Study name: ‘Assembly’ and ‘Three British Mosques’
Research project lead: Dr Julie Marsh
Assembly is a site-specific research project made and exhibited in Brick Lane Mosque, Old Kent Road Mosque and Harrow Mosque in London from 2018 to 2021. Made in collaboration with each mosque community, Assembly attempts to re-enact a performance of congregational prayer via 1:1 floor projections. An automated motorised camera is used to record the Jumu’ah (Friday) prayer from above; this film is then projected back on to the carpet on which the prayer was performed using a lens mounted on the same overhead track from which it was filmed.
This projection – a record and a trace of worship – provides an opportunity for others to experience prayer in situ, via the artwork. At the end of each residency, the mosque community invites the public into their prayer spaces to experience the Jumu’ah prayer via the site-performances.
Methodology
Assembly uses the artist’s methodology of ‘site-integrity’ which employs artistic devices to perform the social, religious, architectural, and institutional discourses taking place in a religious site. ‘Site-integrity’ repositions the act of representation from its retrospective or projective dimensions towards that which is experiential. Therefore, Assembly should not be regarded as a representation of a space, and still less one of individual worshipers, but rather as an attempt to perform the mosque as it actually exists.
Key questions
- How might an immersive, site-specific installation enhance self-awareness of Islamic worship?
- Can artistic fieldwork play a part in connecting communities?
- Would art performed in a mosque (rather than a gallery) be more meaningful for the congregation?
Outputs
The project provided a platform for groups such as Everyday Muslims, the Muslim Council of Britain, the Inclusive Mosque Initiative and Inter Faith Network UK to build links and create a sense of solidarity with Brick Lane Mosque and Old Kent Road Mosque.
Assembly has been 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. Assembly was also featured in the new publication British Mosques (eds. Shahed Saleem, Christopher Turner and Ella Kilgallon).
Funded by PILOT (Practical and Innovative Live Outcomes Testing) research funding scheme, University of Westminster and the V&A Applied Arts Pavilion Special Project by Volkswagen Group.
Read more projects by Dr Julie Marsh
Study name: Virtual Assembly
Project overview
Virtual Assembly is an interactive virtual space and archive 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 is 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.
Visit the Virtual Assembly website.
Methodology
Virtual Assembly uses the artist’s methodology of ‘site-integrity’, a collaborative approach to fieldwork, transforming the traditional anthropological ‘subject of research’ into the producer of its own voice. This egalitarian approach to art making encourages reflexive conversations that avoid reductive ethnographic portraits of ‘subjects’ and fixed representation.
The personal, aesthetic, and everyday cultures of place and community are often museumized, subjected to the disciplinary gaze of Western art historians and anthropologists. Site-integrity repositions this act of representation from its retrospective or projective dimensions towards that which is experiential and encountered within the context of the place and its people.
Key questions
- How might an immersive virtual site help the community maintain a sense of identity and belonging?
- How can co-creation articulate the material, architectural, social and institutional discourses present in site?
- Can innovative/digital technologies capture, record, disseminate and preserve dynamic cultural heritage, particularly interior spaces and intangible cultural practices?
Virtual Assembly includes co-investigator Dr Roza Tsagarousianou, Reader in Media and Communication and project partners The Muslim Council of Britain & Inclusive Mosque Initiative with support from The Fabrication Lab.