Video: [Techno Me: Me Love] by Rusaila

Techno me : Me Love from Interruptions on Vimeo.

Done by Rusaila Bazlamit and exhibited at Makan, Jordan, March, 2009

Description The video tackles human relationships and feelings when they are mediated through digital media. Based on a musical score these bits of video are being played in a way to provoke and agitate. Leaving more space for the viewer to explore. This video is part of a video art project titled: Techno Me.

Cats: Rough Exhibition Video | stop-motion

[CATS: Rough Exhibition Video] from Interruptions on Vimeo.

Culture sells! Exotic Falafel, made in the Orient!

Cool is so 90s! Exotica is now!

It is now official! Arabs are exotic, again! But while Edward Said tried to explain the first Orientalist hype as a distribution of geopolitical awareness on the grounds of Western domination over the Orient; this new ‘exotic’ craze is really all about falafel!

Falafel and Shirwal are exotic!

As the world is stripped out of politics in favor of a cooler, easily digested, commercial political celebrities, and as faiths and ideologies are narrowed down to slogans and differing lifestyles, other things seem to have an uprising value! That’s when Falafel and Shirwal became exotic!

Just a year ago I was struck by the sight of ‘blonde bombshells’ walking down Taksim, Istanbul in shirwals! Months later shirwal was re-adopted by cool upper-bourgeoisie class in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as a fashionable summer outfit! Over the past few years ‘exotic’ has ‘out beaten’ ‘cool’ at many occasions, seducing lower to upper bourgeoisie in western societies as means of cultural consumption;

American pop music played oriental rhythms, celebrities started showing in belly dancers outfit, falafel took over Marks & Spencers ‘traditional food’ section and Melissa featured on an Akon song!

Well there’s nothing upsetting about that, specially that one can now take a girl out to dinner at a terribly filthy place at Al-Balad and still remain ‘exotic’! But the irony lies in this counter-stream consumption approach; as political and military tension arouses in the region, increase of restrictions and political and economic boycotting of entire populations, curiosity towards these cultures increased; and as appeared to some, curiosity sells! It always have! It sold all sorts of things, from shirwals, to falafels, to Buddhist books, to I love NY shirts, to an exotic African-American son of Hussein as president to Guevara’s most consumed poster in history, to Edward Said’s “Orientalism” book itself!

All this seems to be quite different from the counter-culture model of globalization everyone made such a fuss about; as if culture never experienced evolution, and it’s can-protected since our ancestors first invented Humos!

Culture sells, and Globalization is pro-market and not counter-culture!

And soon Falafel would be franchised and we would claim intellectual rights of our Falafel and whine like the Italians do over their stolen pizzas!

But either ways, Since Fukyama announced ‘the end of history’ there’s no place left to ‘deliver’, but rather much to sell/consume! So it’s almost ‘wise’ if we could start branding and packaging all sorts of consumer goods starting with falafel and all the way to packaging values, history, culture and all sorts of exotic things, preferably in colorful textiles with Arabic calligraphy and sell at competing prices!

Made in the Orient!

[Cats: Work-in-Progress] Video on Interruptions Vimeo Channel

CATATONIA [Work-in-progress] from Interruptions on Vimeo.

Death by Megaphone

http://interruptions.ning.com

Happiness is Universal! [Virtual Networking]

Few months ago during Pre-WEF sessions at the YCM program I got to meet Naseem Tarawneh, Mariam and Ramsey Tesdell who spoke of communication ecology as a networking pattern where 'everything is connected to everything' whereas ecology to architects is a matter of balancing and sustaining resources and built/artificial objects by being aware to these connections, the connection itself was the matter to these great guys at 7iber.
And since then I found my new hobby! And basically started playing and messing around until I really confused things up, so I finally had to point fingers to 7iber for my sinning new habit!

Since releasing 'Banana' we've been trying to extend Interruptions network both physical and virtual, after all our early homepage was a bit too retarded after all for a so-called 'activist non-standardized creative platform', and posting that on our crappy homepage sounded a bit too ridiculous!

So first came the BLOG! http://interruptionists.blogspot.com
Interruptions attempt to go digital went off with riots and mayhem!
none of Interruptionists ever had a secret blogger's life and all feared virtual communication making me realize all of Interruptions team is bloggophobic!
I don't know if such a thing ever existed but we surely had to struggle out of it until blogging became 'cool'! And since then, our insane colorful blog gave birth to some of the craziest ideas, and developed Interruptions dramatically. Communicated our thoughts on a broader more elaborative level and increased collaborative material!

