You can run but you cannot hide marina otero by UNMANNED

sqm the quantified home edited by

Lars M端ller Publishers

Biennale Interieur

Space Caviar

contents

foreword flash fiction

9 Maylis de Kerangal

Home Is the Answer, but What Is the Question? Joseph Grima

10 12

radical domesticities

London Is Liquid Sam Jacob on luxury basements

148

data

154

Urban Square Meters

Provisional Simultaneity Ignacio González Galán on a Big Brother house

156

flash fiction

164

Juan Gabriel Vásquez

Bootleg Hotels Anna Puigjaner on kitchenless apartments

Taylor’s Housewife Hilde Heynen on the Frankfurt Kitchen

data

flash fiction

A New Domestic Landscape Catharine Rossi on the environments of Joe Colombo and Superstudio

The Invention of Pornography: Sexuality, Vision, and Topopolitics Beatriz Preciado on Pompeii’s Secret Cabinet

178

flash fiction

Disutility Keller Easterling on game theory and home improvement

192 198

Who Spends Time at Home?

Giorgio Fontana

You Can Run But You Cannot Hide Marina Otero Verzier on Osama bin Laden’s compound

166

the dematerialized home Gianluigi Ricuperati

176

No One Asked Me to Come Malkit Shoshan on the home of Gertrud Kraus

data

Their Rented Bit of the Socialist Dream Justin McGuirk on Robin Hood Gardens

Postcode Demographics A conversation with Richard Webber

200

flash fiction

Goce Smilevski

210

Happy Birthday Joanne McNeil on the smart home

212

The Commodification of Everything Dan Hill on Restaurant Day and Airbnb

216

flash fiction

224

Javier Montes

Archaeology of the Lost Commons Aristide Antonas on Athens Polytechnic’s Student Hostel from dream to bust Adaptation Jonathan Olivares on Ellwood’s Case Study House Number 18

Timeline of Domestic Connections

Etgar Keret

102

Edited Living Alexandra Lange on the Pinterest Home

226

Emaarland Rising Rahel Aima on being at home in Dubai

104

The Wolf Is in the Living Room Excerpts from a conversation with Bruce Sterling

232

Hijacking Development Andreas Ruby on Berlin’s baugruppen

118

data

126

photo essay

Home Screen

241

afterword

Alessandro Mendini

290

data

The Home as Capital

Owning and Renting

Where Every Cubic Foot Counts Gabrielle Brainard and Jacob Reidel on Brooklyn’s mezzanine lofts An interview with Robert Scarano, Jr.

128 135

data

144

A Brief History of Housing Affordability

contributors

294

image credits and country codes

298

YOU CAN RUN, BUT YOU CANNOT HIDE THE HOME AFTER THE WAR ON TERROR MARINA OTERO

1 “Mission,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, last modified August 8, 2012, http:// www.dhs.gov/mission.

Our homes are the final settings of the Global War on Terrorism. They are the front line of the battlefield, the hideouts where the enemy sleeps. In its struggle to construct a “more secure America, which is resilient against terrorism and other potential threats,” 1 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has made the home its ultimate target. From drone attacks to mass surveillance, the domestic space is not—it may never have been—a safe place. To be safe is to keep on moving.

2 Langlands & Bell, The House of Osama Bin Laden (London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004).

Osama bin Laden met his death in his house in Abbottabad, where he had relocated permanently in order to lead a secluded family life. On the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since 1999, bin Laden moved periodically, leaving little trace of his elusive existence. In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, the US military hunted for him unsuccessfully in the caves of Tora Bora, Afghanistan. Plans of his supposed hideout were published in the Western press, capturing the public’s imagination. The axonometric cutaway of a 4,000 metre mountain revealed a labyrinthine arrangement of perfectly level bedrooms, armories, and meeting rooms connected via standard stairways and roadways, equipped with a sophisticated ventilation system, and powered by a hydroelectric plant. Yet the eight-level cave-fortress turned out to be simply a complex of natural caves used as unpolished bunkers. Locating bin Laden’s whereabouts soon became not only a priority for US intelligence agencies but also the subject of artistic and ideological practice. Following their research visit to Afghanistan in October 2002 to explore the aftermath of 9/11, artists Langlands & Bell presented The House of Osama Bin Laden, an interactive multimedia installation that digitally recreated a house in Darunta, eastern Afghanistan, occupied by bin Laden in the mid-1990s. 2 Their image of the house’s south room helped to con-

3 Shaukat Qadir, Operation Geronimo: the Betrayal and Execution of Osama bin Laden and its Aftermath (Amazon. com, 2012): 367. Kindle edition.

