85. In Flux with Alona Nitzan-Shiftan

Original Drawing by Tori Haynes

“1970s Israel was a period of taking things that were constructed and making them into things that are taken for granted, that become 2nd nature, that you don’t question.”

Alona Nitzan-Shiftan

This week, we are joined by Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, head of the Arenson Built Heritage Research Center in Haifa, Israel. This conversation looks at the question and problem of modernism and its relation to the formation of the nation-state, particularly as it relates to Israel and India.

Timestamp Outline 

2:40    Alona is currently in Haifa, Israel where she is the head of the Arenson Built Heritage Research Center. Founded in 1975, it is the first archive in Israel. It has a three-pronged structure: archive, research center, and publishing house.

04:05    Alona conducts research in the politics of architecture and heritage and architectural modernism in Israel

05:10    Her historical research is interested in the lacunas of the canonical histories of Jerusalem and Israel writ large where she investigates modernism and the building of the nation-state. “There are always contradictory narratives.”    ANS

06:09    Vikram and Alona begin discussing the parallels between their respective bodies of research

07:33    A part of this work involves looking at religion as part of the formation of national identity

08:25    What is your personal connection to Israeli Architecture?    VP

09:01    “1970s Israel was a period of taking things that were constructed and making them into things that are taken for granted, that become 2nd nature, that you don’t question.”    ANS

11:40 Underground Jerusalem

12:22 Chandigarh, India

12:58    In efforts to modernize the past, different schools of architecture compete over what Jerusalem should be.

17:25 Lewis Mumford and the Plan for Jerusalem

20:57 Sykes-Picot Agreement

22:45    What does a Post-post National or Post-Post Colonial City look like?    VP

24:26    Louis Kahn and the Hurva Synagogue

24:36    Dome of the Rock

25:13    “By trying to keep Israel international, it became settler colonial and a strong violation of human rights-almost the opposite of the post-post colonial city.”    ANS

26:45    Ottoman Empire

27:10    “Pakistan was created as an Islamic nation, but Nehru and Gandhi were keen to cast India in a secularist mode.”    VP

27:20    The paradoxes of secularism    ANS

28:15    Discussion of Judaism Sanctity versus Christian Sanctity

28:40    The Western Wall in Jerusalem

29:45    Discussion of Religious Zionism versus Nationalism as a secular practice

33:06    Garcia Canclini on secularism in Latin America

33:47    “Nationalism is philosophically very impure...its a very pragmatic project...it must use existing frameworks in order to make sense to its constituencies. Using existing frameworks, like religion, legitimates nationalisms.”    ANS

35:06    The Zionist Movement was first a Labor Movement

35:55    Kingdomism

37:09    “The bible had meaning for every Jew, Socialism didn’t.”    ANS

37:49    Louis Kahn projects: Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem; National Assembly Building in Dhaka; Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. 

40:45    Modernism was extremely compatible with National projects

43:33    “Nation-states are very much built on boundaries, narratives, objects. Space in flux (as in the information age) will negate the nation-states imminent fixity - no more capturing.”    ANS

53:25    Information flow erases the nation-state.

55:15    Zoom offers up a challenge to the fixity of the architectural monument, office, etc.

01:01:10    Build networks of similarities transnationally.