The Watwet channel came along, http://watwet.com/channel
and seriously, if blogs were alright, watwet can get annoying as hell!
But also as our Blog, Watwet also was a dose of creative 'on-phone' arguments
and our channel broadcasts to 48 mobile phones now, and is going to be featured by Kareem, CEO of Watwet!

Online Publications! http://issue.com/interruptions
Issuu offers a handsome interface where we uploaded Interruptions editions which can be browsed online at a very flexible and very clear format and can also be downloaded in pdf extension

The Ning network! http://interruptions.ning.com
So here's where everything floods in! A social-network model and a data pool where viewers can sign up for profiles @interruptions and are continously updated with all Interruptions news and uploaded content and can actively engage and upload content, pictures, video and blogposts

Everything synchs with the Ning, better yet, everything synchs with everything!!
The ning features a watwet badge, RSS feed from Blog and views editions uploaded on issuu.com

But here's how everything works now!
take the blog for instance, we post something on the blog and here's what happens
- Blog post is feeded to the Interruptions.ning
- Blog post is feeded to my Facebook profile page
- Blog post title is posted to Interruptions watwet page
- Watwet is sent to 48 mobile phones
- Watwet synchronizes badge on the Blog
- Watwet synchronizes badge on Interruptions.ning
- Watwet sends post to Interruptions twitter account http://twitter.com/interruptionist

The same would happen when a recent activity happens on the Ning!
- activity sent to Interruptions watwet
- watwet synchs with mobiles, badges, twitter and facebook!

And just when this starts to sound nutts, it truly raises a very exciting data exchange models breaking out of rigid virtual dominating online platforms into a more fluid pattern creating endless possibilities of feeding and exchanging content. It's more of a hybrid virtual space, but yet remains a host to typical ideas, typical ways of expression which should, as well, benefit from such technologically driven hybrid spaces to produce boundless content.

(entire post was improvised to test the new blog/watwet/twitter link!)

حول مخطط كتاتونيا الشمولي

بينما كثرت في الآونة الأخيرة البسبسات حول مخطط كتاتونيا الجديد, تعالت الأصوات بعضها متفائل و البعض الآخر حذر و مترقب أبعاد هذه الخطوة التاريخية حيث أن تمدن القطط هو خطوة تقدمية تجر تصعيداً للصراع الطبقي نحو حتمية الصدام التاريخية ما بين حركة القطط الشوارعية الأممية و برجوازية القطط المنزلية التي دأبت على احتكار مصادر الغذاء و أدوات الأمان, يالاضافة الى تواطئ البرجوازية التاريخي مع الحيوانات البشرية, العدو الأزلي لحركة القطط الشوارعية.

الرفاق من قطط أوروبا الشرقيا و النيبال دعوا الى الاسراع بتنفيذ مخطط كتاتونيا مشددين على أهمية بنائها على أسس النفد الفططي للتجربة البشرية مطالبين بضرورة قيام كتاتونيا على بناء واقعي علمي ينتصر لحقوق القطط الشوارعية الحرة و يؤمن لهم موارد العيش التي بقيت حتى ثورة كتاتونيا العظيمة مقتصرة على برجوازية القطط المنزلية من مأوى, ماء, مصادر الغذاء, عوامل الأمان الضرورية, الراحة و ثقافة القطط الجنسية المنفتحة.

د. قطوان البسابسة

*Extracts from [CATS: Rough Exhibition] (work-in-progress) @Makan
http://interruptions.ning.com

[CATS: The Workshop!] Day Four

Designers have a long history of keeping the legacy of the one-lousy-design-day phenomena! There's always a day when design are in the making where one would lay back and waste the day watching random youtube videos, clean his desktop, or suddenly start wondering if its time to paint his room!
Four our workshop, yesterday was that day! Where everyone came early, but exhausted.
We confirmed what we agreed on the day before, and agreed on the necessity to commit to our plans! 'Team Spaces' (Dina, Rula and Yazan) left Makan, leaving 'Team Things' take the lead by staying another hour discussing Cat's visual culture and visual communication!

And 'Team Spaces' sent in a promise that tomorrow will be a new day!

This morning there was a tragic accident, which may change the course of the workshop-
and above all to prove that Shit Happens! even among the chosen 'saviors'!
But as life goes on, the workshop goes on with more awareness perhaps, for the necessity to skip lousy-days! and for the seriousness of the case at hand!

