New York Edition: September 26, 2009

On Saturday, September 26th 2009, 11 am, the "Cities and the New Wars" conference organized by Saskia Sassen will host the 9th edition of the Dictionary of War. 15 guests are invited to present a concept that plays a crucial role in the contemporary discourse of war and urban spaces: Ted Byfield (Parsons, The New School for Design), Tony Conrad (University of Buffalo, New York), Susan Crile (Hunter College, CUNY), Ashley Dawson (CUNY Graduate School), James Der Derian (Brown University), Fiona Jeffries (CUNY, Graduate Center), Danny Kaplan (Tel Aviv University, Israel), Jennifer S. Light (Northwestern University), Suketu Mehta (New York University), Rosalind C. Morris (Columbia University), Richard Sennett (New York University and London School of Economics), Ida Susser and Jan Schneider (CUNY Graduate Center), Gar Smith (Environmentalists Against War), Gediminas Urbonas (MIT, Visual Arts Program).

If it is the case that there is increasingly less difference between war and non-war, that war is the constitutive form of a new order, that war is perpetual and everywhere, then it becomes essential to desert from a war of words which can no longer be challenged or even critisized. Instead, what seems urgently needed, are new vocabularies, new terminologies that by abandoning old certainties are capable of grasping changing realities and addressing uncharted problems.

Dictionary of War is characterized by its openness towards all sorts of formats, genre, media and conceptual approaches. Rather than defining consensus and limiting meaning, DICTIONARY OF WAR is about a non-uniform, many-voiced, asymmetric, and deregulated production of concepts as the tools with which to attain new ideas.

Up to now eight editions have been organized in Frankfurt, Munich, Graz, Berlin, Novi Sad, Gwangju, Bolzano and Taipei featuring more than 150 concepts presented by a wide range of activists, architects, artists, composers, choreographers, dancers, filmmakers, generals, journalists, philosophers, scientists, theorists from across the globe.

Dictionary of War is a performance and a production space at the same time: The concepts will be presented in 20-minutes time slots, in alphabetical order and without a break; they are recorded in a television studio setup, encoded in real-time and published on the internet.