4 Peter L. Bergen, Man Hunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abbottabad (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012): 12.

struct the myth of the ascetic leader, incorruptible by the forces of Western capitalism, and his frugal domesticity. Inside, a ray of sunlight from the east illuminates a vernacular interior furnished with a simple bed frame; on the dusty floor, a pair of sandals and a collage of footprints depict an absent presence. After the 9/11 attacks, bin Laden resurfaced in Afghanistan, but again disappeared; other accounts situated him in South Waziristan, Pakistan, in early 2002. His complete itinerary remains unknown. By the second half of 2002, after months of travel, he

5 For a first-hand description of the interior of the compound see also the report written by the Abbottabad Commission in an effort to piece together the events around the raid, a copy of which was leaked by Al Jazeera (https://www. documentcloud.org/ documents/724833-aljazeera-bin-laden-dossier. html). 6 Quote recalled by Noman Benotman, a Libyan who once fought with al Qaeda, in a conversation with Peter Bergen.

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7 “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan,” May 2, 2011, transcript, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, http://wh.gov/CgY.

8 See Marina Otero, “Bodies in Custody: Architectures of the Osama Bin Laden Compound in Abbottabad,” dpr-barcelona (blog), May 15, 2014, http:// dprbcn.wordpress. com/2014/05/15/bodies-in-custody-marina-otero.

9 “President Bush’s Address to the Nation,” September 11, 2006, transcript, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/11/ washington/12bush_ transcript.html.

had shifted his hideout from Peshawar to Shangla District, and in 2003 to Haripur, where he rented a four-bedroom house in the suburb of Naseem Town. It was in mid-2005 that he finally settled into a house not far from the Pakistan Military Academy in the city of Abbottabad. From 2002 to 2011 bin Laden resided in at least six different addresses, having gradually exchanged a nomadic existence for the sedentary lifestyle that led him to his death. This time, Osama bin Laden not only insisted that his house be constructed on cash-purchased land; he even took part in its design. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence holds sketches with bin Laden’s handwritten instructions. 3 After being redrawn by a registered architect, identified by the press as Muhammad Younis (principal of the local firm Modern Associates), the plans for a two-story building were sent to the Abbottabad Development Authority for approval. Bribes were paid and walls started to rise; after reaching a height of three to four meters, they were crowned with barbed wire. Bin Laden was not only a fugitive—he had become his own prisoner.

At approximately 3,000 square meters, the compound was the largest in the neighborhood, but not the largest house, and definitely not the one with the highest walls. The hideout was designed on the assumption that privacy can coexist with security. Inside, a system of steel gates and inner walls subdivided the space into smaller areas including the main house, a guesthouse, and a series of constructions. External structures to house chickens, cows, and bees allowed for a homegrown produce of eggs, milk, and honey. Goats were slaughtered inside the compound; vegetables were planted in the kitchen garden. 4 It could polemically be claimed that bin Laden’s house represented a paradigm for an alternative self-sufficient mode of inhabitation—a retreat from capitalist production, consumption, and circulation. 5 “You should learn to sacrifice everything from modern life, like elec-

you can run, but you cannot hide

tricity, air conditioning, refrigerators, gasoline,” he used to tell his adepts. “If you are living the luxury life, it’s very hard to escape and go to the mountains to fight.” 6 Breathing dense air, with no air conditioning and only rudimentary gas heaters, the residents were enclosed by walls bare of paint and pictures; by metal doors with padlocks on both sides; by inflexible codes and ethics. As a polygamous household, the compound was organized in up to three separate spaces with independent kitchens, each one accommodating one of bin Laden’s wives along with her children and grandchildren. On the second floor, a whiteboard marked the space of their common homeschool, where bin Laden personally supervised their education and playtime. Surveillance forced the family to stay indoors, avoid social contact, and eliminate every trace of life. They burned their own trash, used an independent water supply, and lacked phone or Internet connections. As a precaution against the incessant gaze of drones, only under a makeshift awning and a cowboy hat would bin Laden walk in the garden. Even when the raid was approved and under way, the CIA was not certain of the identity of “the Pacer.” But the compound had become a military target, and retreat was no longer possible. Intelligence agencies had built a body of evidence suggesting that the high walls housed a high-value target—circumstantially bin Laden. 7 Frames from a black-and-white drone feed with a figure pacing around the courtyard in Pakistan were now circulating inside US briefing rooms and operations centers. The house was observed, photographed, measured, and represented to the tiniest detail with architectural drawings, scale models and mock-up structures. 8 Around them, briefings, planning sessions, and rehearsals were organized. First sketched by bin Laden, later erected by National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency employees as a 1:84 scale model, and now translated into chain-link fence in a full-scale mock-up in North Carolina, the compound’s towering walls were finally being rendered indefensible. Neither the replicas nor the original (if we can still differentiate one from the other) included an escape route. The house was a trap. On May 1, 2011, Osama bin Laden was reportedly shot dead inside his house. His body was taken into custody, and the compound sealed off. Seemingly withdrawn from Western capitalism, bin Laden’s house was the target embodying the whole rhetoric of clashing civilizations. As George Bush put it in his address to the nation on the fifth anniversary of 9/11, “the war against this enemy is more than a military conflict. It is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” a fight “to maintain the way

10 “Press Briefing.” Days later, various newspaper and news agencies revealed that the descriptions of the raid made by US officials were not accurate. See Declan Walsh, “Osama bin Laden hideout ‘worth far less than US claimed,’” Guardian, May 4, 2011: “Osama Bin Laden’s house … is in fact worth no more than $250,000, say property professionals in Abbottabad.”

