See →.
The PowerPoint file is attached to an email sent to the Ministry of Presidential Affairs with the subject line “Presentation on the New Vision for the Syrian Museums and Heritage Sites,” Oct. 30, 2010, Email-ID 2089122 →.
In the foundation’s own words: “Under the patronage of The First Lady, Asma Al-Assad, the Syrian Government is launching a cultural initiative of exceptional ambition—the transformation of its museums and the conservation of its heritage sites. To celebrate and inform this initiative, Cultural Landscapes 2011, a new annual forum, will bring together an international assembly of thought leaders and experts from the worlds of heritage, contemporary culture, academia and business. This inaugural edition will take the Syrian experience as a starting point for a discussion global in reach and conclusion,” Feb. 7, 2011, Email-ID 765252 (see attachment entitled “About Cultural Landscapes”) →.
However, on June 26, 2011, partner museums call for a dismantling of the initiative’s institutional framework, the Syria Heritage Foundation. Earlier that month, the Financial Times reported that the organization had suspended operations. See Lina Saigol, “First lady struggles to live up to promises,” Financial Times, June 9, 2011 →.
Peter Aspden, “The walls of ignorance,” Financial Times, June 9, 2012 →.
Anna Somers Cocks, “Syria turmoil kills Mrs Al-Assad’s forum,” The Art Newspaper, Apr. 28, 2011 →.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised and extended ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 224.
Anderson, “Census, Map, Museum,” excerpt from Imagined Communities, available at →.
The exodus of Yazidis from Shengal is described in Liz Sly, “Exodus from the mountain: Yazidis flood into Iraq following U.S. airstrikes,” Washington Post, Aug. 10, 2014 →.
His name is Baris Seyitvan.
Wikipedia: “The Google ‘Ngram’ Viewer is an online viewer, initially based on Google Books, that charts frequencies of any word or short sentence using yearly count of n-grams found in the sources printed since 1800 up to 2012 in any of the following eight languages: American English, British English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Hebrew, and Chinese” →.
Osborne argues that contemporary art expresses the “disjunctive unity of present times … As a historical concept, the contemporary thus involves a projection of unity onto the differential totality of the times of human lives …” Peter Osborne, Anywhere or Not At All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art (London: Verso, 2013), 22.
As in the case of the relation between Germany (or EU-taxpayers) and Greece. Eighty-nine percent of the so-called bailout funds have gone to international banks. Only the remaining 11 percent has reached the Greek national budget. Even if only a fraction of this money ends up at auction, how would auctions nowadays fare without the constant subsidies from public funds that mysteriously end up as private assets?
“Suffice it to say, there is wide belief among art dealers, advisers and insurers that there is enough art tucked away here to create one of the world’s great museums.” David Segal, “Swiss Freeports Are Home for a Growing Treasury of Art,” New York Times, July 21, 2012 →.
Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (London: Verso, 2014).
“Freeports: Über-warehouses for the ultra-rich,” The Economist, Nov. 23, 2013 →.
Marie Maurisse, “La «caverne d’Ali Baba» de Genève, plus grand port franc du monde, ignore la crise,” Le Figaro, Sept. 20, 2014: “Selon un document confidentiel, le port franc de Genève dans son ensemble générerait chaque année pas moins de 300 millions de francs de retombées économiques sur le canton“ (According to a confidential document, Geneva freeport in total would generate no less than 300 million Swiss francs of revenue for the canton).
Thomas Elsaesser, “‘Constructive instability’, or: The life of things as the cinema’s afterlife?” 2008, 19f. The texts manifold implications for contemorary political thought and its relation to managed collapse cannot be underestimated, in relation to its discussion of technology but also political usage: “Its engineering provenance has been overlaid by a neo-con political usage, for instance, by Condoleezza Rice when she called the deaths among the civilian population and the resulting chaos during the Lebanon-Israel war in the summer of 2006 the consequence of ‘constructive instability’” →.
Cynthia O’Murchu, “Swiss businessman arrested in art market probe,” Financial Times, Feb. 26, 2015 →.
“Freeports,” The Economist.
Cris Prystay, “Singapore Bling,” Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2010 →.
Benjamin Bratton, “On the Nomos of the Cloud: The Stack, Deep Address, Integral Geography,” Nov. 2011: “The Stack, the megastructure, can be understood as a confluence of interoperable standards-based complex material-information system of systems, organized according to a vertical section, topographic model of layers and protocols. The Stack is a standardized universal section. The Stack, as we encounter it and as I prototype it, is composed equally of social, human and ‘analog’ layers (chthonic energy sources, gestures, affects, user-actants, interfaces, cities and streets, rooms and buildings, organic and inorganic envelopes) and informational, non-human computational and ‘digital’ layers (multiplexed fiber optic cables, datacenters, databases, data standards and protocols, urban-scale networks, embedded systems, universal addressing tables). Its hard and soft systems intermingle and swap phase states, some becoming ‘harder’ or ‘softer’ according to occult conditions. (Serres, hard soft). As a social cybernetics, The Stack that we know and design composes both equilibrium and emergence, one oscillating into the other in indecipherable and unaccountable rhythm, territorializing and de-territorializing the same component for diagonal purposes” →.
