Liminal Zones – The Nicosia Seminar with Aristide Antonas, Haim Bresheeth, Celine Condorelli, Armin Linke, Maria Loizidou, Angela Melitopoulos, John Nassari, John Palmesino, Yiannis Papadakis, Ines Schaber, Florian Schneider, Eyal Sivan, Pelin Tan, Eyal Weizman and Phillipe Zourgane :: November 5-7, 2008 :: Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus, 68 Ledras Street + Goethe-Zentrum Nicosia, 21 Markos Drakos Street, Nicosia, Greece.

Any attempt to understand the rapid transformation of territories in the 21st century reveals shifting landscapes and moving boundaries, thus a continuous struggle for their redefinition through conflicts and exclusions. Different conditions of mobility and migration encouraged by the so-called ‘globalised world’ inscribe in material environments social and psychological borders. In this context Cyprus and its inherent division acts as one of the frontiers to the EU. The aim of this workshop is to explore such liminal spaces with a particular reference to Cyprus and the Middle East.

How are liminal spaces constructed and managed and how can one think them from an interdisciplinary perspective? What dictates the organization and management of these liminal spaces? What facts on the ground challenge the actual negotiation of such “zones under construction”? How do liminal spaces relate to a larger genre of boundaries present in contemporary urban environments? How do continuous fragmentations and reconnections in liminal zones shape contemporary urban societies?

This seminar proposes to engage in several roundtable discussions as productive strategies and tactics encouraging engagement between publics fragmented by the limit. We would like to explore the interdisciplinary roles of visual culture and architecture as porous interfaces within such a territory.

The symposium brings together scholars and practitioners from Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Palestine, Turkey and the UK.Liminal Zones proposes the creation of a research platform that will be continued in the future as a model for exchange and production of diverse methodologies.

Organized by Socrates Stratis & Angela Melitopoulos

Armin Linke – Deserted Islands

Yiannis Papadakis – City Tour: This walk explores various spatial dimensions of Nicosia, the capital city of Cyprus that eventually came to be divided in 1974. Capitals are generally regarded as the spaces exemplifying nationalist ideologies, and in Nicosia these processes acquired added urgency due to the ethnic conflict that took place in Cyprus, leading to almost obsessive efforts to inscribe the national Self on the landscape and erase the Other. At the same time, other social groups critical of nationalist ideologies have been able to employ ‘in-between’ spaces in Nicosia in order to articulate critiques of nationalism and foster interethnic cooperation.

Phillipe Zourgane – Free Zones: Colonization did offer the opportunity for architecture and urbanism to experiment new spatial regulations. The setting of a new regulation systems in those “new territories” did facilitate those experimentations with no impediment. In fact, societies of slavery, by nature, await from architecture to develop systems of filters, fences, boundaries, that can guaranty the security of the white man. Importation and use of those colonial systems are now effective in the contemporary city, worldwide. On the contrary, we will focus ourselves on the fact that architecture can become a tool for struggle against those control systems, on the fact that architecture has a power.

Pelin Tan – Neighborhood Resistances and Possibilities of Counter- Cultural Urban Spaces in Istanbul: The habitants of several districts of Istanbul and the local municipalities have been in a process of debate and conflict since the last few years. A lot of districts like Sulukule, which are economically disadvantaged and ethnically marked, are under the focus of the local municipalities for urban transformation. Here, the urban transformation means not to upgrade the physical environment of a certain rundown district and its social condition, but to replace the habitants and apply projects that are valuable for the urban market. Since the last three years, the neighbourhoods have been uniting for solidarity to defend their rights of dwelling.

John Nassari – Future Screens

Haim Bresheeth – Liminal Memory Zones / Matrix Research Lab

Ines Schaber – The Working Archive: Ines Schabers’ work revolves around questions of visibility. There, it is a matter of the back side of things (being) made visible; questioned in her work is specifically the status of the things that remain hidden, or are kept invisible. Central within this field of questions, is the role of photography. In her installative arrangements, she provokes a gaze and produces a sight, which constantly insist and questions the presence of things absent. Her work interrogates in what way photography, which is an artistic medium as well as a popular medium and a medium of the mass media, defines, fixates, or stashes away things and contents.

Florian Schneider – Imaginary Property: At the end of the 20th century new masses and migrant populations have become visible by claiming a right to access europe and to participate in globalization. At the same time information and communication technologies have generated and articulated new networks of information and knowledge distribution, but also entirely changed the ways in which we imagine access to information and knowledge.

Eyal Sivan -Common Archive: This talk will expose the theoretical background of a on going research on the strategies of redeeming perpetrators narrative and perpetrators’ testimonies as part of a media project untitled “The common archive” using the 1948 ethnic cleansing campaign in Palestine as a case study.

Eyal Weizman

Celine Condorelli – Common Use/Support Structure: I would like to talk about issues of property and alternative modes ownerships through the notion of the Common, and a particular history of the term. In the UK the term designates common land, that might belong to somebody but over which other people can exercise traditional rights. The Common supports a certain inhabitation of the public sphere which not only based in property but on use.

Angela Melitopoulos – The Blast of the Possible: The “Blast of the Possible” looks on the role of property in Cyprus after the failure of the Annan Plan in 2004 that triggered a real estate boom on the island. Today a new road map for reunification is discussed. This research focuses on the reasons of the boom, the significance of private space and property in the political conflict, the role of migration in the discussion on the constitution of the Republic of Cyprus. The research contains case studies on property claims that display different political forms of belonging and property rights. Property is discussed with an emphasis on what the imaginary quality means within such a political conflict at the borders of Europe.

John Palmesino – Cyprus and the World Without Borders: Cyprus is a knot on a vast net of relations, logistic infrastructures, procedures, protocols, supply chains, field operations that the UN Peace Operations is extending throughout the world to oversee its peacekeeping missions. This vast network is not an abstract phenomena: it operates on the ground and reshapes the terrain by means of new infrastructures, border checkpoints, camps, buffer zones, airports, ports, roads, hospitals, offices, compounds, etc.

Aristide Antonas – Nicosia Water Tanks: Nicosia Water Tanks is a project on the water infrastructure of divided Nicosia. It consists on the creation of a system of archives that “describe” the city’s water networks. The water infrastructure of Nicosia is mainly constructed after the traumatic stabilization of the city in 1974. After 1974 the water supply in the south could not depend any more to the important water source of Morphou that was located in the north; two different water supply networks (overlapping in some parts) exist thus in Nicosia. Both networks encounter problems due to the quality of water and the difficulty of finding it and circulating it. The sewerage infrastructure was funded by the United Nations after 1974 and is the only shared infrastructure of the divided city.