Permanent Temporariness

Since their first work, Stateless Nation at the Venice Biennial in 2003, and throughout their more recent architectural interventions in refugee camps, the artistic practice of Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti has explored and acted within and against the condition of permanent temporariness that permeates contemporary forms of life. In their ambitious research and project-based practice, art exhibitions are both sites of display and sites of action that spill over into other contexts: built architectural structures, the shaping of critical learning environments, interventions that challenge dominant collective narratives, the production of new political imaginations, the re-definition of words, and the formation of civic spaces.

This book is organized around fourteen concepts that activate seventeen different projects. Each project is the result of a larger process of collaboration and is accompanied by individual and collective texts and interviews that contextualize and expand the reach of every intervention. Contributors to projects and texts include Maria Nadotti, Charles Esche, Robert Latham, Salwa Mikdadi, Eyal Weizman, Okwui Enwezor, Munir Fasheh, Grupo Contrafilé, Murad Odeh, and Rana Abughannam. Edited by Maria Nadotti and Nick Axel, co-published by the Royal Institute of Art, Sweden.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Sparks | In Conversation with Maria Nadotti
Separation | In Conversation with Charles Esche
Retrospection | In Conversation with Salwa Mikdadi 
Recollection | In Conversation with Robert Latham

Interlude I
On the Border 

Stateless Nation | 2003–2007
Statements 

The Road Map | 2003
From A to B
Asymmetries

Interlude II
Temporary Mandate

Fawwar Square | 2008–2014
Roofless

Interlude III
Residency | In Conversation with Eyal Weizman
Decolonization | In Conversation with Okwui Enwezor

P’sagot | 2008
How to Re-Inhabit the House of Your Enemy

Oush Grab | 2008
Return to Nature

Books of Profanations | 2009
The Book of Returns

Ramallah Syndrome | 2009
What’s Wrong with Being Normal?

The Red Castle and the Lawless Line | 2010
Lawless Lines

A Common Assembly | 2011
Parliaments in Exile

Interlude IV
Campus in Camps: A University in Exile
House of Wisdom | By Munir Fasheh

Shu'fat Basic Girls' School | 2012–2014
Notes on Participation

The Concrete Tent | 2014–2015
Inauguration

Refugee Heritage | 2014–2017
The Architecture of Exile | IV.B
Annex 5

Interlude V
Daar in Exile

Italian Ghosts | 2014–
The Afterlives of Fascist-Colonial Architecture

The Tree School | 2014
The Baobab’s Return
Mujawaara

The Book of Exile | 2016
One Hundred Stories | By Murad Odeh

Al Nada Social Housing | 2016–
Destruction, Displacement, Reconstruction, and Return
Agency | In Conversation with Rana Abughannam

Al Madafeh/The Living Room | 2016–
The Right To Host

Coda

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti are co-directors and co-founders of DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency) an architectural collective based in Beit Sahour (Palestine) that combines conceptual speculations and pragmatic spatial interventions, discourse and collective learning. The artistic research of Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti are situated between politics, architecture, art and pedagogy. In their practice art exhibitions are both sites of display and sites of action that spill over into other contexts: built architectural structures, the shaping of critical learning environments, interventions that challenge dominant collective narratives, the production of new political imaginations, the formation of civic spaces and the re-definition of concepts.