The perm is nothing more than asking us to pay rent for the space we took. Only illegal occupation fosters effective strategies.

For this reason, the site of the space had to remain a resistant exception to state sovereignty. It was therefore imperative that the squat remained illegally squatted, for only then could it push against state power while also carving out aparadoxical site within/outside of it. This is demonstrated by the heated debate when offered a very lenient rental contract for continued, legal use of the space, which the group nonetheless ultimately refused. The plenary body argued that:

The occupied status of the Flora offers possibilities and strategies that would otherwise be impossible due to legal and economic constraints. In addition, it multiplies opportunities to repeatedly transgress the current political rules of the game and to produce ruptures in the dominant prevailing political order. (Zeck 2001)

To enter a contract would therefore not only undermine the sovereignty of the squat, but also prevent the radical nature of that space from critiquing, transgres- sing, and attempting to subvert “the dominant prevailing political order”. Fur- thermore, it would be impossible to negotiate with a state from a position of weakness, as to sign a contract would mean acknowledging the power structures of the state, and thereby enter into them as a subordinate. Instead, the only option to be taken seriously in this context was to speak as one sovereign to another, as will be discussed shortly. Spatially, this meant that the Flora had to remain not only illegally occupied, but also in the paradoxical zone of inclusion/ exclusion to the state in order to retain its political identity. The building’s loca- tion in the heart of the rapidly gentrifying Schanzenviertel neighbourhood main- tained a spatial contestation of neoliberal city restructuring precisely via juxtaposition.17 In other words, it was only by refusing state sovereignty inside of the physical limits of the city that the squat could offer an exclusion and excep- tion outside of city sovereignty. Just as the sovereign is defined as that which is simultaneously outside the law and yet bound by it, the state of excess space could only be created by pushing back against the state, while remaining tied to it via that resistance. As a spatial state of exception, the building was both bound by rejection of the state and yet outside of its control: a “law-free space” deter- mined by its refusal of that same law, effectively making it sovereign.