Tali Hatuka - The Design of Protest

The Design of Protest

Choreographing Political Demonstrations in Public Space

Tali Hatuka

University of Texas Press

Austin

is based, in part, on a paper co-authored with Aysegul Baykan, Politics and Culture in the Making of Public Space: Taksim Square, 1 May 1977, Istanbul (Planning Perspectives, Vol. 1, Issue 1, 2010, pp. 4968).

Copyright 2018 by the University of Texas Press

All rights reserved

First edition, 2018

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Design by Tali Hatuka

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hatuka, Tali, author.

Title: The design of protest : choreographing political demonstrations in public space / Tali Hatuka.

Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017048974

ISBN 978-1-4773-1576-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4773-1577-4 (library e-book)

ISBN 978-1-4773-1578-1 (nonlibrary e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Architecture and society. | Public spacesSocial aspects. | Public spacesPolitical aspects. | DemonstrationsPlanning. | City planning.

Classification: LCC NA2543.S6 H385 2018 | DDC 720.1/03dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017048974

doi:10.7560/315767

Contents

Preface

A woman wakes up in the morning; she is standing by herself near the window; she puts on her clothes, picks up her bag, locks the door, and walks onto the street. She is supposed to meet some friends who, like her, are frustrated with the current leadership; they want and imagine change. They have been planning this action for a while; their talks and meetings have brought them closer to one another. In these meetings, they have envisioned the eventthe routes to be taken, the messages to be presented, the boards to be designed, the flags to be hung. Debates are part of this dynamic, and much of their time is spent negotiating ideas and strategies among themselves. New members are joining, while others have decided to quit. The woman hopes that the action will be a successthat other people will take a risk and join them in realizing their vision.

This abstract description of dissent embodies the idea of protest presented in this booka planned event in a space that is envisioned in the minds of its organizers, who seek to publicly challenge the political distance between those who rule and those who are ruled. To be sure, the meaning of the term protest implies different things in different places; however, despite these differences, similarities can be found between diverse events that are taking place worldwide. This search for similarities in the ways in which change is configured or realized has been the key driver in this project. Conceptually, this search was influenced by Elias Canettis Crowds and Power, particularly his ideas on distance and mass assemblies, as well as by two more contemporary works, The Power of Distance by Diane Davis, who writes about citizens distance from the state, and Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance by Nira Liberman and Yaacov Trope, who explore the concept of cognitive distance and the ways in which individuals perceive particular events. I found these three works, though extremely different, to be particularly useful in examining the dynamics of protests and their spatial manifestations.

Attempting to figure out the process of planning a protest meant traveling from one city to another to interview different activists, some of whom are still emotionally living a moment that occurred years or even decades ago. Attending protests in different parts of the world, I was always an outsider, even when the actions took place in my homeland. As an architect and a planner, I decided to focus on and analyze the events formal attributes rather than its ideological or political messages. I saw the value in exploring the physical manifestations of citizenship, viewing them as spatial rituals. Through this exploration and related discussions, I began to realize that with the increased democratization and global urbanization of the twenty-first century, protests, as communication tools and a means for change, are not vanishing; they are instead becoming more popular. In part, this increased popularity stems from increased competition over resources and rights, where protests seem to be not only vital tools for concretizing grievances but also a means of creating temporary, yet tangible, communities in cities.

Indeed, competition and contestation are not foreign to me. Living in the Middle East, in Israela conflicted zone, where the concept of space is both dynamic and contestedmakes me constantly reflect on the fragility and temporality of power, beliefs, and territories. This habitus not only piqued my curiosity but also created some limits in terms of exploring this topic and, in that sense, relating to protests in different parts of the world; the books perspective is predominantly Western. Thus, I would like to see this exploration as the beginning of a wider discussion on the dynamics between protests and physical spaces.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

The book has three parts: Planning Protests, Spatial Choreographies, and Continuum. is a broad inquiry into the design of protests in public spaces. It is abstract in its approach, with each of its chapters suggesting general categorization of a particular dimension of the protest-planning process. The discussion is incremental, and the ideas presented in this part should be viewed as building upon one another.

, Bargaining Power, which discusses protests as bargaining processes regarding the appropriation of city spaces. Over the long history of civil protest, organizers have frequently struck bargains with authorities and police in advance. Negotiations between organizers, demonstrators, authorities, and police, both before and during the event, put limits on all parties and increase the predictability of encounters during demonstrations. The states power to permit and limit citizens tactics is still relevant today when addressing the relationships between activists and regimes, whether they are democratic or not.

, Spatial Choreographies, is about the specific spatial and temporal dimensions of protests. It investigates specific events detailed designs, not only as aesthetic manifestations but also as tactics. Tactics, argues de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life (xix), depend on timing and opportunities that must be seized. However, tactics are not the victories of the weak over the strong (whether the strength be that of the powerful people or the violence of things or of an imposed order, etc.). Instead, they concern the clever implementation of the protests planning strategy. Clearly, tactics cannot be exactly replicated (even by the same activists), but they can definitely inspire other protesters. The unfixed nature of a protests design is its strength, allowing activists to contextualize their ideas and actions.

Spatial Choreographies addresses the dynamics between temporalities and their spatial attributes. They are microanalyses of events that focus on the dynamics between the body and physical settings, between the protests social dynamics and ritual components (e.g., marching, gathering, and singing), dress code, and schedule (i.e., the timing and duration of the event). , Staging the Action, provides an introduction to these features, presenting the dramaturgical attributes of three key spatial protest prototypes: the