Vita
Eyal Weizman, born 1970, is an architect and has been Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London since 2005. Since 2011 he also directs Forensic Architecture, a European Research Council funded project on the place of architecture in international humanitarian law. It also serves as a research agency providing evidence in human rights cases and war crimes trials. Weizman studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and completed his Ph.D. in humanities and cultural studies at the London Consortium/Birkbeck College in 2006. Since 2007 he is a founding member of the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine. From 2004 to 2006, Weizman has been a professor of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and has also taught as a Guest Professor at Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and Stadel School in Frankfurt, as well as a Professeur invité at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) in Paris between 2010 and 2012. He lectures, curates and organises conferences in many institutions worldwide, for instance the exhibition and conference program on FORENSIS at the House of World Cultures (HKW) in 2013-14. In 2014 he has been appointed as Princeton Global Scholar.
Dated from 2016
Fields of research
architecture in relation to art, media, philosophy, law and politics; forensic architecture; forensic aesthetics; visual and spatial cultures
IKKM Research Project
Conflict Shorelines: Colonialism as Climate Change
Even the most militants of environmental activists regard climate change as the “collateral, damage” of modernity, the unintentional bad consequence of industrialisation, globalization and capitalism. Seen from the perspective of colonial history, however, and the climate, like the earth itself, was a project to be transformed, designed, made productive. Might climate change rather be a telos of colonial modernity? Since the 16th century, and the colonization of the Americas, the destruction of the native people and the displacement of the climate have gone hand in hand. Recently, it has become apparent that this period was a phase transition in earth system science. Later, colonial cartographers and administrators attempted to scientifically define, measure and map “environmental thresholds” within empire: notably the threshold of the desert, that of the forest and the ice cap in the polar regions. Making the desert bloom, the forest cultivatable and the ice navigable are a few examples. Today, these thresholds are still frontiers where political contestation, environmental destruction, climate change, urban transformations and armed conflict are deeply, perilously entangled. The research is a multidisciplinary attempt to examine the political, legal, epistemic and aesthetic challenges of this long conception of climate change.
Publications
Monographs
The Least of all Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza. London/NYC: Verso Books 2011.
Hollow Land: The Architecture of Israel’s Occupation. London/NYC: Verso Books 2007.
Edited Books
Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth. Berlin: Sternberg Press 2014.
with Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti: Architecture after Revolution. Berlin: Sternberg Press 2014.
with Thomas Keenan: Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of Forensic Aesthetics. Berlin: Sternberg Press 2012.
with Rafi Segal: A Civilian Occupation, The Politics of Israeli Architecture. Tel Aviv/London/NYC: Babel Press 2002.
Articles
“Dheisheh (Cisjordanie). Retours. Penser le futur dans l’extraterritorialité (un projet architectural)”. In: Michel Agier (eds.): Un Monde de Camps. Paris: La Découverte 2014, pp. 193-202.
“The Lawless Line”. In: London Review of International Law 1, 2013, pp. 201-209.
“Thanato-tactics”. In: Patricia Ticineto Clugh, Craig Willse (eds.): Beyond Biopolitics: Essays on the Governance of Life and Death. Durham: Duke University Press 2011, pp. 177-212.
“Forensic Architecture: Only the Criminal Can Solve the Crime”. In: Radical Philosophy 164, 2010, pp. 9-24.
“Legislative Attack”. In: Special section: Megacities and Violence. Theory, Culture & Society 27 (6), 2010, pp. 11-32.