MSD at HOME with Anoma Pieris
Online - ABP Zoom Webinar
Architecture's Exceptions: War, Borders and Sovereignty
Can architecture contribute to an understanding of the multivalent histories of physical destruction, human displacement and material dispossession that have shaped our notions of sovereignty? A discussion on the underlying concepts, research processes and findings of two recently published books by Prof. Anoma Pieris, the research monograph Sovereignty Space and Civil War in Sri Lanka: porous nation (2019) and the anthology Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary politics and built space (2019).
Sovereignty Space and Civil War in Sri Lanka: porous nation (2019)
This ambitious multiscalar spatial study of civil war in Sri Lanka offers an intersectional, de-ethnicised analysis of political sovereignty drawn out by the struggle for territory. Based on vital retrospective findings from the five-year postwar period, when wartime hostilities were still festering, it convincingly links ethnonationalism to postnational border politics, marketisation, militarised securitisation and illiberal democracy. This book argues that internecine conflict exposes the implicit violence within nation-state formations; mass human displacements heighten collective and individual ontological insecurity and neoliberalism makes the nation porous in unforeseen ways.
Architecture on the Borderline: Boundary politics and built space (2019)
Architecture on the Borderline interrogates space and territory in a turbulent present where nation-state borders are porous to a few but impermeable to many. It asks how these uneven and conflicted social realities are embodied in the physical and material conditions imagined, produced or experienced through architecture and urbanism. Drawing on historical, global examples, this rich collection of essays illustrates how empires, nations and cities expand their frontiers and contest boundaries, but equally how borderline identities of people and places influence or expose these processes.
About our presenter:
Anoma Pieris is a professor at the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning. Her training is in architectural history and in geography with a specialist focus in postcolonial and subaltern studies methods. She has published widely on issues of nationalism, citizenship and sovereignty as viewed through the lens of architecture with a specialist interest in penal architecture from the colonial period to the Pacific War.
Presentation and Q+A
Date: Wednesday 30 September 2020
Time: 18:00 - 19:30 AEST* Melbourne (UTC +10)
Venue: Online - ABP Zoom Webinar
Event link: Once you have registered for the event, the event link will be sent to you via your Eventbrite confirmation email and reminder emails.
* London: Wednesday 30 September 2020, 09:00 - 10:30; BST
* Singapore: Wednesday 30 September 2020, 16:00 - 17:30; SGT
* Dubai: Wednesday 30 September 2020, 12:00 - 13:30; GST
* New York: Wednesday 30 September 2020, 04:00 - 05:30; EDT
* Los Angeles: Wednesday 30 September 2020, 01:00 - 02:30; PDT
Images:
Kovil bell from a fishing village near Kayts, AP 2010
War damaged buildings in Jaffna, AP 2010
Manzanar National Historical Site AP 2015