2013/14 Brief 06 – Marrakech Nomadology

There are two inter-realted tasks for you to do while in Marrakech.

1. Take a walk through the city.

This can be an aimless drift or derive or you can use the I Ching or other chance operations to determine a route, or perhaps to generate a random line on a map which you follow as closely as possible. Or you might develop the route by identifying the position of say, every dentist in Marrakech and passing by each one. It should last at least half a day.

Use the I-Ching to determine 3 methods of recording your journey which might take the form of a film, a drawing, a photo essay, a soundscape or anything you like and follow its suggestions to create a virtual cross section of the city.
You can use this trip in combination with chance operations to identity potential sites for future projects. These can be open land, existing buildings, mixtures of both, disused or with any current use.

2. Survey
Acting as a whole studio group, you should collectively record the area of the Medina and the Djemaa-el-Fnaa. You should record this over time, observing and recording the differences between and interactions between the ‘physical’ and non-physical architectures of the area, how they change over time. Look for changing patterns of use; the relationship between built and unbuilt architectures (buildings, stalls, performances, hassling, display of items for sale etc. Again, you must do this in groups and with due respect to the issues already discussed to do with a sensible and responsible behaviour.

You might think of this as a fragmentary and collective survey operating in many different media (photos, sketches, notes, sound recordings etc). Again, you may invent, combine, structure, react, change, ask the I-Ching, consult and swap with your colleagues, set up frameworks and re-invent them on how to do this. You will work as a group to present the collective survey on our return.