http://eipcp.net/transversal/0507/weizman/en
Some choice quotes:
"Rather than submitting to the authority of conventional spatial boundaries, movement became constitutive of space, and space was constituted as an event. It was not the order of space that governed patterns of movement but movement that produced and practiced space around it. The three-dimensional movement through walls, ceilings, and floors across the urban bulk reinterpreted, short-circuited, and recomposed both architectural and urban syntax. The tactics of “walking-through-walls” involved a conception of the city as not just the site, but as the very medium of warfare – a flexible, almost liquid matter that is forever contingent and in flux."
"Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. We were thus moving from the interior of homes to their exterior in a surprising manner and in places we were not expected, arriving from behind and hitting the enemy that awaited us behind a corner."
"In addition to these theoretical positions, Naveh references such canonical elements of urban theory as the Situationist practices of dérive and détournement. These ideas were conceived as part of a general approach meant to challenge the built hierarchy of the capitalist city. They aimed to break down distinctions between private and public, inside and outside, use and function, to replace private space with a “borderless” public surface. Naveh made references to the work of Georges Bataille as well, who also spoke of a desire to attack architecture: his call to arms was meant to dismantle the rigid rationalism of a postwar order, to escape “the architectural straitjacket,” and to liberate repressed human desires."
"The assumption of low-intensity conflict, as articulated by Arquilla and Ronfeldt, is that “it takes a network to combat a network." An urban combat is thus not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass, but the collision of two networks. As they adapt, mimic and learn from each other, the military and the guerrilla enter a cycle of “co-evolution.” Military capabilities evolve in relation to resistance, which itself evolves in relation to transformations in military practice. However, claims for total breakdown of vertical hierarchies in contemporary militaries are largely exaggerated. Beyond the rhetoric of “self-organization” and “flattening of hierarchy,” military networks are still largely nested within traditional institutional hierarchies. Non-linear swarming is performed at the very tactical end of an inherently hierarchical system."
"Following this logic Naveh claimed that “whatever line they [the politicians] could agree upon – there they should put the fence [Wall]. This is okay with me . . .but as long as I can cross this fence. What we need is not to be there, but […] to act there. […] Withdrawal is not the end of the story.” In this respect, the large “state wall” is conceptualized in similar terms to the house wall – as a transparent and permeable medium that could allow the Israeli military to “smoothly” move through and across it."
"According to Hannah Arendt, the political realm of the Greek city was guaranteed by these two kinds of walls (or wall-like laws): the wall surrounding the city, which defined the zone of the political; and the walls separating private space from the public domain, ensuring the autonomy of the domestic realm. “The one harbored and enclosed political life as the other sheltered and protected the biological life process of the family.”
"Rather than submitting to the authority of conventional spatial boundaries, movement became constitutive of space, and space was constituted as an event. It was not the order of space that governed patterns of movement but movement that produced and practiced space around it. The three-dimensional movement through walls, ceilings, and floors across the urban bulk reinterpreted, short-circuited, and recomposed both architectural and urban syntax. The tactics of “walking-through-walls” involved a conception of the city as not just the site, but as the very medium of warfare – a flexible, almost liquid matter that is forever contingent and in flux."
"Like a worm that eats its way forward, emerging at points and then disappearing. We were thus moving from the interior of homes to their exterior in a surprising manner and in places we were not expected, arriving from behind and hitting the enemy that awaited us behind a corner."
"In addition to these theoretical positions, Naveh references such canonical elements of urban theory as the Situationist practices of dérive and détournement. These ideas were conceived as part of a general approach meant to challenge the built hierarchy of the capitalist city. They aimed to break down distinctions between private and public, inside and outside, use and function, to replace private space with a “borderless” public surface. Naveh made references to the work of Georges Bataille as well, who also spoke of a desire to attack architecture: his call to arms was meant to dismantle the rigid rationalism of a postwar order, to escape “the architectural straitjacket,” and to liberate repressed human desires."
"The assumption of low-intensity conflict, as articulated by Arquilla and Ronfeldt, is that “it takes a network to combat a network." An urban combat is thus not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass, but the collision of two networks. As they adapt, mimic and learn from each other, the military and the guerrilla enter a cycle of “co-evolution.” Military capabilities evolve in relation to resistance, which itself evolves in relation to transformations in military practice. However, claims for total breakdown of vertical hierarchies in contemporary militaries are largely exaggerated. Beyond the rhetoric of “self-organization” and “flattening of hierarchy,” military networks are still largely nested within traditional institutional hierarchies. Non-linear swarming is performed at the very tactical end of an inherently hierarchical system."
"Following this logic Naveh claimed that “whatever line they [the politicians] could agree upon – there they should put the fence [Wall]. This is okay with me . . .but as long as I can cross this fence. What we need is not to be there, but […] to act there. […] Withdrawal is not the end of the story.” In this respect, the large “state wall” is conceptualized in similar terms to the house wall – as a transparent and permeable medium that could allow the Israeli military to “smoothly” move through and across it."
"According to Hannah Arendt, the political realm of the Greek city was guaranteed by these two kinds of walls (or wall-like laws): the wall surrounding the city, which defined the zone of the political; and the walls separating private space from the public domain, ensuring the autonomy of the domestic realm. “The one harbored and enclosed political life as the other sheltered and protected the biological life process of the family.”
