WHO KNOWS WHERE: A TREATISE ON INDISCIPLINARY THINKING by Jessika Khazrik B.A. Linguistics and Theatre Lebanese University, 2014 SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ART, CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY JUNE 2017 @ Jessika Khazrik. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medi- um now known or hereafter created. Signature redacted Signature of Author: Department of Architecture May 12, 2017 Signature redacted Certified by: Rene Green Professor of Art Culture and Technology Thesis Supervisor Accepted by: Signature redacted I Sheila Kennedy Professor of Archite cture, Chair of the Deprtment Committee on Graduate MASSA S IN E Students OF TECHNOLOGY JUN 2 0 2017 LIBRARIES ARCHIVES COMMITTEE Renee Green Professor of Art, Culture and Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology Jennifer S. Light Director and Professor of Science, Technology, and Society and Professor of Urban Studies and Planning Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nadia Bou Ali Professor of Civilization Studies American University of Beirut 2 WHO KNOWS WHERE: A TREATISE ON INDISCIPLINARY THINKING by Jessika Khazrik Submitted to the Department of Architecture on May 12, 2017 in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Art, Culture and Technology ABSTRACT The production of knowledge has been immensely tied to the production of space in both language and application. Through the use of metaphors and metonymy coupled with spatial strategies ofexclusion and delimitation, knowledge has been ramified into disciplines and fields whose continuous corollary integration in the distribution of labour reproduces taxonomies evident in the political and topological organization of the world. According to Max Weber, modernity dangerously establishes a fundamental disunity ofreason that through rationalization creates three spheres of value: the differentiated zones of science, art and law. This arises not simply from the creation of separate institutional entities but through the specialization of cognitive, normative, and aesthetic knowledge that in turn permeates and fragments everyday consciousness. Today this process is accelerating: 'interdisciplinarity', 'smart' architecture and the 'open lab' projects increasingly happen under the sway of a seemingly new ideology whose goal is to form a 'social physics' that controls, optimizes, and predicts both labor and dwelling. As a cybernetics that alleges to cognitively capture the environment and reproduce the self through data accumulation, surveillance and the ever-changing representations of AI becomes more opaquely predominant, labor is further obfuscated by capital while more territories are asymmetrically raided and enclosed for new primitive accumulations to take form. How to break from these epistemological boundaries that, heavily propelled by an enlightened expertism, occupy cognizance with pervasive claims to master and differentiate it from life? In this thesis, I will propose an 'indisciplinary' epistemology that studies and grapples While presenting indisciplinary studies on the legacy of polymath Ibn Al Haitham, the spatial politics and knowledge produced around a post-war landfill and its reconstruction, and the use of war as testing grounds in Al, I will ruminate on my work under the indisciplinary platform I have founded, The Society of False Witnesses. Through occupying disciplines in incomputable collaborations, expropriations, writing and cryptography, The Society of False Witnesses playfully probes exilic spaces and their epistemological repercussions on the performance and lexica of attestation. Hereby, both evidential and imaginary as well as past and preemptive genealogies will be limned to suggest an indisciplinary thinking that is in constant negotiation with its potential spatialization in relation to the cognitive and hidden arrangements of life, future and trace. Thesis Supervisor: Renee Green Title: Professor of Art, Culture and Technology 3 To the knowledge we wish we let loose before we had to leave or wereforced to remain while we had found toxicity tarrying in our bodies, future, and place. To those who were accusedfor seeing more than was required. To those who still cannot be satiated by neither labor nor education and strive to not withstand any proprietary andfettering claims over thought. To all those who do not want to teach the army but want to study collectively. To those who died along the way and remain the only survivors. To those who couldn't stay. To those who were forced. My deepest gratitude goes to the little sun traveler who was my mother, the blue bird who dreamt of changing names who was my father and my crypto love with whom I have spent nocturnal hours writing, hacking and conversing in the military institute of Terranova. To all those who came before and taught me extensively. To my comrades, collaboratorsand those whom I have still not met. To the ontology of the eclipse. To desire. This specifically goes to the Society of False Witnesses. 