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Makhzen: A Port of Information

Part 2 Project 2019
Roanne Moodley
University of Johannesburg | South Africa
This project speculates on new relationships between language, media and architecture.

Makhzen is an underground radio station and coup. It is a counter-institution to both the state controlled media houses in Morocco and its contradictory “constitutional monarchy”. It functions as an information collector and disseminator at the site of Dar el Makhzen- the king’s palace and public square of allegiance in Morocco’s capital city in the year 2020.

The project is a series of studies on language through the acts of reading, listening and speaking in political contexts, experimenting with ways of translating these acts into space. It uses narrative to both describe the events of the coup and form parts of the Soap Opera, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, that is broadcast via the radio station.

Moving through mediums of sound, linguistics, narrative, programme, choreography, and form allow the project to weave through various spectrums- official/unofficial, parent/creole, spectator/participator, permanent/transient, and material/spiritual. Makhzen claims and re-frames Orwell’s dystopian quote that “the revolution will be complete when the language is perfect” in the contemporary crisis in the relationship between what we believe, the information we consume and how we vote/act.


Tutor(s)

2019
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