Nishat Awan | University College London (original) (raw)
Books by Nishat Awan
Articles by Nishat Awan
Journal of Visual Culture, 2022
Humanitarian agencies are relying more frequently on remote sensing, satellite imagery and social... more Humanitarian agencies are relying more frequently on remote sensing, satellite imagery and social media to produce accounts of violence. Their analysis aims at creating more compelling narratives for the court of law or of public opinion and has contributed towards a forensic turn, thus complicating the already fraught relationship between the practice of witnessing and political subjects. This article explores how digital witnessing allows us to ‘see’ further and deeper into places that are at a distance from us, whilst at the same time creating the conditions that make certain subjects recede from view. I will discuss these issues in relation to a country I am familiar with and one that has been central to the forensic imagination – Pakistan – although the particular geographies within Pakistan that this imagination works with are not mine. Thinking with non-linear temporalities of violence, I explore how the forensic turn may have actually contributed to the erasure of the racial...
Environment & Politics C: Politics & Space, 2020
This article explores infrastructures of subaltern resistance in Pakistan through a focus on spat... more This article explores infrastructures of subaltern resistance in Pakistan through a focus on spatial and performative modes and across a number of historical and contemporary examples. I start with the figure of the puppet, tracing it historically as an example of how culturally specific modes of dissent have evolved from a colonial to a postcolonial context, and further into a neoliberal space. I then analyse the practice of 'wall chalking', which could be considered a local form of graffiti that also embodies debates over religious and ethnic identity through the contested status of script in the country. In narrating these examples, my aim is to show how a specific form of resistance has developed in the country through the displacement of the dissenting subject. Here I conceptualise resistance as a Foucauldian counter-conduct that transforms space through a creative and embodied use of tactics. It is a form of subaltern resistance that emerges in relation to non-humans and everyday rituals and has developed in subtler (and more resistant) forms, through ways of enacting that thrive within and through the vulnerability of the subject.
Media Theory, 2020
Through discussing the persistent present of displacement the essay argues that a politics of tim... more Through discussing the persistent present of displacement the essay argues that a politics of time is being mobilised as a biopolitical means of control in migrant lives. This can be seen in the circularity of displacement, deportation and return, where waiting and disorientation become forms of control. The discussion emerges from field research and interviews I carried out in the villages of north Punjab, Pakistan, where many people are caught in this chronopolitics of migration. The migrant experience of borders is read alongside a critical interrogation of the computational technologies deployed in border management, including EuroDAC and iMap. They produce a form of imperial temporality for which the horizon acts as a constitutive trope of progress, while simultaneously producing a sense of a horizonless world through the networked logic and ubiquity of datafication. I end with a discussion of how it may be possible to find other orientations within these normative spatiotemporalities of a bordered world.
GeoHumanities, 2016
This “Border Topologies” themed section draws a series of texts that explore what design and arti... more This “Border Topologies” themed section draws a series of texts that explore what design and artistic research could contribute to an understanding of border conditions in a context of rising inequalities, conflict, and climate change. The common aim of the articles is to interrogate contemporary borders through the practices that produce them by focusing on how the border appears and reappears at different scales, in unexpected places and configurations. In doing so, some of the articles collected here insist on a planetary scale that questions the geopolitical as an organizing construct.
GeoHumanities, 2016
This article explores some of the geographies of crisis and conflict that have become increasingl... more This article explores some of the geographies of crisis and conflict that have become increasingly visible through the use of digital technologies. It attends to the visual politics embedded within such images, whether these are photographs and videos shared through social media or maps produced on platforms such as Google Earth. It also discusses recent practices of spatial analysis that use a forensic approach. Through focusing on the Pakistani city of Gwadar in the restive Balochistan province, my aim is to reveal the complex layered narrative that emerges out of and about such a place through processes of visualization. Gwadar oscillates between an anticipated role as a strategic regional port and the present reality of being positioned at the periphery. By working through these narratives, I explore what type of ethical spatial engagement is possible with such places that are often constructed as out-of-bounds by governments and nonstate actors.
Architecture & Culture, 2015
ABSTRACT The following maps explore how participatory democratic spaces can be represented throug... more ABSTRACT The following maps explore how participatory democratic spaces can be represented through their spatial and social organization.
Space and Culture, May 2013
Our research uses the concept of “territories” to describe the production of migrant space. The a... more Our research uses the concept of “territories” to describe the production of migrant space. The article describes a project based in London where the everyday practice of walking is used to map migrant territories, which are conceptualized as dispersed and overlapping, causing topological deformations to the actual lived space. We interrogate these deformations through focusing on the micro-scale and the everyday, mapping them as “scapes” and “spheres.” Using specific computational techniques, we transform the original walks into an architectural tool for investigating the fluctuations and flows of the contemporary city. In doing so, we approach
territories from two distinct angles: from the geopolitical perspective of territories seen as the product of the interplay of politics, power, and space and from the biological perspective of territories seen as the primal need of all animals, including humans, for space and a certain
distinction from their environment and from others.
