decolonizing.ps
(by Sandi Hilal | Alessandro Petti | Eyal Weizman)
Feriköy Greek School

by Sandi Hilal | Alessandro Petti | Eyal Weizman
Sandi Hilal       
Born in 1973, Bethlehem. Lives in Bethlehem. 
Alessandro Petti       
Born in 1973, Pescara. Lives in Bethlehem.
Eyal Weizman  
Born in 1970, Haifa. Lives in London.

Decolonizing.ps arose from a need to open up an 'arena of speculation' about the future of Palestine, and to encourage both imaginative and practical planning about the areas that already have or will be liberated from direct Israeli control. The group explores ways in which the architecture of occupation could be re-appropriated, and has created a manual for transforming Israeli settlements and military bases through different conceptual approaches such as 'parcelling', 'grounding', 'combining' or 'plugging'.
The installation Returns (2009), charts a wide field of political, social and cultural practices of return. Current returns are defined by attempts to navigate the complex relation between two places: the space of refuge and the place of origin. Since the places of origin and refuge have been irrevocably transformed and built upon, any return is always also 'a return to the built space'. The wall mounted Manual of Decolonization helps to investigate ways of returning that recognise, respond to, challenge and subvert the physical realities that have been created since the foundation of the state of Israel. Through its modularity it creates the potential for architecture freed up by 'fragments of possibility', and through which current political terms for a 'solution' to the conflict are replaced by fluid and adaptable proposals.