Concrete, Barbed wire and Barricades 3500-FAKL-BETON

The aim of the course is to reflect on the problem of power of producing social spaces as spaces of conflict.

During the course we address two main issues.
Firstly, we reflect on two macro-logics of power of producing social spaces (cities, borderlands etc.) as spaces of conflict. On the one hand, there is the logic of dividing, shredding and segregating spaces and the populations inhabiting them. On the other hand, there is the opposing logic of merging what has been divided, combining what has been shredded, re-binding what has been segregated. What do these logics consist of? How did they emerge and change? What interests, aspirations and perceptions set them in motion and have been responsible for their rise/ persistence/decline?
Secondly, we look at how both of these logics work and operate as specific policies of producing, shaping and managing social spaces. In what contexts and configurations do they manifest themselves? What are and can be the power relations between them? What social consequences do they produce? We observe these policies through the lens of three material nodal points: concrete as a tool of occupation, colonialism and wartime architecture; barbed wire as tools for fencing, demarcating and preventing the free movement of people and things; barricades as a form of response to the above two trends and the radical claim to validity of an alternative trend.

The class is divided into 2 main parts.
Part one includes discussing classical sociological approaches to the relationships between power and shaping social spaces: Lefebvre, Benjamin, Foucault, Mbembe, Virillo, Harvey.
Part two involves examining contemporary politics of concrete, barbed wire fencing and barricades in the following spaces of conflict: Israel, India, Iraq/Afghanistan, Poland, Greece, Ukraine. Here we work with academic texts as well as with visual research material.