On the occasion of DAAR’s exhibition, Common Assembly, Alessandro Petti will explore new forms of political action and association – collective protests — in the Middle East and around the world. The term Common Assembly comes to name a radical form of political participation and collective actions being used from Cairo’s Tahrir square to the stairs of St Paul’s cathedral. Common Assemblies pop up in different slippages and cracks in property and land systems: a park whose jurisdiction is ambiguous, in the relative extraterritoriality of a church land within the extraterritorial frame of the city of London, public roundabouts in Cairo and Bahrain. Could we think of Palestinians camps not as places of refuge but rather as those of assembly? Spaces where political participation and representation are organized beyond the idea of nation-state? Join Architect Alessandro Petti as he explores the powerful potential for space and spatial construction to change the meaning of political categories such as “Common,” “Assembly,” and “Occupation.”
Directly afterwards please join Hamid Dabashi, David Harvey and Anthony Alessandrini at 7.30pm in Proshansky auditorium for a related discussion, sponsored by Center for Place Culture and Politics.