7.00pm is now a time we all look up to daily to escape into a very provocative and boundless flood of ideas! today these ideas should start being realized!

Photo Documentation of Workshop on Ning

Find other photos and updates on Interruptions network interruptions

[CATS: The Workshop!] Day Two

...so Dina and Yazan brought ice cream today to make it up for coming late, despite the fact that it tasted bad, ice-cream should'v been there after the heated weather and much more heated dialog we had today as the second day of the workshop folded-

Today's session aimed to raise problems and start envisioning design solutions, these problems were identified as a product of our previous in-depth analysis of cats!
setting up a pre-determined scenario didn't work since cats occupied a hostile context where primary concerns such as security, food supply and transition were not met!

Hundreds of ideas flooded, each worthy of a project on its own but yet the idea was learning how to bridge various design languages together in order to produce a coherent vision. By the end of today's session I think we're getting there and we're ready for 'visualizing' these ideas at a studio session tomorrow!

To tidy up our ideas we split into four focus groups,

Group A+B_ Transition + Context + Logistics
(Rula, Toleen, Ahmad, Ali)
This group should generate ideas concerning methods of transition which reduces security threats, design products and methods of obtaining and containing food, maintaining shelter and the city's infrastructure

Group C_ Spatial Design
(Dina, Rawan, Yazan, Khaled)
Spatial and physical intervention, the city's core space + activity to be design and connected with infrastructure and compliments an overall scenario primary to cats

Group D_ Visual Culture + Narrative
(Dana, Hadi, Mike, Ahmad)
Building up a continuity in the cat community's narrative, complimenting other layers with visual dimension, orientation elements, signage, propaganda and awareness campaigns

The ideas produced during the studio at Makan will be hung on boards, and then some of these ideas would be selected to what can produce a consistent scenario
and later on the groups can work again together collaboratively to compliment each other's interventions

The discussions today were as intense as the passionate vibe sensed throughout the workshop- and as Rula said, it brought back the feeling of loving design!
Whatever is happening there at the workshop is beautiful, progressive and unprecedented, looking forward to tomorrow's session!

Interruptions presents- [CATS: the Workshop!]

Workshop:
Interruptions recruits designers from multiple disciplines for a secret design mission called upon by the [Under Ground Cat Society]- Participants are to, collaboratively, reform an urban setting to meet the requirements of 'cats' as living beings parallel to humans and have certain characteristics, community structure, needs and affiliations.
10-15 participants will be selected for a one week workshop hosted at [Makan 15th -22nd August]

Workshop Coordinators:
Interruptions + Ahmad Sabbagh (Blouzaat)
----------

Story:
the Interruptions team have been invited to a top secret meeting with an anonymous governmental official. The meeting promises to disclose crucial confidential data, something that will surely, if ever leaked to the people, shake the very foundation of its fragile society.

upon entering the meeting room, however, the team find themselves, completely on their own. Unless you count the large, orange tabby cat sitting upright on the meeting table. The cat, licking its whiskers (slightly maliciously, you might say) quite simply, proceeds to talk. (Alice de ja vu, anyone?)

It tells the flabbergasted team of a secret underground society, one that has been slowly forming over the past few decades. It tells them that the members of that society had had enough. Living be the upper caste's rules was no longer acceptable. "We live by their rules, We eat by their rules, We breathe by their rules, we bloody die by their freakin rules"

This secret society has taken it upon themselves to start creating their own little world. Right under the nose of the humans, the furry little members forage for raw material and castaways, and use them to build their own enclosures and private spaces, mechanisms to make their life easier and safer, freeways and secret roads.

The orange tabby takes the team on a tour of the hidden feline society. Only, they discover that its not so much hidden as unseen. They have simply never looked before. Under the cars, in the trash cans, alley ways... you've seen the cat, but you've never seen what's behind the cat. All the better, where the cat is concerned.

----------

Aims:
- liberating design thinking from standardized prescriptive typologies
- testing potentials and possibilities of multi-disciplinary design approach

----------
Participation:
- Participant numbers are limited,
- Participants are expected to join us from the 15th to the 22nd of August, All evenings (after 6.00 pm) except two full days on weekends.
- Participation fee (10.00 JD)

To Join:
Please send us your personal and contact info, fields of interests and (preferably) samples of your work to:
interruptions@live.co.uk

Interruptive Vibes

(The title here was written before knowing the content of the blog post, but it's an interesting title so I'll brainstorm something under)

Say you get on a bus, you locate a seat without a reserving object on top, and once you sit you start worrying about who would be your companion for today's journey!
It's like a traditional marriage in a sense.. you wait till the day comes and 'unwrap' your significant mother err other!
Five years of getting on the bus daily to go to uni I've experienced all types of 'companions'! And that 'interruptive journey-long company you share early morning each day could either get you off the bus with good vibes or bad ones!

