Tightrope Walking Archives

Mapping the Gaza Strip

July 14, 2014 Thomas Büsch

French architect and editor of the research platform The Funambulist, Léopold Lambert, created various maps of Gaza to visualize the more

Tightrope Walking

The Zone – A View From The West Bank

July 11, 2014 Thomas Büsch

The Zone is an ongoing research project by Palestinian artist Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme that has different extensions; previously

Tightrope Walking

Prisoner of Love

July 10, 2014 Thomas Büsch

Starting in 1970, Jean Genet — petty thief, prostitute, modernist master — spent two years in the Palestinian refugee camps

Tightrope Walking

Man on Wire

July 9, 2014 Thomas Büsch

Philippe Petit was crossing illegally the space between the two towers of the World Trade Center in August 1974. Petit’s

As tensions and violence escalated in Palestine, our thoughts are with the Speed Sisters, their families and friends, and all others at risk of harm.

Tightrope Walking refers to the funambulist Philippe Petit crossing illegally the space between the two towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. This act of walking on a line (funambulist means tightrope walker) is an act of subversion of the traditional role of the line/wall which normally splits two milieus from one another and organizes the bodies in space.

The outcaster, writer, thief and prostitute Jean Gene became as well a funambulist when he witnessed to the wreckage and slaughter in the Palestinian refugee camp of Chatila in 1982 reffering to it in his essay Four Hours in Chatila.

French architect Léopold Lambert as editor of The Funambulist online platform examines the inherent characteristics of architecture that systematically makes it a political weapon specifically in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.