Sunday 11 September 2011

Deluze and space of warfare

How IDF uses Deluze - they walk through walls!
this paragraph from 'Hollow Land' will explain

'Reference to Deluze i and Guattari is indicative of recent transformations within the IDF, because although they were influenced by the study of war, they were concerned with non-statist forms of violence and resistance, in which the state and its military are an arch-enemy. In their Book 'A Thousand Plateus', Deluze and Guattari draw a distinction between two kinds of territoriality: a hierarchical, Castesian, geometrical, solid, hegemonic and spatially rigid state system; the other, flexible shifting, smooth, matrix-like 'nomadic' space. Within these nomadic spaces they foresaw social organizations in a verity of polymorphous and diffuse operational networks. Of these networks, 'rhizomes' and 'war machines' are organizations composed of multiplicity of small groups that can split up or merge with one another depending on contingency and circumstances and are characterized by their capacity in themselves with military ideals such as those described above.
Naveh [Major General in IDF] observed that "Several of hte concepts in 'A Thousand Plateus' became instrumental for is... allowing us to explain contemporary situations in a way that we could not have otherwise explained. It problematized our own paradigm ... Most important was the distinction [Deluze and Guattari] have pointed out between the concepts of 'smooth' and 'striated' space ...[which accordingly reflected] the organizational concepts of the 'war machine' and the 'space apparatus'. In IDF we now often use the term 'to smooth out space' when we want to refer to operations in a space in such a manner that borders so not affect us. Palestinian areas could indeed by thought of as 'striated', in the sense that they are enclosed by fences, walls, ditches, road blocks and so on ... We want to confront the 'striated' space of traditional, old-fashioned military practice witch smoothness that allows foe movement through space that crosses any borders and barriers. Rather than contain and organize our forces accordingly to existing borders, we want to move through them' ... ' travelling through walls is a simple mechanical solution that connects theory and practice. Transgressing boundaries is the definition of the condition of 'smoothness'. '
end of quote, very interesting!

Saturday 10 September 2011

Israeli "operational architects'

Trained better than us in urban design and spatial theories!

Israeli Operational Theory Research Institute (OTRI) (operating in the decade of (1966-2006) run obligatory course for all high-ranking Israeli officers from the different corps of IDF. The school developed a curriculum that trains "operational architects". One of the reading lists of OTRI included the following titles:
Christopher Alexander: The Endless Way of Building: Patterns of Events, Oatterns of Space, Patterns of Language
Gregory Bateson: Steps to An Ecology of Mind and Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity
Beatriz Colomina: Architecture Production
Gilles Deluze and Felix Guattari: A Thousand Plateus and What is Philosophy
Clifford Geertz: After the Fact - Two Countries, Four decades, One Anthropoligist
Catherine Ingraham: Architecture and the Burdens of Linearity
Rob Krier: Architectural Composition
J.F. Lyoatard: The Post-Modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge
Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore: The Meedium in the Message: An Invention of Effects
W.J. Mitchell: The Logic of Architecture
Lewis Mumford: The myth of the Machine
Gordon Pask: Cybernetics of Human Learning
Ilya Prigogine: Is Future Given? The End of Certainty and Exporing Complexity
John Rajchman: The Deluze Connections
Bernard Tschumi: Questions on Space, Architecture and Disjunction and Event-Cities 2
Paul Virilio: The lost Dimension


Wednesday 7 September 2011

Matrix of Control

Jeff Halper (born 1946) is an anthropologist, author, lecturer, political activist speaks of the Israeli tactics to create fact on the ground which are irreversible and incorporate the West Bank into Israel and effectively paralyze the possibility of any viable Palestinian state.