An extremely intelligent remark from an audience member in Moscow added that this was to be seen as a huge benefit, as a lot of shoddy “market art” would get safely quarantined without anyone having to see it. I sympathize very much with her point of view.
See →.
Bill Carter and Amy Chozick,“Syria’s Assads Turned to West for Glossy P.R.,” New York Times, June 10, 2012 →.
The story has since been withdrawn. More background can be found here: Max Fisher, “The Only Remaining Online Copy of Vogue’s Asma al-Assad Profile,” The Atlantic, Jan. 3, 2012 →.
Michael Stone, “Anonymous supplies WikiLeaks with ‘Syria files,’” The Examiner, July 9, 2012. This article quotes Anonymous’ initial declaration: “While the United Nations sat back and theorized on the situation in Syria, Anonymous took action. Assisting bloggers, protesters and activists in avoiding surveillance, disseminating media, interfering with regime communications and networks, monitoring the Syrian internet for disruptions or attempts at surveillance—and waging a relentless information and psychological campaign against Assad and his murderous and genocidal government” →.
Barak Ravid, “Bashar Assad emails leaked, tips for ABC interview revealed,” Haaretz, Feb. 7, 2012 →.
The emails can be accessed here →.
See the email here →.
See the email here →.
See →.
Studio Herzog de Meuron has been contacted for comment but has not replied as of the time of publication. For the answer from Rem Koolhaas’s studio, OMA, see below.
See →.
Martin Bailey,“Gaddafi’s son reveals true colours,” The Art Newspaper, March 2, 2011 →.
“Rem Koolhaas is very keen to visit Damascus with strong interest to participate in public sector and urban gentrification and regeneration of the city, and trying to keep away from commercial developments and suburban master plans, yet we wanted to sense and feel the current conditions of architectural and urbanization in the city before establishing any commitment . I also wanted to engage Rem in Damascus architectural school and establish internship program with OMA and the university.” See the full email here →.
“Rem Koolhaas is very keen to visit Damascus with strong interest to participate in public sector and urban gentrification and regeneration of the city, and trying to keep away from commercial developments and suburban master plans, yet we wanted to sense and feel the current conditions of architectural and urbanization in the city before establishing any commitment. I also wanted to engage Rem in Damascus architectural school and establish internship program with OMA and the university.” See the full email here →.
Ibid.
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. See the full email here →.
Suzie Rushton, “The shape of things to come: Rem Koolhaas’s striking designs,” The Independent, June 21, 2010. “An unlikely new client is Libya, specifically ‘a subtle group of people around the [Gaddafi
OMA’s exhibition at the 2010 Venice Biennale, entitled CRONOCAOS, included a section on the Libyan desert. The exhibition was based around “critical preservation stories” →.
A warrant for Saif Gaddafi’s arrest was issued by the ICC on June 27, 2011 →.
Max Fisher, “Syrian hackers claim AP hack that tipped stock market by $136 billion. Is it terrorism?,” Washington Post, April 23, 2013 →.
Hunter Stuart, “Syrian Electronic Army Denies Being Attacked By Anonymous,” Huffington Post Sept. 4, 2013 →.
Joshua Keating, “WikiLeaks to move to Sealand?,” Foreign Policy, Feb. 1, 2012 →
Information under the heading “Swiss Security” on the the ProtonMail website →.
One recent example →.
This ambiguity characterizes popular web tools that are supposed to safeguard anonymity, such as Tor. The Edward Snowden leaks revealed that the mere usage of Tor, or even searching the web for privacy-enhancing tools, actually flags people for NSA scrutiny (see →). A software designed to screen out surveillance actually ends up attracting it.
Angelique Chrisafis, “Leading Swiss art broker arrested over alleged price-fixing scam,” Guardian, Feb. 26, 2015 →. Bouvier has rejected these allegations, putting the blame on the allegedly defrauded Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev.
Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” thesis XV, in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1988), 261–62.
Ali Shamseddine and John Rich, “An Introduction to the New Syrian National Archive,” e-flux journal 60 (Dec. 2014) →.
Note the different strategies for publicizing massive leaks employed by, on the one hand, WikiLeaks, and on the other, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, and their numerous collaborators.
Most pronouncedly expressed by Peter Bürger, Theorie der Avantgarde (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1974). English translation: Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984): 90.
Which might fulfill the traditional role of a “financial tombstone”—a gadget that commemorates concluded transactions →.
However limited basic democracy may have been in Switzerland, given that general female suffrage was not established until 1971, and in Appenzell Innerrhoden not until 1990.
A term invented by Sven Lütticken.
