This.Is.Not.Magione
V. Altmann, C. Allen, L. Bonvin, S. Bryner, R. Grünenfelder, M. Hildebrand, S. Rohner, J. Roth, A. Selva, J. Weber | URBANISM ACROSS GEOGRAPHIES; LAND(SCAPE)/SPACE, SITE IMMERSION PALERMO, SICILY, 2022
This collective publication documents the reflections, experiences, methodologies and themes mobilized by student participants and our local collaborators in the Spring 2022 Urbanism Across Geographies track at the Critical Urbanism program in the University of Basel.
Our block course focuses on land(scape) and (urban) space as both objects of investigation and as sites of intervention—the very medium within which movement takes place and through which power and resistance are represented and exerted. The course examines the tensions linking the urban spaces, territories, infrastructures and practices engaged with at a local level with broader geopolitical scales and dimensions, paying particular attention to the historical colonial and imperial legacies, and trans-local processes that cross the imagined ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ divide. In doing so, the course explores how cities and territories are formed and their entanglement in the global systems of movement, circulation, accumulation, and displacement that produce global conflict.
Within this conceptual framework, we engage with—and seek to (un)learn and challenge—sites that interrogate notions of layered state power, borders, violence, territorialisms, the militarization of space, and the movement of people, ideas, goods identities, and solidarities. Taking place alongside site immersions in Palermo, Sicily in the Spring 2022 semester, our sessions are designed to complement the field experiences and site visits, and involve assigned readings, collective discussions, and individual presentations that focus on both written and visual engagements with the course materials and topic.