Michael Bears’s illustrations, cast in the vocabulary of graphic novels are a map of
DAAR’s networks and origin of projects, recreating the complex web of formal and
informal relations in which every project is embedded. DAAR’s nomadic artistic
and architectural practice and mode of production stand in stark contrast with the
surrounding political environment. Bears’s narrative drawings depict a synthetic
cartography and interpretation of lived experience, where even the organizing
principle of vignettes is discarded to underscore DAAR’s organic, experimental
approach. A human geography forms around every project, faces of architects,
artists, researchers, activists, lawyers, colonizers, students, soldiers, politicians,
shape consciously or unconsciously DAAR spatial interventions and political
propositions.

2011