The Art of Rapitecture

I just got home from a day of constantly running around, and now I'm about to pull an all night long homework session.

I met with the guys from VIP today and we started laying the groundwork for their album.  They also introduced me to a French rapper who is living here in Cairo that I will start working with also.   Its amazing, as producing these hip hop records is simply something that I thought would be fun but I didn't really expect much to come from it.  Instead, I am finding a very receptive audience and many excited artists who view this as their chance to make the sort of music that they asprire toward.   So now I have three different albums in production, and this Friday Unigunz will be debuting much of our work in a live performance here in Cairo.  Another glimmer of good news is that a UK radio show called Refugee Radio, which broadcasts on Monday nights in Brighton and Hove, is interested in doing a special on the project.  You can learn more about the radio show at http://www.refugeeradio.org.uk/.

In other news, school is getting close to ending... so close, but just not close enough.  If getting older doesn't make me lose my hair, I quite sure that continuing my education will.  I started this term totally fried, so at this point I'm beyond crispy.  One more semester... just 3 classes more...

Tonight I need to write a collection of papers, one on Sudanese refugee camps, one on the dynamics of money transfers by migrant communities, and another on the distinctions of refugee vs. general migration policy.  You know, its been nice to learn the intricacies while I've been here, but more than anything it makes me miss doing Development Planning.  I miss creating diagrams and drawings, elaborate presentations to convey the results of my studies and being able to talk about the intercourse between large concepts such as social justice and the particular components of architecture or urban design.  Working with migration, economics, and foreign policy within the context of Planning made it so much easier to grasp while my more recent academic research remains within the abstract.

Speaking of which, I just remembered that I need to submit an abstract to a university in India right now.  I've written two separate papers on Humanitarian Space thus far and if the University of Delhi is interested, I might present my research on the complications of Humanitarian Spaces within conflict zones at a conference called Imagined Horizons: Spatial Configurations of the Present.  For anyone interested, here's the opening paragraph...

"Humanitarian operations within conflict zones often require military support to satisfy security demands, a practice frequently at odds with the humanitarian objective to deliver aid to demanding populations in a politically neutral manner.  This contradiction is most evident within the necessary action to carve out humanitarian spaces for the implementation of aid programming within conflicted regions.  The creation of such spaces frequently demands military support, leading to an increase in conflict by additionally politicizing the role of humanitarian aid and thus politicizing a landscape created for logistical purposes.   Furthermore, by impinging upon the pretense of neutrality, humanitarian actions supported by militarization adversely affect the expression of rights among displaced populations who must occupy the same territory.  This imbalance is likewise reflected within the physical transformation of the humanitarian space, as a space created for the sake of institutional operation and human rights expression, is converted into a zone of controversy and power."