The conference addresses two major subjects:The multiple meanings of the new urban wars: asymmetric armed conflict, US Army training for the "urban enemy," forms of economic violence that kill, cities and urban space as a technology for war, reapropriating the city of fear, civil war refugees and their flight from and to cities, measuring human rights violations during war.The limits of power and of war: the role of the civic, war and law, the growing global web of interdependencies -- all can contest the most powerful states and all can undermine the idea of victory in war. Conditions under which powerlessness becomes complex and transcends mere victimhood
Cities and the New Wars (PROGRAMA)
Friday, September 25, 2009
1:00 – 1:30 Introduction
Saskia Sassen
Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Member, Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University.
1:30 – 3 Geographies of Terror
Arjun Appadurai
Goddard Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University
Stephen Graham
Professor of Human Geography and Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of Cities and Regions, University of Durham.
Jessica Stern
Professor of Law and Affiliate, the Belfer Center's International Security Program, Harvard University.
3-4 War and Displacement
Les Roberts
Associate Clinical Professor of Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and former Director of Health Policy at the International Rescue Committee.
Karen Jacobsen
Associate Professor at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, and Academic Director of the Feinstein International Center, Tufts University
4 – 4:15 Break
4:15 – 5:15 Economic Violence
Sudhir Venkatesh
William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, Columbia University.
Claire Cutler
Professor of International Law and Relations, University of Victoria, Canada.
5:15 – 6:45 Urban Spaces as a Technology of War
Eyal Weizman
Architect, Profesor and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College. Member, architectural collective "Decolonizing Architecture" in Beit Sahour/Palestine.
Peter Marcuse
Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Presevation at Columbia University.
Partha Chatterjee
Professor of Anthropology and member of the Committee on Global thought at Columbia University and, Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta, India.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Dictionary of War Project
A collaborative platform for creating concepts on the topic of "war". This is their first US presentation. Previous events have been held in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz, Berlin, Novi Sad, Gwangju, Bolzano and Taipei. Fifteen speakers will each present a concept that plays a crucial role in the contemporary discourse of war and urban space. Such a concept might be a term that needs to be newly created, one that has been neglected so far, or one that needs to be re-invented.
The concepts will be presented in 20-minutes time slots, in alphabetical order and without a break; they are recorded in a television studio setup, encoded in real-time and published on the internet.
Dictionaryofwar.org
About the Speakers
Arjun Appadurai is the the John Dewey Professor in the Social Sciences at The New School. He earned his BA from Brandeis University in 1970, and his MA and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 1973 and 1976, respectively. He has authored numerous books and scholarly articles including Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (2006, Duke University Press) and Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, (1997, Oxford University Press, Delhi). His current research focuses on ethnic violence in the context of globalization; the cultural dimensions of social crisis in Mumbai; and emergent transnational organizational forms and new practices of sovereignty.
Elazar Barkan is Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Barkan received his BA from Tel Aviv University and his PhD from Brandeis University in Comparative European History. Barkan's research interests center on the role of history in contemporary society and politics, with particular emphasis on the response to gross historical crimes and injustices, and human rights. His most recent work is Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation (an edited volume with Alexander Karn, Stanford University Press, 2006).
Ted Byfield is an Asissant Professor in the Communication Design and Technology Department at Parsons the New School for Design, and a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project. He writes on subjects ranging from space photography to Internet governance, and has been published in First Monday, Frieze, Le Monde Diplomatique, Mute, and Stanford Humanities Review. Byfield has served as co-editor of README! (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, 1999) and NKPVI (Venice/Ljublijana: MGLC, 2001), and co-organizer of several conferences including Tulipomania: A Critique of the New Economy (Amsterdam 2000), blur_02 (New York 2002) and Next 5 Minutes 4 (Amsterdam 2003). Current research interests include the etymology of words central to describing the rise of ICT-oriented cultures, the ways in which social discourses are expressed through technical interfaces, alternatives to privacy, and critical perspectives on data visualization.
