Cement Entanglements

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This lecture offers a critical analysis of cement-based concrete in the Palestinian territories from an urban and political ecology perspective. It examines cement as a multi-scalar network entangled with power relations, territorial conflict, land acquisition, exclusion, political desires, and the limits of urban metabolism. As a substance, it plays an active role in urbanisation and construction projects in the West Bank. Control over its circulation consolidated the power over urban metabolism. Establishing independent cement plants requires sovereignty over land and energy resources. And finally, the destruction of Gaza shows us that this material’s agency is no longer seen as a banal modern construction material but rather as an activated weapon for urban annihilation.

In collaboration with Studio Space Popular / University of Applied Arts Vienna
Moderated by Anousheh Kehar / Studio SPoP, Nina Kolowratnik / ÖGFA

Samir Harb is a human geographer and trained architect whose work examines the material politics of urbanisation, infrastructure, and the environment, with a focus on cement and its production networks. He completed his PhD at the University of Manchester on how cement shapes urban and territorial transformations in Palestine, linking production to questions of sovereignty and political autonomy. As a postdoctoral researcher in Berlin, he extended this research to European cement industries, net-zero CO₂ agendas, and the political ecology of decarbonisation. Harb is also an artist whose graphic novels and mappings visualise complex spatial and political processes internationally.