I was in Copenhagen last May 29-30 to get my annual dose of ideas and inspiration overload at the conference aptly called reboot. It’s an annual gathering — a community event to be more precise — that’s been going on for a decade; it has been a crossroads of digital technology and change where practical visionaries meet and reboot.
From the organisers’ own words: “2 days a year. 500 people. A journey into the interconnectedness of creation, participation, values, openness, decentralization, collaboration, complexity, technology, p2p, humanities, connectedness and many more areas.”
I like being in reboot, mainly because it’s so different from your usual corporate conferences. There’s an air of excitement and anticipation, but everyone’s just cool to everyone. The energy sizzles in the air and good will just overflows. It’s good to be stuck in such a place that houses stories and inspirations of people of different nationalities, who share ideas as artists, writers, bloggers, developers, entrepreneurs, researchers, analysts, teachers, cultural workers, designers, information architects, and so much more.
I almost did not go after having had long, tiring and bad day at work, but it’s a good thing I did. I really needed to shut down and reboot 😉
Walking through walls
This year’s theme was ‘Free’: not just the price, but the freedom to flow, create and re-create spaces and interfaces around and within us.
One of the topics that struck me the most was the talk on ‘walking through walls’by Molly Wright Steenson. It was a military strategy used by units of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on its attack on the city of Nablus in April 2002. Described as ‘inverse geometry’ as it re-organised the ‘urban syntax’, it used the streets, roads, alleys, or courtyards that constitute the syntax of the city in a non-traditional way; as well as the external doors, internal stairwells, and windows that constitute the order of buildings, the soldiers moved horizontally through blasted walls, and vertically through blasted ceilings and floors. Because the rebels interpreted the spaces made by doors, windows and alleys in a traditional manner — places where you can walk through or enter, but also places where you can be trapped and confronted — Aviv Kochavi, then commander of the Paratrooper Brigade decided to perceive these spaces not in the same way as every architect did. He considered it forbidden territory and thus looked for other ways of moving through the spatial boundaries they were in.
“…. We interpreted the alley as a place forbidden to walk through, and the door as a place forbidden to pass through, and the window as a place forbidden to look through, because a weapon awaits us in the alley, and a booby trap awaits us behind the doors. This is because the enemy interprets space in a traditional, classical manner, and I do not want to obey this interpretation and fall into his traps. Not only do I not want to fall into his traps, I want to surprise him! This is the essence of war. I need to win. I need to emerge from an unexpected place. And this is what we tried to do.”
I found deeply interesting the unexpected way the space — or the interface — was reinterpreted by the military. In this case, it was not the spatial boundaries that created and directed movement, but it was the movement itself — the walking though walls — that recreated the space around it. “Walking-through-walls” re-conceptualised the city as not just the site, but also the very medium of warfare.
I find this very relevant in our work with experience architecture, where we give structure to and analyse information on different digital platforms: it reminds me to keep on rethinking the interfaces we design and develop; to challenge the usual flows of data and how users access it.
But although I have a grudging admiration for this perspective, the tactic of ‘walking through walls’ has greatly impacted the democratic spaces offered by both public and private domains. By invading and worming through the domestic interiors, the inside has been turned to outside: private domains became thoroughfares of conflict where fighting takes place ‘…within half-demolished living rooms, bedrooms and corridors of poorly built refugee homes, where the television may still be operating and a pot may still on the stove.’
If they have walked through walls and reinvented the spaces around them, what could have then been removed or displaced? Which pathways have been blocked or rendered impassable and which new spaces are going to evolve, adapt and perhaps fill in the gaping holes in the walls?
Timi you re so nice and you re so smart. You re such a good friend too.
Ngunit… I was puzzeled by the way you wrote about the wall. I do not think the key-message here is redefining space but an oppressive force (the IDF) using methods, unapproved by Geneva convention, to destroy people’s resistance and doing such killing 60 civilians. That is what happened to the Palestinians of Nablus.
After reading your blog I picture loads of very creative and brillantly intelligent people thinking about thinking in a abstract, classless context.
Oppressors can be stupid and oppressors can be smart. Even Marcos made creative moves like making a geographical ring of ngo-project around a liberated village. I think one should never write about that without the perspective of the people being oppressed.
I was in Nablus long before this happened and loved the historical place with the tiny alleys and the lovely people and my friends Guido and Zohra went there days after the siege happened, so I guess it is close to my heart and I had to respond.
I still think you are a great person. And I am sorry I never replyed on the many inspiring and nice blogs you posted.
Timi you re so nice and you re so smart. You re such a good friend too.
Ngunit… I was puzzeled by the way you wrote about the wall. I do not think the key-message here is redefining space but an oppressive force (the IDF) using methods, unapproved by Geneva convention, to destroy people’s resistance and doing such killing 60 civilians. That is what happened to the Palestinians of Nablus.
After reading your blog I picture loads of very creative and brillantly intelligent people thinking about thinking in a abstract, classless context.