Arq-architectural Research Quarterly, 2008
A postcolonial reading of a park in East London, a critique of 'space' that acknowledges the uniq... more A postcolonial reading of a park in East London, a critique of 'space' that acknowledges the unique position of the subject as 'mediator' and the role of objects in creating agency.
Book chapters by Nishat Awan
More Posthuman Glossary, 2022
Surface orientations is a concept and methodology for approaching digital modelling and mapping p... more Surface orientations is a concept and methodology for approaching digital modelling and mapping platforms as 'lure for feelings' that intensify experience and provide a form of orientation within these constructed worlds (Whitehead, 1978).
![Research paper thumbnail of Affective Witnessing: [Trans]posing the Western/Muslim divide to document refugee spaces](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/89334351/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Architectural Affects after Deleuze and Guattari, 2020
Handbook of Displacement, 2020
This chapter gives an overview of recent research into undocumented migrant journeys with an emph... more This chapter gives an overview of recent research into undocumented migrant journeys with an emphasis on the methods used to trace the displacement of people across international borders. I begin by addressing the ways in which displacement has been usefully conceptualised through a focus on the nature of movement. Through a series of examples, I reveal the inherent contradiction in the use of methods of tagging and tracking individuals within research, since these are all key to how the border regime itself functions. I therefore focus on activist research that aligns itself consciously with undocumented migrants, in an attempt to turn the techniques of border control against itself. Whilst focusing on methodology, the chapter also pays attention to the ethical implications of such research.
Feminist Futures of Spatial Practice , 2017
Historically, architecture has struggled with how to represent movement as it inevitably also enc... more Historically, architecture has struggled with how to represent movement as it inevitably also encapsulates time, and architectural representation has traditionally remained static. 1 But in order to account for movement within architecture, it is not simply a question of being able to represent dynamic situations, it is also the very nature of architectural space, conceptualised through the constraints of Euclidean geometry, that needs to be questioned. Whilst space as a concept has exploded in cultural theory, geography and many other disciplines, including also architectural theory, in the practice of Architecture it remains a container, bounded and secure in its three dimensions. Movement provokes a crisis in this
N. Awan (2012) ‘Kurdistan in London’ in, R. Tyszczuk, J. Smith, N. Clark & M. Butcher (eds.), ATL... more N. Awan (2012) ‘Kurdistan in London’ in, R. Tyszczuk, J. Smith, N. Clark & M. Butcher (eds.), ATLAS: Geography, Architecture and Change in an Interdependent World. London: Artifice, pp. 42-47.
Journal of Visual Culture, 2022
Humanitarian agencies are relying more frequently on remote sensing, satellite imagery and social... more Humanitarian agencies are relying more frequently on remote sensing, satellite imagery and social media to produce accounts of violence. Their analysis aims at creating more compelling narratives for the court of law or of public opinion and has contributed towards a forensic turn, thus complicating the already fraught relationship between the practice of witnessing and political subjects. This article explores how digital witnessing allows us to ‘see’ further and deeper into places that are at a distance from us, whilst at the same time creating the conditions that make certain subjects recede from view. I will discuss these issues in relation to a country I am familiar with and one that has been central to the forensic imagination – Pakistan – although the particular geographies within Pakistan that this imagination works with are not mine. Thinking with non-linear temporalities of violence, I explore how the forensic turn may have actually contributed to the erasure of the racial...
Environment & Politics C: Politics & Space, 2020
This article explores infrastructures of subaltern resistance in Pakistan through a focus on spat... more This article explores infrastructures of subaltern resistance in Pakistan through a focus on spatial and performative modes and across a number of historical and contemporary examples. I start with the figure of the puppet, tracing it historically as an example of how culturally specific modes of dissent have evolved from a colonial to a postcolonial context, and further into a neoliberal space. I then analyse the practice of 'wall chalking', which could be considered a local form of graffiti that also embodies debates over religious and ethnic identity through the contested status of script in the country. In narrating these examples, my aim is to show how a specific form of resistance has developed in the country through the displacement of the dissenting subject. Here I conceptualise resistance as a Foucauldian counter-conduct that transforms space through a creative and embodied use of tactics. It is a form of subaltern resistance that emerges in relation to non-humans and everyday rituals and has developed in subtler (and more resistant) forms, through ways of enacting that thrive within and through the vulnerability of the subject.
