FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 4, 2010 Media Contact: Diana Wyenn 213 237-2873 | dwyenn@calarts.edu  

Decolonizing Architecture A project by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal, Eyal Weizman DECOLONIZING.PS

The Red Castle and the Lawless Line (2010), photo by Alessandra Gola. Courtesy of Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency. Exhibition dates: December 7, 2010 – February 6, 2011 Opening reception: Sunday, December 5 at 4:00-7:00 pm Opening talk by Eyal Weizman in conversation with Steve Fagin: Sunday, December 5 at 4:30 pm A panel discussion with Alessandro Petti, Iain Boal, Teddy Cruz, Geoff Manaugh and others, co-presented by REDCAT and MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House: Wednesday, January 26 at 7:30 pm at REDCAT

The project of the garden historically represented a laboratory to test new ideas for the city and the territory. Architects and planners, in the walled and more protected areas of public and private gardens, tested experimental interventions that could not yet take place at the larger scale due to technical, economical or political reasons. The garden in this way became a place to verify large scale territorial interventions. The garden of the Red Castle located in area C has offered the possibility to explore creative, innovative and non-invasive

REDCAT is pleased to present the first U.S. exhibition by DAAR, Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency. Initiated by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman in 2007, DAAR is a project set up as a research studio and residency program in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem. The studio examines architecture to articulate the spatial complexities of decolonization, taking the conflict over Palestine as their main case study. Collaborating with a range of individuals including artists, filmmakers, activists, academics and non-profit organizations, they embark on a broad spectrum of critically-engaged and highly-focused research projects seeking to use spatial practice as a form of political intervention and narration. Offering new possibilities for insight and engagement, DAAR aims to inaugurate an "arena of speculation" that incorporates varied cultural and political perspectives as interventions within the political, legal, and social force fields that exist there. For REDCAT, DAAR will develop an exhibition that builds on their work over the last three years. Comprised of research material, photography, architectural models, film/video works, and a series of books, the exhibition brings together three core projects (How to inhabit your enemy’s house, Return to Nature, and The Red Castle and the Lawless Line) to recast the largely discredited term decolonization and to consider how the transformation of financial, military and legal infrastructures in the area can lead to what the architects have called "the construction of counter apparatuses that find new uses for the abandoned structures of domination." How to inhabit your enemy’s house deals with a fundamental question of how Israeli-built structures can be reused, recycled or re-inhabited by Palestinians at the moment they are unplugged from the military/political power that charged it. Taking Psagot in Ramallah, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, as a case in point, the project proposes a de-parcelization or re-organization of the area by superimposing pre-settlement landownership maps to the present plan of suburban gated communities, therefore creating new relationships between houses and their parcels, internal and external spaces, and private and public spaces and turning the "geography of occupation" against itself. Return to Nature employs architectural models and photographic studies as a proposal to transform former Israeli army barracks in Oush Grab into a bird observatory for migrating birds. Working in collaboration with the Palestinian Wildlife Association, the studio counters the usual process of "revolving door occupation," common with newly discharged areas, and transforms the building's original use by turning over the buildings to nature. The most recent project titled The Red Castle and the Lawless Line takes as a case study a newly constructed mansion of a wealthy Palestinian businessman perched on a hill in Battir, a small ancient village located five kilometers west of Bethlehem. The house, as it so happens, sits on the literal red ink line drawn on the map of the 1993 Oslo Accords that demarcated and divided West Bank into three zones with varying Israeli and Palestinian control. The architects propose this 5.5-meter band as extraterritorial space undefined by law, in a legal limbo that falls under neither jurisdiction, and seeks to use the "red castle" to transform this slight but significant territory into a critical site for architectural appropriation and intervention. Assembled together for the first time at REDCAT, the three projects represent the visual products of research initiated by the studio and its resident-collaborators including Michael Baers, Amina Bech, Suzanne Harris-Brandts, Armin Linke, Francesco Mattuzzi, Sara Pelligrini, Nadav Harel, Diego Segatto among others. The studio was recently re-established as the Decolonizing Architecture/Art Residency (DAAR) to capture its full range of activities and programs. By combining discourse, spatial intervention, education, collective learning, public meetings and legal challenges, they attempt to open up the discipline and praxis of “architecture”—understood as the production of rarefied buildings and urban structures—into shifting network of “spatial practices” that includes various other forms of intervention. The exhibition will also include the studio’s series of folios titled Books of Spatial Profanation, organized around the overall project's central themes of migration, profanation, confrontation, and proximity. Organized in conjunction with exhibition, a panel discussion co-presented by REDCAT and MAK Center for Art and Architecture will bring together Alessandro Petti, founding member and director of Decolonizing Architecture/Art Residency; Ian Boal of RETORT, the Bay Area collective of writers, activists and scholars,

and co-author of Afflicted Powers: Capital and Spectacle in a New Age of War; architect and UCSD professor Teddy Cruz whose work centers around urban research/design within context of the U.S.-Mexico border; and Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG. Moderated by MAK Center Director Kimberli Meyer on Wednesday January 26 at 7:30pm at REDCAT. The exhibition is funded in part with generous support from the Nimoy Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the haudenschildGarage. BIOGRAPHY Decolonizing Architecture/Art Residency (DAAR) was founded by Alessandro Petti, Sandi Hilal and Eyal Weizman in 2007. Established as a architectural research project based around a studio/residency program in Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, Decolonizing Architecture has since taken part in a number of international exhibitions and biennials. The institute has presented projects in such notable exhibitions as the 11th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale (2008); the 4th International Architecture Biennial of Rotterdam (2009); the 11th International Istanbul Biennial (2009); Home Works V in Beirut (2010); the Edinburgh Art Festival (2010); and, most recently at the Architekturforum Tirol in Innsbruck and 0047 in Oslo (2010).

Decolonizing Architecture was originally conceptualized and its pilot stage produced in dialogue with Eloisa Haudenschild and Steve Fagin, partners in the haudenschildGarage, Spare Parts projects.

GALLERY AT REDCAT Gallery at REDCAT aims to support, present, commission and nurture new creative insights through dynamic projects and challenging ideas. The Gallery presents five exhibitions every year, often of newly commissioned work that represents the artist's first major presentation in the U.S. or Los Angeles. The Gallery also maintains an active publishing program producing as many as two major monographs per year. Proceeding from the geographic and cultural specificities of Los Angeles, its program emphasizes artistic production of the Pacific Rim—namely Mexico, Central and South America and Asia—as regions that are of vital significance to California. The Gallery aims to facilitate dialogue between local and international artists contributing to a greater understanding of the social, political and cultural contexts that inform contemporary artistic practice. Gallery at REDCAT is open Tuesdays through Sundays from noon to 6:00pm or until intermission. It is closed Monday and major holidays. Admission to the Gallery at REDCAT is always free. REDCAT is located at the corner of W. 2nd and Hope Streets, inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles (631 West 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012). REDCAT | ROY AND EDNA DISNEY/CALARTS THEATER REDCAT is an interdisciplinary contemporary arts center for innovative visual, performing and media arts located in downtown Los Angeles inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Through performances, exhibitions, screenings, and literary events, REDCAT introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in this region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT continues the tradition of the California Institute of the Arts, its parent organization, by encouraging experimentation, discovery and lively civic discourse. For more information, visit www.redcat.org. REDCAT 2010-11 Season Sponsors include media sponsors Los Angeles Times and KCRW, official hotel sponsor The Standard Hotel Downtown and official piano of REDCAT Yamaha. Full REDCAT Acknowledgments can be found online at www.redcat.org/acknowledgments.

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