Partha Chatterjee is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University and a Professor of Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta, India. A major focus of Partha Chatterjee’s work is nationalism, but in order to follow his thoughts on this topic, one must simultaneously think also of colonialism, post-colonialism, modernity, and the idea of the nation-state, and also summon up, simultaneously with that cluster of concepts, a not-nationalist and counter-colonial viewpoint about what these terms actually represent (or could actually represent), with special reference to India. Chatterjee also studies issues of national borders, sovereignty, citizenship, welfare and democracy, and was a founding member of the subaltern studies group of historians.
Tony Conrad is an American video artist, filmmaker, musician, composer, and writer. He first gained attention in avant-garde film circles in 1963 for the soundtrack for Jack Smith's underground film, Flaming Creatures and then for directing The Flicker [1966] which explored the analogical relationship between harmonic structures in music and flickering light. As a musician, Conrad was an early member of the Theater of Eternal Music, along with John Cale and La Monte Young. In 1972, he collaborated with the rock group Faust on the release of Outside the Dream Syndicate. During the ‘80s and ‘90s he contributed hundreds of programs to public access cable television in Buffalo, NY. In 2008 the Tate Modern invited Conrad to present a new performance piece and showed his film and video work. In 2009 his Yellow Movies were selected for the Venice Biennial. He teaches video in the Department of Media Study of the University at Buffalo.
Susan Crile
Claire Cutler is a Professor of International Law and Relations in the Political Science Department at the University of Victoria. She received her BA and PhD at the University of British Columbia, an MSc at the London School of Economics and Political Science as well as an LLB at McGill. Cutler specializes in the intersection of international law and international politics and is interested in developing critical theory in international law. Her contemporary research focuses upon institutions and processes for dispute resolution in international law. Her publications include Private Authority and International Affairs, edited with Virginia Haufler and Tony Porter (New York: State University of New York Press, 1999) and Private Power and Global Authority: Transnational Merchant Law in the Global Political Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Dr. Cutler is a Research Fellow with the Centre for Global Political Economy, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC.
Ashley Dawson is associate professor of English at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and at the College of Staten Island/CUNY. He is the author of Mongrel Nation: Diasporic Culture and the Making of Postcolonial Britain (Michigan, 2007) and co-editor of three essay collections: Democracy, the State, and the Struggle for Global Justice (Routledge, 2009); Dangerous Professors: Academic Freedom and the National Security Campus (Michigan, 2009); and Exceptional State: Contemporary U.S. Culture and the New Imperialism (Duke, 2007).
James Der Derian is a research professor with a focus on global security at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University where he leads a research initiative, "Beyond Terror: Innovating Global Security and Media for the 21st Century." He is also the author most recently of Virtuous War: Mapping the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (Routledge, 2nd ed. 2009) and Critical Practices in International Theory (Routledge, 2009). He has produced two film documentaries, Virtual Y2K and After 9/11, and is at work on a third, Cultural Warriors. Der Derian was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he completed a M.Phil. and D.Phil. in international relations.
Environmentalists Against War (Gar Smith)
Yasmine Ergas is an Adjunct Associate Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Ergas holds degrees in Sociology from the Universities of Sussex and Rome and a J.D. from Columbia University. She has served as a consultant to international organizations including the OECD, WHO and UNESCO. Ergas' numerous publications include A History of Women (Cambridge: 1994); and "Child Care Policies in Comparative Perspective" for the OECD, and Lone Parents: The Economic Challenge (Paris: 1990). Her research interests focus on international law and domestic public policy, the redefinition of national sovereignty and the intersections of corporate law, international law and human rights.
Karen Jacobsen is Associate Professor and Academic Director at Feinstein International Center, Tufts University, and teaches at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, also at Tufts. She is also the director of the Refugees and Forced Migration Program at the Feinstein Center. Jacobsen's current research focuses on urban refugees and IDPs, and on livelihood interventions in conflict-affected areas. Her most recent book, The Economic Life of Refugees was published in 2005. She holds a B.A. from University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Fiona Jeffries is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Her current research explores the circulation of social struggles against the political use of fear in contested spaces of production, consumption and differentiation. Her published work includes essays on contemporary urban social movements and the role of communication practices in the production of alternative globalizations.