Media Theory, 2020
Through discussing the persistent present of displacement the essay argues that a politics of tim... more Through discussing the persistent present of displacement the essay argues that a politics of time is being mobilised as a biopolitical means of control in migrant lives. This can be seen in the circularity of displacement, deportation and return, where waiting and disorientation become forms of control. The discussion emerges from field research and interviews I carried out in the villages of north Punjab, Pakistan, where many people are caught in this chronopolitics of migration. The migrant experience of borders is read alongside a critical interrogation of the computational technologies deployed in border management, including EuroDAC and iMap. They produce a form of imperial temporality for which the horizon acts as a constitutive trope of progress, while simultaneously producing a sense of a horizonless world through the networked logic and ubiquity of datafication. I end with a discussion of how it may be possible to find other orientations within these normative spatiotemporalities of a bordered world.
GeoHumanities, 2016
This “Border Topologies” themed section draws a series of texts that explore what design and arti... more This “Border Topologies” themed section draws a series of texts that explore what design and artistic research could contribute to an understanding of border conditions in a context of rising inequalities, conflict, and climate change. The common aim of the articles is to interrogate contemporary borders through the practices that produce them by focusing on how the border appears and reappears at different scales, in unexpected places and configurations. In doing so, some of the articles collected here insist on a planetary scale that questions the geopolitical as an organizing construct.
GeoHumanities, 2016
This article explores some of the geographies of crisis and conflict that have become increasingl... more This article explores some of the geographies of crisis and conflict that have become increasingly visible through the use of digital technologies. It attends to the visual politics embedded within such images, whether these are photographs and videos shared through social media or maps produced on platforms such as Google Earth. It also discusses recent practices of spatial analysis that use a forensic approach. Through focusing on the Pakistani city of Gwadar in the restive Balochistan province, my aim is to reveal the complex layered narrative that emerges out of and about such a place through processes of visualization. Gwadar oscillates between an anticipated role as a strategic regional port and the present reality of being positioned at the periphery. By working through these narratives, I explore what type of ethical spatial engagement is possible with such places that are often constructed as out-of-bounds by governments and nonstate actors.
Architecture & Culture, 2015
ABSTRACT The following maps explore how participatory democratic spaces can be represented throug... more ABSTRACT The following maps explore how participatory democratic spaces can be represented through their spatial and social organization.
Space and Culture, May 2013
Our research uses the concept of “territories” to describe the production of migrant space. The a... more Our research uses the concept of “territories” to describe the production of migrant space. The article describes a project based in London where the everyday practice of walking is used to map migrant territories, which are conceptualized as dispersed and overlapping, causing topological deformations to the actual lived space. We interrogate these deformations through focusing on the micro-scale and the everyday, mapping them as “scapes” and “spheres.” Using specific computational techniques, we transform the original walks into an architectural tool for investigating the fluctuations and flows of the contemporary city. In doing so, we approach
territories from two distinct angles: from the geopolitical perspective of territories seen as the product of the interplay of politics, power, and space and from the biological perspective of territories seen as the primal need of all animals, including humans, for space and a certain
distinction from their environment and from others.
Arq-architectural Research Quarterly, 2008
A postcolonial reading of a park in East London, a critique of 'space' that acknowledges the uniq... more A postcolonial reading of a park in East London, a critique of 'space' that acknowledges the unique position of the subject as 'mediator' and the role of objects in creating agency.
More Posthuman Glossary, 2022
Surface orientations is a concept and methodology for approaching digital modelling and mapping p... more Surface orientations is a concept and methodology for approaching digital modelling and mapping platforms as 'lure for feelings' that intensify experience and provide a form of orientation within these constructed worlds (Whitehead, 1978).
Architectural Affects after Deleuze and Guattari, 2020
Handbook of Displacement, 2020
This chapter gives an overview of recent research into undocumented migrant journeys with an emph... more This chapter gives an overview of recent research into undocumented migrant journeys with an emphasis on the methods used to trace the displacement of people across international borders. I begin by addressing the ways in which displacement has been usefully conceptualised through a focus on the nature of movement. Through a series of examples, I reveal the inherent contradiction in the use of methods of tagging and tracking individuals within research, since these are all key to how the border regime itself functions. I therefore focus on activist research that aligns itself consciously with undocumented migrants, in an attempt to turn the techniques of border control against itself. Whilst focusing on methodology, the chapter also pays attention to the ethical implications of such research.
Feminist Futures of Spatial Practice , 2017
Historically, architecture has struggled with how to represent movement as it inevitably also enc... more Historically, architecture has struggled with how to represent movement as it inevitably also encapsulates time, and architectural representation has traditionally remained static. 1 But in order to account for movement within architecture, it is not simply a question of being able to represent dynamic situations, it is also the very nature of architectural space, conceptualised through the constraints of Euclidean geometry, that needs to be questioned. Whilst space as a concept has exploded in cultural theory, geography and many other disciplines, including also architectural theory, in the practice of Architecture it remains a container, bounded and secure in its three dimensions. Movement provokes a crisis in this
N. Awan (2012) ‘Kurdistan in London’ in, R. Tyszczuk, J. Smith, N. Clark & M. Butcher (eds.), ATL... more N. Awan (2012) ‘Kurdistan in London’ in, R. Tyszczuk, J. Smith, N. Clark & M. Butcher (eds.), ATLAS: Geography, Architecture and Change in an Interdependent World. London: Artifice, pp. 42-47.