I don't know if this fitted well under the title, but.. its the tendency of personally engaging or to be personally affected by external existing conditions, let it be a person sitting next to you, weather, heavy traffic, environment, landscape, context... whatever it is.. It is quite difficult to remain indifferent and merely perceptive of surrounding phenomena.. but to what extent do we have control of the type of effect these external phenomena could have on us, how do we draw boundaries and how can we experientially modify the ummm.. politics of these temporarily relationships (iza bidek)

y3ni, a taxi driver can be the most irritating 'thing' on earth! (not to you girls trust me! id rather have a taxi check me out in the mirror rather than having to hear all he has to say! and i have some horrible stories, contact me for some!)
so many times I fake a phone call or engage in something, but theres this one time when the guy was complaining and I found some interesections with him when I tried hearing, and we ended up having lunch together at a burger place (my treat!) which he claimed was better than (burgar killing, and mcdonas)! The burger wasn't bad, neither the conversation.. well if the words were spoken by a blonde in a softer tone while holding an iPhone with a teddy-bear chain it could have been like any other conversation! SO THE IDEA IS, these vibes which were pretty disturbing, changed by experientially altering the perception pattern..!

Well these were just thoughts, tried to fit them into the title! This is not conclusive but it's an interesting experience which most of you go through on daily basis.. Start noticing it and write down some of these examples of observations.. maybe we'll tidy the words up a little bit, match with an illustration and stuff it in Interruptions!
Ya3tikon il 3afiyeh

More about LAVA

Extract:
-------------
LAVA started in 1993 when a group of students of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TUE) created an Internet site about Architecture. Most of the members from this first period have since graduated.
Since the beginning of 1997 the level of activity on LAVA was very low. Many sites are still linking to parts of the LAVA site. We decided to turn our site into a so-called Web Ring.

So LAVA is now a distributed site. The largest part is hosted by the group of Design Systems.

As the LAVA group no longer exists, the website is inactive. We are keeping it as a documentation of our work. Thank you for your interest.
------------
http://lava.ds.arch.tue.nl/

Interesting Comments on Koolhaas S,M,L,XL on Lava

Alphabet: The alphabet launches a series of platitudes that could not otherwise be reasonably inserted in the texts [versus xviii-1302]
Assembly: The book is assembled, not written; therefore it is not a novel about architecture [versus 1348]
Beauty: Of the two positions on beauty: (1) a principle (geometry, balance, composition, etc.) that will render good buildings, and (2) a property emerging from a good solution, S,M,L,XL demonstrates position (2)
Chronology: The chronology explains the contents of the book (how did they do it?)
Concept: A pervading use of vocabulary does not necessarily indicate a clear set of concepts
Gay science: The call for urbanism to lighten up is legitimate, however not because it is not responsible [versus 971, 829] but because it offers new possibilities
Globalization 1: Rem Koolhaas shits his pants for Richard Meier; whereas he is one of his most alike collegues [versus 365]
Globalization 2: The Byzantium clash demonstrates they are both picked for their style not their architecture [354-361]
Level: The use of levels of scale offers a good structure for ordering the book
Numbers: The careful numbering of the pages demonstrates the necessity for some control
Serious: The weight and production time of S,M,L,XL contradict its supposed lightness [versus 1053]
Understanding: Coherence imposed on an architect's work is the result of reflection; this is lacking in the book [versus xix]
Weight: The measure of discussion per project indicates its relative weight; therefore the book is not a reference work
Wrong: Two billion people can be wrong [versus 1087]

http://lava.ds.arch.tue.nl/books/koolhaas.html

Shawirma is Faster than Fast Food

Homeless in Amman | Pt1:
Shawirma is faster than 'fast food', don't know how that is relevant but it's one of the things I noticed during my quest for a referential residence in the city of Amman!

This post is personal, random and stupid; it is not meant to be neat, organized or even make sense!
1. Again, shawirma is faster than fast food, and these are not the states on the American flag, these are Hardees stars!
(Exercise: Who can fix an american flag with hardees stars on?)