Danny Kaplan specializes in the anthropology of emotions through the prism of friendship and nationalism. His current interests focus on media and the representation of emergency. He is the author of Brothers and Others in Arms: The Making of Love and War in Israeli Combat Units (Haworth Press 2003) and The Men We Loved: Male Friendship and Nationalism in Israeli Culture (Berghahn Books 2006). His recent articles include: The Songs of the Siren: Engineering National Time on Israeli Radio. Cultural Anthropology 24(2),313-345. Kaplan heads the masculinity track of the Gender Studies Program at Bar Ilan University, Israel.
Jennifer S. Light is Associate Professor of Communication Studies, History, and Sociology and a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Light has a BA in history and literature from Harvard, an MPhil in history and the philosophy of science from Cambridge University, and a PhD in the history of science from Harvard. Light's research investigates the work of technical experts in the political process, with special interest in these figures' influences on US urban history. She is the author of From Warfare to Welfare: Defense Intellectuals and Urban Problems in Cold War America (2003) and The Nature of Cities: Ecological Visions and the American Urban Professions (2009), both published by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Peter Marcuse is Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning at the Graduate School of Achitecture, Planning and Presevation at Columbia University. Marcuse holds a BA from Harvard, a JD from Yale, an MA from Columbia, an M.U.S. from Yale, and a Ph.D. from Berkeley. Recently, he has been widely involved with issues of housing policy and globalization. He gave a keynote address at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil in fall 2001, and his book, co-edited with Ronald van Kempen, Globalizing cities: A New Spatial Order, was published by Blackwell in 2001. A further volume, similarly co-edited, called Of State and Cities: On the Partitioning of Urban Space, has been recently published by Oxford University Press.
Suketu Mehta is Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, and winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the Hutch Crossword Award. Maximum City was also a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and the Lettre Ulysses Prize. In addition, Mehta is a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, the O. Henry Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. Mehta's work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harpers Magazine, Time, and Condé Nast Traveler. He is currently working on a nonfiction book about immigrants in contemporary New York, for which he was awarded a 2007 Guggenheim fellowship. Mehta is a graduate of New York University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Rosalind C. Morris is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University. She was Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender between 1999 and 2004, and Associate Director of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia between 2003 and 2009. A scholar of both mainland Southeast Asia and South Africa, she has published widely on topics concerning the politics of representation, the mass media, the relationship between violence and value, gender and sexuality, and the changing forms of modernity in the global South. Her most recent book is Photographies East: The Camera and its Histories in East and Southeast Asia (Duke 2009). Other books include In the Place of Origins: Modernity and its Mediums in Northern Thailand (Duke 2000) and New Worlds from Fragments: Film, Ethnography, and the Representation of Northwest Coast Cultures (Westview 1994). Forthcoming in 2010 are an edited volume, Can the Subaltern Speak? Reflections on the History of an Idea (Columbia) and a collection of essays entitled Wars I Have (not) Seen (Seagull Books).
Les Roberts holds has an MA in Public Health from Tulane University and a PhD in Environmental Engineering from Johns Hopkins. He did a post-doctorate fellowship in Epidemiology at the CDC where he worked for four years. In 1994, he worked as an epidemiologist for the World Health Organization in Rwanda during their civil war. He previously served as the Director of Health Policy at the International Rescue Committee. He is currently a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University as well as the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia Univeristy.
Saskia Sassen is the Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and a Centennial Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. Sassen’s research and writing focuses on globalization (including social, economic and political dimensions), immigration, global cities (including cities and terrorism), the new networked technologies, and changes within the liberal state that result from current transnational conditions. Sassen's written work includes The Mobility of Labor and Capital (Cambridge University Press 1988), The Global City (Princeton University Press 1991; 2nd ed 2002), and Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages ( Princeton University Press 2006). Her books are translated into sixteen languages. She serves on several editorial boards, is an advisor to several international bodies, and has written for The Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, and the Financial Times, among others.
Jane Schneider is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Graduate Center, CUNY; conducted several decades of research in Sicily, encompassing transformations of both the Mafia and Antimafia interventions; also worked on a broader comparative study of global trafficking and organized crime formations. Recent publications (co-authored with Peter Schneider) include Reversible Destiny; Mafia, Antimafia, and the Struggle for Palermo (Univ. of California Press, 2003), and "The Anthropology of Crime and Criminalization" Annual Review of Anthropology 2008.
