Civil occupation

Collaborating since 2005 under the collective name Brave New Alps, Bianca Elzenbaumer and Fabio Franz investigate into the cultural value of design and its capacity to question our surrounding realities and to actively suggest alternatives. Brave New Alps’ practice is focused upon developing a careful and exact evaluation of the cultural conditions surrounding a given project. By inhabiting the specific time and place of a project, and gaining insight from a variety of different subject specialists, Brave New Alps develop an in-depth analysis of the given project’s social, political, physical and economic conditions. Their resulting design process aims at creating a situation or a product, which sets off a change in modes of thinking about, and operating within the identified conditions.

In 2006, Brave New Alps graduated from the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in South Tyrol. In 2007, Bianca gained a Postgraduate Certificate in International Peacekeeping and Conflict Management from the Faculty of Educational Science of the University of Bologna. In 2010, they both graduated from a 2 year MA in Communication Art & Design at the Royal College of Art in London. Bianca is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Design Department of Goldsmiths College in London, where she is also teaching in the MA Design & Environment. They live and work between Olang (It), Nomi (It) and London.

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Civil occupation

2007

These are excerpts of a visual research into the Israeli architecture of occupation. Civil buildings in the West Bank represent facts on the ground, which make the peace process in the region ever more difficult.

 

Atraktziya – a failed Israeli water park venture at the Dead Sea, which is still labeled as a settlement.

 

Ma’ale Adumim – the biggest settlement in the West Bank, which is ever expanding although it’s existence is illegal under International Law.

http://www.brave-new-alps.com/brave-new-winter/