2. Falafel ought to be cheap, each piece of Falafel should be true to itself, its essence, its cheap ingrediants and the masses which it relates it and preserve its purpose as an alternative to burgers as long as class division is preserved

3. Each one of us carries his house's window frame and sees the city through, those with no homes are stupid enough to wish they had your frame!

4. No apartment should have fixed rent, for that existance is relative

5. Flats and 'significant others'; one much easier to find than the other but both can be bargained

6. The previous post is not sexist; for that both sexes agree with posts 1 and 2

7. When renting an apartment one has to rent the owner's values, regulations and beliefs; future estate advertisenments would look like this:
A Fundamentalist Apartment, 2 bedrooms (only for sleeping purposes), overlooking Qaeda HQ! Fundamentalist couples only (preferably rich), entery test required!

8. The previous apartment exists in Dahiet al Hussain, opposite of Aramex

9. If you're in the street, waiting for a cab but can't find any, call the 'Mumayaz'; not so they would send you a cab, but so you would entertain yourself listening to Frank Sinatra's "I did it my way" for over 15 minutes while on hold until you finally find a yellow cab!

10. One building should burn in every neighborhood so that real estate prices would get back to more logical pricing! There MUST be decent one room apartments for less than 350 jds a month!

11. Jordan Gate project does NOT own pavements and the streets surrounding the project (for security reasons) the only thing which should be eliminated for "security reasons" are those jinxed ugly disgusting towers which so far has collapsed three times, burned once and broken 'raf3a'!

12. Um Uzaina is NOT Khalda! Even if real estate offices said so! Don't give them 10 jds! And let them pay for their own damn transportation!

13. In general, and even if Shawirma is faster than fast food, it loses the benefit for the awful effect of 'garlic' in a ridiculously hot summer!

14. No interruptionists should eat shawirma while writing an article for that garlic's effect is contagious, and we (at interruptions) are ready to interrupt any cheap attempt to leak garlic to the pages of our beloved publication

15. posts 13 and 14 were written after consuming massive amounts of shawirma and garlic substance and then walking down to an internet cafe at Jam3a street at almost midnight

16. Even if written under these circumistances, doesnt make any of the previous points wrong, or less credible

I end this post here, and today's question is:
iPhone or Blackberry Bold?

Goodnight everyone!

Live Drama on Watwet

I loooooooooove the new drama happening on Interruptions watwet channel! we just need to bring more people, and have more interruptionists participate! Interruptionists are really spoiled needing all the cheerleading to do an exercise! but we're ready at all costs! We proved we are capable! we ate 20 bananas and put them on a magazine cover! so trust me we're capable of anything!

the success of the exercise is a success of the visionary concept of watwet's channel!

Student Deceleration | Follow Up!

For those incharge of rephrasing discussion-group pointers

Please try to phrase your topic discussions in 5 points with one introductory paragraph and have it ready by the end of this week! Updates would be posted on blog and you will receive the final decelaration form once finalized!

thank you all! Best!

First Student Deceleration Meeting (3.3)

so for the first time ever for an Interruptions meeting, people show up at 9.55 to a 10.00 am meeting! Muhtaraf al Rimal's door was still locked, the sun was rudely arrogant and over 20 interruptionists gathered outside eager to declare intentions!

quite an insperational scene to wake up to this morning-

we sat around a circle which turned to be two halves of a circle where JU students clustered at one half and JUST students at the other penetrated by some Yarmouk and ASY students here and there and a GJU student in the middle! But I was certain this would break soon positively because of my belief that no person would ever wake up on a weekend before 9am at the ridiculously hot weather and make it all the way to Lwaibdeh, (with stylized hair) to find the door locked and still wait without really being up to something!

and 'something' was what were up to!

in a matter of minutes everyone began to 'click'- the conversations went on to many aspects, emotions, ideas and opinions were unleashed and it was time to break into the designed workshop format!

in 5 discussions group, we discussed 5 topics concerning education, the role of institutions, the role of students, solutions, negatives and an alternative utopia.

each group responded to the given topic in 5 points to summarize their full hour discussion!

the points were presented to the rest, elaborated and then given to each group as an assignment to rephrase into five solid statements.

these statements will be posted on the blog gradually as they come in to Interruptions inbox, and updates about the final format of the "document" will be posted as well-

I didnt find an evaluation of the meeting neccessary because one noted thing was how passionate and eager each one of the participants was- I hope we could arrange for a meeting once the document is out in its final form to present it to a wider audience

thanks for everyone who shared his/her morning hours with us today

First Student Deceleration Meeting (2.3)

First Student Deceleration Meeting (1.3)