Project narrative

Focusing on Jumu’ah (Friday) prayers, a film made one week was typically played back for the congregation after prayers the following Friday. As in camera mode, the device again moves back and forth, between the entrance and the Mihrab – but this time projecting footage of the congregation down into the hall. The result is uncanny: mapped precisely to the mosque floor, the projected image of the carpet disappears into the real carpet. And the congregation, returning as observers, watch ghostly illusions of themselves at prayer moving slowly across the hall. As the image moves through the physical space, the controlled motorisation creates an effect of only the frame moving, revealing and concealing the architectural site below. There is never a point of fixed representation as the work is continuously in the process of being made.

V&A special project at Venice Architecture Biennale 2021

Assembly was exhibited internationally as part of the Three British Mosques exhibition, V&A Pavilion for La Biennale di Venezia 2021. Curated by architect Shahed Saleem and the V&A, the exhibition looked at the self-built and often undocumented world of adapted mosques. The outputs will enter the V&A collection as permanent digital artefacts, each representing a stage in the evolutionary journey of the British Mosque. Visit the V&A website: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/la-biennale-di-venezia-2021

Assembly was also featured in the publication British Mosques (eds. Shahed Saleem, Christopher Turner and Ella Kilgallon). Commissioned by V&A Applied Arts Pavilion Special Project, Volkswagen Group.

Virtual Assembly

Virtual Assembly is an interactive virtual space for Old Kent Road Mosque and MANUK (Muslim Association of Nigeria UK) due to the demolition and redevelopment of their mosque on Old Kent Road in Southwark. Built using 3D software and immersive technologies (VR/AR), the space combines spatial scanning technologies with drawings, audio, film, and speculative design. The content was co-created by the Old Kent Road Mosque community through a series of workshops bringing together different narratives of identity to interact, communicate and learn from each other and carry the community (in its diversity) forward. The project also explores the potential of new technologies in the creation of virtual communal spaces/archives, providing a platform for wider engagement on a local and national scale. The Muslim Council of Britain are project partners.

Realisation of the work involved: 

• Production of four site-specific artworks to test ideas and develop a working methodology and contextual framework for the project
• Collaboration with mosque communities and other experts to develop a knowledge base during each site-specific residency
• Sustained technical research into the recording/ playback device through liaison with technical engineers, computational developers and coders in order to develop the necessary knowledge base to deliver practice 
• Development of qualitative research methods as a form of data collection and archive from each site residency and performance