This book is the second volume of texts curated specifically for The Funambulist since 2011. The editorial line of this second series of twenty-six essays is dedicated to philosophical and political questions about bodies. This choice is informed by Léopold Lambert’s own interest in the (often violent) relation between the designed environment and bodies. Corporeal politics do not exist in a void of objects, buildings and cities; on the contrary, they operate through the continuous material encounters between living and non-living bodies. Several texts proposed in this volume examine various forms of corporeal violence (racism, gender-based violence, etc.). This examination, however, can only exist in the integration of the designed environment’s conditioning of this violence. As Mimi Thi Nguyen argues in the conclusion of this book’s first chapter, “the process of attending to the body — unhooded, unveiled, unclothed — cannot be the solution to racism, because that body is always already an abstraction, an effect of law and its violence.” Although the readers won’t find indications about the disciplinary background of the contributors — the “witty” self-descriptions at the end of the book being preferred to academic resumés — the content of the texts will certainly attest to the broad imaginaries at work throughout this volume. Dialogues between dancers and geographers, between artists and biohackers, between architects and philosophers, and so forth, provide the richness of this volume through difference rather than similarity.The Funambulist Papers are published by the CTM Documents Initiative imprint, Center for Transformative Media, Parsons School of Design, The New School. CTM is a transdisciplinary media research initiative bridging design and the social sciences, and dedicated to the exploration of the transformative potential of emerging technologies upon the foundational practices of everyday life across a range of settings.TABLE OF CONTENTS //INTRODUCTION: CORPOREAL POLITICS by Léopold Lambert — PROFILING SURFACES by Mimi Thi Nguyen — CAUGHT IN THE CLOUD: THE BIOPOLITICS OF TEARGAS WARFARE by Philippe Theophanidis — BODIES ON THE LINE: SOMATIC RISK AND PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIES IN URBAN EXPLORATION AND PALESTINIAN ‘INFILTRATION’ by Hanna Baumann — PALESTINE MADE FLESH by Sophia Azeb — CORPOGRAPHIES: MAKING SENSE OF MODERN WAR by Derek Gregory — CHAMAYOU’S MANHUNTS: FROM TERRITORY TO SPACE? by Stuart Elden — NAZI ARCHITECTURE AS AFFECTIVE WEAPON by Gastón Gordillo — BODIES AT SCENE: ARCHITECTURE AS FRICTION by Pedro Hernández Martínez — RACIALIZED GEOGRAPHIES AND THE FEAR OF SHIPS by Tings Chak — URBAN SPACE AND THE PRODUCTION OF GENDER IN MODERN IRAN by Alex Shams — NORM, MEASURE OF ALL THINGS by Sofia Lemos — PATTERNS OF LIFE: A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF SCHEMATIC BODIES by Grégoire Chamayou — BEE WORKERS AND THE EXPANDING EDGES OF CAPITALISM by Renisa Mawani — WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? by Nick Axel — OF ASSOCIATED MILIEUS by Sarah Choukah — ~~FJORD~~ AND //DESERT// BODIES~~LEAKING~~ AND //CONTAINED// BODIES by Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos — DRESS BECOMES BODY: FASHIONING THE FORCE OF FORM by Erin Manning — A SENSING BODY, A NETWORKED MIND by Adrienne Hart — DREAM OF FLYING / FLYING BODIES by Elena Loizidou — THE ACT OF WAITING by Joanne Pouzenc — BODIES IN SYMPATHY FOR JUST ONE NIGHT by Chrysanthi Nigianni — FRAMING THE WEIRD BODY IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN CINEMA by Ina Karkani — BUILDING BODY: TWO BRIEF TREATMENTS ON LANDING SITE THEORY by Alan Prohm — A.V. (ANTHROPOCOSMOGONIC VASTUPURUSHAMANISM) by Dan Mellamphy — GHOST IN THE SHELL-GAME: ON THE MÈTIC MODE OF EXISTENCE, INCEPTION AND INNOCENCE by Nandita Biswas Mellamphy — PORTFOLIO: BODY WEIGHT by Seher ShahThe Funambulist Pamphlets is published as part of the Documents Initiative imprint of the Center for Transformative Media, Parsons The New School for Design, a transdisciplinary media research initiative bridging design and the social sciences, and dedicated to the exploration of the transformative potential of emerging technologies upon the foundational practices of everyday life across a range of settings.ABOUT THE EDITORLambert_Lost_Bio_2Léopold Lambert (born in 1985) is a French architect who has successively lived in Paris, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and New York, and currently resides in Paris. His approach to architecture consists in a delicate articulation between theoretical research and a frank enthusiasm for design. Such an articulation has been explicated in his book Weaponized Architecture: The Impossibility of Innocence (dpr-barcelona, 2012), which attempts to examine the characteristics that make architecture an inherent political weapon through global research as well as an architectural project specific to the Israeli civil and military occupation of the West Bank. He is also the author of the graphic novel, Lost in the Line. He finds his architectural inspiration from films, novels, and political philosophy books, rather than in architectural theory texts.The blog The Funambulist: Architectural Narratives, a daily architectural platform written and edited by Léopold Lambert, finds its name in the consideration for architecture’s representative medium, the line, and its philosophical and political power when it materializes and subjectivizes bodies. If the white page represents a given milieu — a desert for example — and one comes to trace a line on it, (s)he will virtually split this same milieu into two distinct impermeable parts through its embodiment, the wall. The Funambulist, also known as a tightrope walker, is the character who, somehow, subverts this power by walking on the line.

This book is included in DOAB.