Neutrality & Exterritories

John Palmesino at Dictionary of war (Video) on “Neutrality”:
“Two points seem to be particularly interesting when we think of neutrality as a mean to manage postcocolonial, ethnic, racial, gender, political, social, military, technological, cultural transitions, as a dispositf of change of the contemporary space, tuned to balance the conflictual forces that flare up in almost every human settlement. First of all, in constructing an overview of contemporary human settlements, we are thinking of a world without borders, a world whose parts have become increasingly plugged into each other, and which today is completely cordless at every turn, in which we have migrations of an endless kind almost at every point of the world. The second point is that the implementation of this borderless world is accompanied by an intermingled and entangled overlapping of logistic supply networks, buffer zones, enclaves, extraterritorial bases. Wherever these transitions are occurring, new principles have been theorised to examine the nature of war and contemporary transformation processes. Today, not to have a policy, not to stand for something, not to take part, not to participate, to be a-political is becoming more and more a difficult, contrasted, almost immoral condition. Yet it might be in these very difficulties that to be neutral acquires a novel significance.”

And from the exhibition “Neutrality” at Fri-Art (see 2004/3):
“Neutrality is an exhibition on the transformation of space: international, local, urban, humanitarian, political, conflictual, economical, financial, military, institutional, global, individual.
[…] Neutrality is a specific way of organising matter in space in order to create an operational zone where to manage conflicts, contradictions, diversities”

On exterritorial areas:

project exterritories:
“exterritories ist ein urbanistisches Szenario für Städte und Regionen in hoch industrialisierten Staaten, die von Schrumpfung und Stagnation betroffen sind. Es beschäftigt sich mit einer internationalen ökonomischen Integration von Regionen, die bis hin zu fremd verwalteten Sonderwirtschaftzonen reichen.
exterritories stellt das Entstehen exterritorialer Gebiete als logische Folge aktueller Globalisierungstendenzen dar.”
Paula Bialaziewicz: “Existierende Beispiele wie CT HALLE (die chinesische Sonderwirtschaftszone im Osten Deutschlands) oder ADA in Detroit (eine innerstädtische Gated Community, von Südafrika verwaltet) widersprechen allen Grundannahmen politikwissenschaftlichen Denkens – dem Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen, der Unantastbarkeit der territorialen Integrität – und sie verfügen über keine historischen Vorbilder. Trotzdem folgt ihr zunehmendes Auftreten einer Logik.”
siehe auch complizen planungsbüro, shrinking cities (en), telepolis

An Architektur on Exterritories and Camps:
“With Guantánamo, an example was created for how a political system no longer orders legal standards and forms of living in an established territory, but instead employs exterritoriality as a constitutive element in maintaining power. As a spatial category, exterritoriality designates locations such as Guantánamo Bay, which are outside a state territory and its jurisprudence, but which are still controlled by the respective sovereign power. The suspension of order is transformed from a provisional measure to a permanent technique of ruling. Through the increase in the power of the executives acting as sovereign power, this results not only in the loss of the traditional separation of constitutional forms, but also makes the deprivation of rights a constitutive element of the new legal order. The state of emergency, which is manifested in the various forms of exterritoriality, becomes the new regulator of the political system. Alongside state, territory and nation, it becomes the fourth element of political order.”