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS _ _ __---------------------------------- 07 PREFACE _ __ __------------------------------------------- 10 INTRODUCTION_______ ______- ___-_-_-_-_- ___-__-_-_ 12 METHODOLOGY_ _ _ __----------------------------------- 25 PART I CH I: FROM UNDERGROUND TO GROUND, FIELD AND DISCIPLINE: PLACES TO KNOW__-------------------------------- 32 CH 2: ON THE PATH OF INVESTIGATION: TRANSLATION AND PLACE IN IBN AL HAITHAM'S INDISCIPLINARY TRACE- 49 CH 3: ANYTHING BUT BEING BURIED UNDERGROUND: THE LANDFILL THAT WE COULD ONCE GO TO--------- 67 PART II CH 4: D B B D__--------------------------------- 96 CH 5: WHEN WE WERE EXILED WATER REMAINED _-____ 1- CH 6: I MOUNT MOUND REFUSE + SOMETIMES_-- ______ 125 CH 7: TERRELLA AL2ARD ALSAGHIRA:__-----------------------------145 CONCLUSION-----------------------__148 EPILOGUE---------------------153 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS________-________155 BIBLIO G RA PH Y _______________ -____ --_ -__ ---- __ 156 5 Where am I unfounded mercury too rapid the assessingof One. (lifetime.) He doesn't knowwhere it is. (world.) The scientific command given over, too; I let them have it all. I need to find you and tellyou but I can't remember the order of events Because "order" is different here. -ALICE NOTLEY, The World I'm Dead in (2011) We need the power of modern critical theories of how meanings and bodies get made, not in order to deny meanings and bodies, but in order to build meanings and bodies that have a chance for life [... I The eyes have been used to signify a perverse capacity - honed to perfection in the history of science tied to militarism, capitalism, colonialism, and male supremacy - to distance the knowing subject from everybody and everything in the interests of unfettered power. The instruments of visualization of multinationalist, postmodernist culture have compounded these meanings ofdisembodiment. The visualizing technologies are without apparent limit. -DONNA HARAWAY, Situated Knowledges (1988) And atthatday, like amissile the word "living" resounded in her head. Itjust seemed that the problem oflivingis not amonopolyover her being; it appears to be ageneral plight. And so, at this moment, she felt she was coming out of her encasement to confront the world with a wider view. -NAHIDA FADLI EL DAJANI, Al-Nusf Al-Sathi [The Shallow Half] (2005) 6 ACKNOWEDGMENTS Before coming to MIT, I owed most of my education to the internet, intersectional feminist thought, gallivant and clamant investigations, the curious company of books, late cordial conversations, philosophers and professors I mostly haven't met in class, exploited labor, para-academic programs, personal archives of scientists and journalists who have very generously welcomed me in, wars I haven't lived and my memories that were born before me. I would like to thank first those who scan, lobby, juridically suffer and resign day and night in order to make knowledge publicly accessible online, on site, in print and in performance. Things haven't changed much since, except that I have more thoroughly understood this process in the generous company of others. I am very grateful to have had the precious chance to meet, befriend and collaborate with fellow students, staff and professors whose work immensely vary - ranging from free software to mechanical engineering, cryptography, architecture history and STS. Thank you for creating this enticing environment, you know who you are. I am infinitely grateful to all the MIT alumni and ex-professors who wholeheartedly discussed with me their memories of the anti-militarization student movements as well as all those who due to several hinderances couldn't meet or that I couldn't find. My never quoting you ad verbatim remains very deliberate as I look forward to the places this investigation could lead to. My deep gratitude goes to my advisor Renee Green and my readers Nadia Bou Ali and Jennifer S. Light for their bountiful comments, time and support. I am particularly thankful to professors Harriet Ritvo, William Uricchio and Gerry Sussman for all the knowledge they wholeheartedly shared with me. I was very fortunate to meet Lara Baladi at ACT and be engulfed with her blissfully bolstering might. Infinite gratitude goes to artist and media associate Madeleine Gallagher who has not only enriched