The Conversation, 2017
Trump promised his supporters a "big and beautiful" wall. Accordingly, the recent design competit... more Trump promised his supporters a "big and beautiful" wall. Accordingly, the recent design competition required it, among other things, to look good-from the US side. Yet it seems unlikely that the wall will ever be completed. The areas where US border security deemed a physical barrier necessary and viable have already been built. The remaining sections of the border feature formidable natural barriers where countless innocent people have lost their lives. The wall brings to mind another seemingly impossible engineering feat from the realm of science fiction. In the concluding novel of Cixun Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, humanity is forced to devise an extreme plan to save itself from higher intelligence beings. One option is to create a "cosmic safety notice" by transforming the Solar System into a reduced light speed black hole. The idea being that if you cannot reach the speed of light, you cannot attack others and are therefore not a risk. The Black Domain is essentially a prison that humanity would enter into voluntarily in order to keep itself safe. The story offers ways of thinking about the current spate of border wall building: the US version is only the best-known example. India, too, is proudly declaring the impending fulfilment of its ambition to completely seal its borders with two of its neighbours. Pakistan, Iran and Hungary are also busy building barriers.
Diasporic Agencies: Mapping the City Otherwise, 2016
The aim of The Institute of Radical Spatial Education is to rethink professional and pedagogical ... more The aim of The Institute of Radical Spatial Education is to rethink professional and pedagogical agendas through a series of "actions" that will alter the space within the gallery and beyond. Over two days Spatial Agency will be working with up to 40 participants from a range of backgrounds and ageranges, to produce a manifesto on radical pedagogy. They will explore, discuss and visualise spatial education that leads towards radical social change. Work with them to transform education through spatial actions!
An immersive video installation by artist and academic Nishat Awan in the refurbished Bothy Galle... more An immersive video installation by artist and academic Nishat Awan in the refurbished Bothy Gallery. Grounded in original field research, Migrant Narratives of Citizenship: A Topological Atlas of European Belonging presented a collection of maps which follow the borders of Europe, particularly along the Black Sea. The exhibition traced a route through the borderlands of the ‘refugee crisis’ narrating stories of migrant journeys and the clandestine crossing of borders. An unfinished and provisional Atlas of European Belonging visualised Europe through its margins and the spaces of transit, movement and stasis produced by those on the move. This timely project, developed in collaboration with artist Cressida Kocienski, took as its starting point the historical connection between the way states represent themselves through maps and how citizens and non-citizens are defined. Awan considers maps to be world-making entities traditionally created by those in power, rather than as visualisa...
The term ‘diasporic urbanism’ addresses the difficulties of operating with diasporic space and of... more The term ‘diasporic urbanism’ addresses the difficulties of operating with diasporic space and of accommodating the material complexities of migrant lives. It proposes displacement and reterritorialisations as methodologies and ‘mapping otherwise’ as a tool for representing and working with migrant spatialities. Diasporic space is theorised as a relational space, whilst diasporic subjectivity is described as ‘nomadic consciousness’. The politics of the diaspora are addressed through the need to accommodate conflict (Mouffe) and through introducing ‘things’ and ‘matters of concern’ (Latour) into the democratic relationship. These concepts were tested in practice through my research which focuses examples of diasporic agencies in the everyday. From the Turkish and Kurdish kahve to a street whose physicality forces a certain visibility on to those who traverse it, to a park in East London that through being claimed by one diasporic group has come to symbolise wider notions of political...
Too often in mainstream architecture, environmental issues are directly attached to the building,... more Too often in mainstream architecture, environmental issues are directly attached to the building, in terms of control and mitigation. Buildings are treated as technical devices, and design for sustainability is focussed on the optimisation of systems to reduce energy use and in the choice of materials to reduce embodied energy, both in a move towards “low carbon” solutions. Clearly these are important issues, but this limiting of environmental understanding to the technical realm alone tends to treat it as an isolated system that can be dealt with on its own terms, typically those of efficiency and control. This leads to a sense that environmental issues can be dealt with through technical fixes, but this is in fact a false sense of security because it is clear that the environment is tied into much wider networks. Ecology, in relation to spatial agency, the environment is not isolated to matters of energy reduction and efficiency, but has to be understood in relation to the social,...
wonderland – MANUAL FOR EMERGING ARCHITECTS