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11 All quotations from the preceding paragraph are from the following sources: Nicholas Schmidle, “Getting Bin Laden. What happened that night in Abbottabad,” New Yorker, August 8, 2011; Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty: The Shooting Script (New York: Newmarket Press, 2013): 88–99; Steven Yaccino, “Role-Playing at the Range, Bin Laden in Their Sights,” New York Times, September 1, 2012.

of life enjoyed by free nations.” 9 To win this battle, the then-US president promised to use all of the nation’s power. “One of the strongest weapons in our arsenal is the power of freedom,” he reminded his listeners, observing that “the terrorists fear freedom as much as they do our firepower.” When the US Department of Defense finally released images of bin Laden inside his “million-dollar-plus compound far removed from the front,” they showed him at his media room, watching himself on television, trapped and awaiting death. 10 The high walls had become empty signifiers. The house was inevitably associated to the global neoliberal regime and to the production and reproduction of information in the media. By the time the bulldozers arrived at the compound to begin its demolition in February 2012, its interiors were circulating restlessly. They materialize again and again in paintball facilities, in the final episode of a videogame, in literature, and in movies, to the point that there is no longer a separation between the real and its fictional assemblage.

It is May 1, 2011, again. “Just before four o’clock,” we read in The New Yorker, “Panetta [announces] to the group in the Situation Room that the helicopters were approaching Abbottabad… On the of on the big screen. “EXT. ABBOTTABAD, PAKISTAN – NIGHT… It is massive—six or seven times larger than any other nearby structure—with sixteen-foot-high walls and a gated interior. A fortress.” Bang! The first gate falls open, leading to a driveway, to another locked gate, to a courtyard, to the guesthouse. Movie spectators hold their breath as a door opens. Bin Laden’s courier “is lying dead in a pool of blood.” In the pages of The New Yorker, the “Americans’ night-vision goggles cast the scene in pixellated shades of emerald green.” In his Twitter feed, @ReallyVirtual announces that a helicopter is hovering above Abbottabad at 1 a.m. Meanwhile, a group of SEALs advance to the front door. The scene happens in a replica built in Jordan, in exact

you can run, but you cannot hide

detail, for Zero Dark Thirty. There, “piercing the first floor darkness with their infra red lights, the SEALs advance slowly,” and begin clearing room by room. Gunfire. We find two bodies lying on a floor covered in red. In The New Yorker, a locked metal gate blocks the base of the staircase leading to the second floor. In the script we read loud: “Boooom!” Millions of viewers on primetime climb the stairs in 60 Minutes on CBS with Scott Pelley and SEAL Team Six member Matt Bissonnette, who chronicles the raid with the help of a model of the house. The cameras follow their hands moving on the white surfaces of walls, stairs, and rooms, neat and empty, devoid of bodies. Midway up, in the Kuma\War videogame, we shoot bin Laden’s son Khalid and blow open another metal door leading to the third floor. Finally, creeping “toward the terrorist’s bedroom as a soundtrack of gunfire and helicopters pounded through speakers,” players in a paintball facility in Minnesota shot wide “as a screaming bin Laden fired blanks at them from a modified Glock 17 handgun before he collapsed on the ground.” On the radio a voice reports, “For God and country—Geronimo, Geronimo, Geronimo.” Lights on. “… blood stains on the walls, bodies pierced with bullets.” “Enemy Killed In Action.” Silence in the Situation Room; a burst of applause in the movie theater. 11 From the helicopter, the house shrinks beneath us until it disappears. Its architecture remains, now even engraved in the so-called Justice Coin, which unofficially commemorates the death of Osama bin Laden. On one side, the tragic reminders of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, still intact, proclaim, “Justice has been done.” On the other, the SEAL Team Six supported by their helicopters, a US flag and a date—May 1, 2011. Above, engraved on the golden metal, we find what could be designated the manifesto of 21st-century neoliberal existence: “You can run but you cannot hide.” To keep our homeland safe, we are left with no home.

This text is part of the ongoing doctoral research project Architectures of the Raid on Osama bin Laden’s Compound in Abbottabad. The author would like to acknowledge the invaluable advice provided by Declan Walsh (Pakistan Bu-

reau Chief, The New York Times), and the continuous support and guidance of Prof. Felicity D. Scott (Director of the Critical, Curatorial, and Conceptual Practices program at GSAPP, Columbia University).