Richard Sennett trained at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, receiving his PhD in sociology in 1969. A point of departure for Sennett's work has been the contemplation of personal consequences for workers as the nature of work changed with the altering face of modern capitalism. In the 1970's Sennett became one of the founders of The New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University. He has also served as an advisor to UNESCO and as president of the American Council on Work. Mr. Sennett divides his time between New York University and the London School of Economics. His publications include: The Corrosion of Character (W.W. Norton, 1998), Respect in a World of Inequality (2002), and The Culture of the New Capitalism (Yale, 2006). Most recently, Mr. Sennett has explored more positive aspects of labor in The Craftsman (Yale, 2008).
Jessica Stern is a faculty affiliate of the Belfer Center's International Security Program and a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School. From 1994–1995, she served as Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, where she was responsible for national-security policy toward Russia and the former Soviet states, and for policies to reduce the threat of nuclear smuggling and terrorism. Stern earlier worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In 1998–1999, Stern was the Superterrorism Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and in 1995–1996, she was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. She is the author of The Ultimate Terrorists (Harvard University Press, 1999) and of numerous articles on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. She received a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in Chemistry, a master of science degree from MIT, and a doctorate in public policy from Harvard University.
Ida Susser Ph.D., is Acting Chair of anthropology at Hunter College and professor at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, as well as adjunct professor of Socio-Medical Sciences at the HIV Center, Columbia University. Susser has conducted ethnographic research with respect to urban social movements in the United States and challenges for women in the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Puerto Rico and southern Africa. She was President of the American Ethnological Society from 2005 to 2007. Her most recent books are AIDS, Sex and Culture: Global Politics and Survival in Southern Africa (2009 Wiley-Blackwell), Rethinking America: The Imperial Homeland in the 21st Century (2009 Paradigm Press, edited with Jeff Maskovsky). Susser's forthcoming book is entitled Norman Street Revisited: Rights to New York City from the Fiscal crisis to the Great Recession (Oxford).
Gediminas Urbonas is an Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Program at MIT who, along with his partner Nomeda, has established an international reputation for socially interactive and interdisciplinary practice exploring the conflicts and contradictions posed by the economic, social, and political conditions in the former Soviet countries. Combining the tools of new and traditional media, Nomeda and Urbonas's work frequently involves collective activities such as workshops, lectures, debates, TV programs, Internet chat-rooms and public protests that stand at the intersection of art, technology and social criticism. Urbonas is the cofounder of JUTEMPUS interdisciplinary art program, VILMA (Vilnius Interdisciplinary Lab for Media Art), and VOICE, a net based publication on media culture. He and his partner have exhibited at the San Paulo, Berlin, Moscow and Gwangju Biennales – and at Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt/Main – among numerous other international shows, including a solo show at the Venice Biennale and MACBA in Barcelona. They have been awarded a number of high level grants and residency awards, including the Lithuanian National Prize for achievements in the arts and culture (2007); a fellowship at the Montalvo Arts Center in California (2007/08); and a Prize for the Best International Artist at the Gwangju Biennale (2006).
Sudhir Venkatesh is William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology at Columbia University in the City of New York. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Venkatesh was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University from 1996-1999. He is currently Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, and Director of the Charles H. Revson Fellowship Program, both at Columbia University. He is a researcher and writer on urban neighborhoods in the United States (New York, Chicago) and Paris, France. His books include Gang Leader for a Day (Penguin Press 2008), Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor (Harvard University Press, 2006) and American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (2000). His next book, under contract with Penguin Press, will focus on the role of the black market in the revitalization of New York in the last decade.
