re-production, re-construction and re-imagination of space will be interrogated by different researchers through film, drawings and mapping.

This event is FREE and open to all but registration is essential to attend.

To book please go to: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dressingundressing-the-landscape-panel-discussion-tickets-57315042836

The event will be organised by PART and the panel discussion will be led by PhD students and researchers from the University of Westminster and University College London.

Curator Yara Sharif invites guests to explore the concept behind the exhibition, and its importance as an alternative lens into a world of responsive architectural design.

The discussion will address the social and environmental issues of colonisation, where foreign architecture and spatial design can demolish not only functional space, but with it, layers of history, culture, memory and identity.

Chair : Dr Nasser Golzari

Panelists: Dr Murray Fraser & Yara Sharif

Exhibitors:

  • Palestine Regeneration Team (PART)
  • Yara Sharif
  • Hemali Rathod
  • Julia Topley
  • Sakiya: Art, Science, Agriculture
  • Sahar Qawasmi
  • Rim Kalsoum
  • Hiba Al-Safi
  • Nuha Hansen
  • Angeliko Sakellariou
  • Dana Nasser
  • May Sayrafi
  • Samar Maqusi

AWAN, which is about to enter its 5th edition, showcases the work of contemporary Arab women artists in the UK, Europe and beyond, providing opportunities for artists and audiences to celebrate, be informed and network whilst exposing new audiences to the work of emerging and established artists.

AWAN is produced by Arts Canteen and supported by Rich Mix London

Book Launch: ‘Architecture of Resistance: Cultivating Moments of Possibility Within the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict’ by Yara Sharif, 5th April, Robin Evans Room M416, 18:30-21:00

When: 5th April 2018, 6.30pm – 9.00pm

Where: Robin Evans Room M416, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, NW1 5LS

Join the author Yara Sharif and a number of outstanding speakers and panellists for the book launch of Architecture of Resistance: Cultivating Moments of Possibility within the Palestinian/Israeli Conflict published by Routledge.

Robert Mull, Sarah Beddington, and Tanzeem Razak will join the author with presentations on offering unconventional alternatives while dealing with contested space.

The author and speakers will be in discussion and open Q&A with panellists, Lindsay Bremner, Harry Charrington, Murray Fraser, Nasser Golzari, Kim Trogal, Nouha Hansen and Rim Kalsoum on themes raised in the book concerning spatial resilience, politics and place.

Speakers

  • 6.30 pm Harry Charrington Welcome
  • 6.45 pm Yara Sharif Introduction to the book
  • 7.00 pm Robert Mull On Offering Alternatives
  • 7.15 pm Tanzeem Razak Subverting the Black Narrative in Post-Apartheid Context’
  • 7.30 pm Sarah Beddington The Logic of the Birds

7.45 pm Panel discussion and open Q&A joined by

  • Lindsay Bremner
  • Harry Charrington
  • Murray Fraser
  • Nasser Golzari
  • Kim Trogal
  • Rim Kalsoum
  • Nouha Hansen

8.15 pm Drinks

Copies will be sold at discounted price.
The event is free and open to the public

About the Book

Architecture of Resistance investigates the relationship between architecture, politics and power, and how these factors interplay in light of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. It takes Palestine as the key ground of spatial exploration, looking at the spaces between people, boundary lines, documents and maps in a search for the meaning of architecture of resistance. Stemming from the need for an alternative discourse that can nourish the Palestinian spaces of imagination, the author reinterprets the land from a new perspective, by stripping it of the dominant power of lines to expose the hidden dynamic topography born out of everyday Palestine. It applies a hybrid approach of research through design and visual documentary, through text, illustrations, mapping techniques and collages, to capture the absent local narrative as an essential component of spatial investigation.

Endorsement

In this subtle, compassionate, and clear-eyed book, Yara Sharif offers architecture as both a tactic of physical resistance and a contesting form of knowledge and possibility – a critical mnemonic for a culture under erasure. Her profound mapping of Palestine beautifully harmonize space and life and, with courageous modesty, advance creativity and improvisation in defense of a beleaguered, precious normality. (Michael Sorkin)