Oppressors can be stupid and oppressors can be smart. Even Marcos made creative moves like making a geographical ring of ngo-project around a liberated village. I think one should never write about that without the perspective of the people being oppressed.
I was in Nablus long before this happened and loved the historical place with the tiny alleys and the lovely people and my friends Guido and Zohra went there days after the siege happened, so I guess it is close to my heart and I had to respond.
I still think you are a great person. And I am sorry I never replyed on the many inspiring and nice blogs you posted.
hi elly,
i didn’t say i was for this tactic, but that the different way the concept of architecture was reinterpreted was the thing that caught my interest. i admire the reinterpretation, not the motive behind it. it could also have been the case that the resistance movement might have used such a way of interpreting architeture differently in the same way the tress, clearings, streams, foliage of the jungle is interpreted and used differently by the people’s resistance movement in the Philippines, for example.
I did write at the end that such a tactic of worming through the private domain has turned the inside into outside and has impacted the democratic space of both public and private domains. I also posed the question of what other spaces would be formed in reaction to the gaping hole of the wall.
That the hole in the wall was a result of an oppressive force doesn’t change the fact that it was still a redefinition of space and a different perspective on architecture, but that which impacts negatively democratic spaces. This was the point of my article. It is not class-based, yes, but that is because I refuse to reduce every phenomenon to the issue of class. Class is an important context, but it is not the only context. As a writer, I want to be able to focus on different aspects, and class will not always take central position. In this case, I chose to highlight this event from the point of view of space and architecture. This is not abstract thinking in my eyes, but simply a different approach and an additional opinion on this event.
No need to be sorry about anything and of course you should respond as you see it fit. But you must know that my standpoint as a writer will not always give all the conclusions myself but also pose questions for people to respond and react — as you have done.
hi elly,
i didn’t say i was for this tactic, but that the different way the concept of architecture was reinterpreted was the thing that caught my interest. i admire the reinterpretation, not the motive behind it. it could also have been the case that the resistance movement might have used such a way of interpreting architeture differently in the same way the tress, clearings, streams, foliage of the jungle is interpreted and used differently by the people’s resistance movement in the Philippines, for example.
I did write at the end that such a tactic of worming through the private domain has turned the inside into outside and has impacted the democratic space of both public and private domains. I also posed the question of what other spaces would be formed in reaction to the gaping hole of the wall.
That the hole in the wall was a result of an oppressive force doesn’t change the fact that it was still a redefinition of space and a different perspective on architecture, but that which impacts negatively democratic spaces. This was the point of my article. It is not class-based, yes, but that is because I refuse to reduce every phenomenon to the issue of class. Class is an important context, but it is not the only context. As a writer, I want to be able to focus on different aspects, and class will not always take central position. In this case, I chose to highlight this event from the point of view of space and architecture. This is not abstract thinking in my eyes, but simply a different approach and an additional opinion on this event.
No need to be sorry about anything and of course you should respond as you see it fit. But you must know that my standpoint as a writer will not always give all the conclusions myself but also pose questions for people to respond and react — as you have done.
Thinking classbased is not a reduction but an expansion, the more so in this case you described. People died their for example: children were droven over with catterpilars. In a struggle that goes back 2000 years. Do not worry: I got the point of the spaces that were turned around and all that. And you admiring that. But what I would really admire is if one of this smart people would come up with a creative idea for the palestinians to counter this tactic.
But rather you seem to indulge in admiring each others smartness. Without even caring to mention the context it is in. (which is kind of weird for people who like so much thinking out of a box).
In a way I wish I was also a writer to address this issue. I guess the daily confrontation and fight with misery and explotation here in the Philippines made me seem blunt to you. I see on your blog and the sites you refer to you are all more intelligent then me. I ll try to catch up with you, them on the creative thinking. Same time I will make class-based choices. So my knowledge can benefit the right people. It is about choices, this is what I remember from the conversation with your father in 1998. So yes my response was about me, what about you?
Apparantly you read my email as appologetic, filipino style I guess: always carefully. Today it is Dutch style 😉
Thinking classbased is not a reduction but an expansion, the more so in this case you described. People died their for example: children were droven over with catterpilars. In a struggle that goes back 2000 years. Do not worry: I got the point of the spaces that were turned around and all that. And you admiring that. But what I would really admire is if one of this smart people would come up with a creative idea for the palestinians to counter this tactic.
But rather you seem to indulge in admiring each others smartness. Without even caring to mention the context it is in. (which is kind of weird for people who like so much thinking out of a box).
In a way I wish I was also a writer to address this issue. I guess the daily confrontation and fight with misery and explotation here in the Philippines made me seem blunt to you. I see on your blog and the sites you refer to you are all more intelligent then me. I ll try to catch up with you, them on the creative thinking. Same time I will make class-based choices. So my knowledge can benefit the right people. It is about choices, this is what I remember from the conversation with your father in 1998. So yes my response was about me, what about you?
Apparantly you read my email as appologetic, filipino style I guess: always carefully. Today it is Dutch style 😉