Stephen Graham is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Durham and Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of Cities and Regions. He is also Associate Director of the International Boundaries Research Unit. Graham holds a degree in Geography (Southampton), an MPhil In Urban Planning (Newcastle), and a PhD in Science and Technology Policy (Manchester). Between 1989 and 2002 he worked in planning and economic development at Sheffield City Council. His recent work has explored the ‘splintering’ of urban spaces and infrastructures, mobilities and cities; the implications of new media technologies for urban life; and the proliferation of urban surveillance systems which are increasingly automated through computer software. Graham’s books include Splintering Urbanism (Routledge, 2001)(both with Simon Marvin), The Cybercities Reader (Routledge, 2004) and Cities, War and Terrorism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004). His next book, Cities Under Siege (Routledge), explores the links between urbanism and militarization in the post-Cold War world.
Eyal Weizman is an Architect based in London. He studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and completed his PhD at the London Consortium, Birkbeck College. He is the director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College. Since 2007 he is a member of the architectural collective "decolonizing architecture" in Beit Sahour/Palestine and has been on the B'Tselem board of directors since 2008. Weizman has taught, lectured, curated and organized conferences in many institutions worldwide. His books include The Lesser Evil [Nottetempo, 2009], Hollow Land [Verso Books, 2007], A Civilian Occupation [Verso Books, 2003], the series Territories 1,2 and 3, Yellow Rhythms and is a regular contributor to many journals and magazines. Weizman is the recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Prize for 2006-2007.
On Saturday, 26th of September 2009, the "Cities and the New Wars" conference will host the 9th edition of the DICTIONARY OF WAR, a collaborative platform for creating concepts on the topic of "war". 12 guests will be invited to present a concept that plays a crucial role in the contemporary discourse of war and urban spaces. Such a concept might be a term that needs to be newly created, it can be one that has been neglected so far, or one that needs to be re-invented.
If it is the case that there is increasingly less difference between war and non-war, that war is the constitutive form of a new order, that war is perpetual and everywhere, then it becomes essential to desert from a war of words which can no longer be challenged or even critisized. Instead, what seems urgently needed, are new vocabularies, new terminologies that by abandoning old certainties are capable of grasping changing realities and addressing uncharted problems.
DICTIONARY OF WAR is characterized by its openness towards all sorts of formats, genre, media and conceptual approaches. Rather than defining consensus and limiting meaning, DICTIONARY OF WAR is about a non-uniform, many-voiced, asymmetric, and deregulated production of concepts as the tools with which to attain new ideas.
Up to now eight editions have been organized in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz, Berlin, Novi Sad, Gwangju, Bolzano and Taipei featuring more than 150 concepts presented by a wide range of activists, architects, artists, composers, choreographers, dancers, filmmakers, generals, journalists, philosophers, scientists, theorists from across the globe.
DICTIONARY OF WAR is a performance and a production space at the same time: The concepts will be presented in 20-minutes time slots, in alphabetical order and without a break; they are recorded in a television studio setup, encoded in real-time and published on the internet.
DICTIONARY OF WAR is a collaborative platform for creating 100 concepts on the issue of war, to be invented, arranged and presented by scientists, artists, theorists and activists at four public, two-day events in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz and Berlin. The aim is to create key concepts that either play a significant role in current discussions of war, have so far been neglected, or have yet to be created.
DICTIONARY OF WAR is about polemics in various respects: It seeks confrontation with a reality that is characterised by the concealment of power relations the more that one talks about war and peace. But it is also about finding out to what extent war may function as an “analyzer of power relations” that constitutes current changes.
Changes that have been producing ever new wordings: The new war, post-modern war, global war, immanent war - all sorts of labels that indicate that the juridical model of sovereignty would seem to have had its day: war as an armed confrontation between sovereign nation states is a thing of the past.
While this still refers to conflict between different interest groups that are defined by the degree of their intensity and extension, unlike in the past war serves to regulate rather than destroy or renew existing power relations.
War is a “constitutive form of a new order” that no longer knows an inside or outside, that not only destroys but also produces life. In this new world order there is no difference between war and non-war: war is perpetual and everywhere.
So like so many other things these days, war too seems to be subject to a de- and re-regulation process that radically challenges old certainties and replaces them with new premises that shall not be questioned. DICTIONARY OF WAR sets out to oppose war and, at the same time, calls for "desertion" from a war of words in which facts are created with such force in their communication and propaganda that they can no longer be challenged.
