Symposium: Disappearing Cities of the Arab World

Speakers include Sharon Rotbard, Ziauddin Sardar, Salma Samar Damluji, Amjad Nasser and Ali Cherri

In the post-colonial age, Arab urban life has often borne witness to destruction through civil wars, foreign invasion and religious conflict. Old customs and architectures have been erased; in their place, a new landscape of globalization has emerged.

Disappearing Cities of the Arab World explores issues of architecture, post-colonialism, globalisation and psycho-geography. It brings together writers, artists, historians, architects and urbanists to explore the complex space that is the contemporary Arab city. Following short presentations, the speakers will be in conversation and there will be opportunities for audience questions.

The opening session examines the urban fabric of the contemporary Arab city from a variety of persepectives, featuring Ziauddin Sardar on how consumerism and commercialism have transformed the spirit of Mecca, Eyal Weizman on architecture and space in the Occupied Territories, Shadia Touqan on the restoration of Jerusalem’s ancient buildings and Salma Samar Damluji on continuing the centuries-old tradition of mud brick architecture in the Yemen.

Leading novelists including Amjad Nasser, focusing on Beirut, and Nihad Sirees, focusing on Damascus, discuss how their novels reflect the changing urban experience, the creative license that fiction allows in the representation of place. The session will be chaired by Paul Blezard, writer and co-judge of Banipal Arabic translation prize.

Artists and curators explore visual representations of Arab cities, in still and moving images. Ali Cherri will present extracts from a current film depicting Sharjah and Abu Dhabi juxtaposed with the past. Mohamed Elshashed co-edits the Cairo Observer, founded in 2011 to provoke conversation about urban life in the city. He discusses revolutionary modernism in Egypt and its legacy on the present day. The session will be chaired by Sheyma Buali, a programmer and researcher focusing on urbanism and visual culture in the Middle East.

Sharon Rotbard, architect and author of White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa gives the keynote talk, focusing on modernist architecture and colonisation in Israel. The event is chaired by architect and curator Sam Jacob, former director of FAT, curator of the British Pavilion at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.

BP Lecture Theatre, The British Museum