The aim of DICTIONARY OF WAR is to make the creation or revaluation of concepts transparent into more or less open processes in which we can and need to intervene; at the same time, the aim is to develop models that redefine the creation of concepts on the basis not of interdisciplinary but rather undisciplined, not co-operative but rather collaborative processes.
“At least, when we create concepts, we are doing something.” The idea of DICTIONARY OF WAR, then, begins by referring to the theory of creating concepts proposed by Deleuze and Guattari: Concepts must be invented, created, produced; concepts refer to problems without which they would be meaningless. It is not about definitions, anecdotes, original opinions or entertainment, but rather about developing the tools with which to attain new ideas.
The concepts are created by conceptual personae, who are not identical to the author, philosopher, artist self, but rather testify to a third person beneath or beside. According to Deleuze and Guattari, “we do not do something by saying it but produce movement by thinking it, through the intermediary of a conceptual persona”.
DICTIONARY OF WAR is not a book in the proper sense. It is not about texts, deadlines or editing but about performativity. The concepts are introduced in alphabetical order by their conceptual personae in twenty-minute presentations.
There are no restrictions with regard to format. DICTIONARY OF WAR will be composed of lectures, choreographies, films, slide shows, readings or whatever format authors, actors, organisers and conceptual personae choose to use.
Finally, DICTIONARY OF WAR may well be a kind of war machine itself: the concepts are not intended to be deployed as means of control that regulate meanings, but which rather activate developments and processes and evoke events. “To draw speech to oneself and bring something incomprehensible into the world.” (Kleist)
DICTIONARY OF WAR consists of a stringent concept on three levels:
1. Presentation
Every concept will be presented in twenty minutes, the conceptual personae may use this period as they wish. At least twenty-five concepts will be created per event in this way. The formulation and selection of the respective concept, the determination of its content, and the decision with regard to the format and mode of the lecture is incumbent on the conceptual persona invited. The concepts will be presented in alphabetical order over two days, each day session lasting approximately seven-hours. The stage set is adapted to the respective premises but will be founded on a concept, as yet to be devised, that will be based on a few recurrent elements that the conceptual persona may arrange in the period available. The respective concepts and conceptual personae will be announced by an off-stage speaker. The speakers will be accompanied onto the stage by a host, who will be available throughout for support, e.g. with technical matters.
2. Documentation
All created concepts will be documented. Two video cameras and a video mixer will be available for this throughout the events. The aim of the documentation is to make the lectures available on the Internet, and as such accountable and reproducable beyond the actual event. The documentation is explicitly not about creating another independent artistic contribution. However, such contributions may of course be submitted as supplements or additional material. If possible, the conceptual personae are asked to provide their manuscript. The documentation may also feature additional material exceeding the twenty-minute time-frame. The video recordings of the presentations will be published under a creative commons licence on the Web shortly after the events. They will thus be available as material for ongoing editing, comment and discussion, although, of course, always referring back to the original contribution and its conceptual persona.
3. Publication
Following the four DICTIONARY OF WAR events, a book will be published by Merve-Verlag, Berlin, to present the 100 concepts, appropriately adapted by the author where necessary, in printed form.
http://dictionaryofwar.org/concepts
Comittee on global thought
http://cgt.columbia.edu/
SASKIA SASSEN
http://www.columbia.edu/~sjs2/
Saskia Sassen’s research and writing focuses on globalization (including social, economic and political dimensions), immigration, global cities (including cities and terrorism), the new
networked technologies, and changes within the liberal state that result from current transnational conditions. In her research she has focused on the unexpected and the counterintuitive as a way to cut through established “truths.
In addition to her appointments at Columbia University and the London School of Economics, Saskia Sassen serves on several editorial boards and is an advisor to several international bodies. She is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Cities. She has received a variety of awards and prizes, most recently, a Doctor honoris causa from Delft University (Netherlands), the first Distinguished Graduate School Alumnus Award of the University of Notre Dame, and was one of the four winners of the first University of Chicago Future Mentor Award covering all doctoral programs. She has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, the International Herald Tribune, Newsweek International,Vanguardia, Clarin, and the Financial Times, among others.
