Lewis Murray

A Wake: I am in the Interzone

Approaching Tangier through an exploration of William Burroughs’ hallucinatory texts and Brion Gysin’s method of cut-ups, the city manifests itself as a parallel, as an other. This teeming sea of relations between, across, and through the city become permutations of Tangier’s material reality; a pin-cushion of imperial flags, camouflaged and flecked with the wear and tear of its fluctuating history. The undertones of colonialism reverberate in its streets, in its language, in its law.

celestial arabesques rain
upon the cobbles and thrones
pelt,
a skin masquerading dominion,
the greed grins snarls berates its litter
awash the streets melt into another,
swept into the sky all and none
spoke cried softly
the word that has betrayed again,
plurality reigns, it is true

Drifting

The foreign colonial powers have been replaced by a native one, concentrating power into the singular. The actions of the government encroach on societal freedoms, create severe environmental issues, and beset the population of modern-day Morocco with trenchant corruption.

shudders the frame,
shackles the heart,
respite denied
with brutal consideration.
masks slip and veils flutter above
paternal ornament
secretes scarlet whispers,
change revolution mutiny
they assert to what they know,
another is yet,
to be once more

War Cabinet

Tangier’s siting at a confluence of narratives is exemplified in the Petit Socco, a tightly bound square which played host to a multitude of international institutions during the mid-20th century. Western nation’s legations, post offices and hotels rose high above the street, before crumbling in the wake of the International Zone’s collapse in 1956. The Petit Socco exemplifies the technique of the cut up, the rapid shuttling of one to another.

debts wracked against the wall
surge like shoots through cracks,
whip the back cleaving one from self,
over the boundary into the embrace
tender is the flight,
reborn liquid again
dear life sold another conspires,
profit nicks the heels
stumbles the never,
makes worthy the lie of the land

Hide & Seek

A manipulated legal framework provides an opportunity to reclaim territory in a move against the zeitgeist. This series of chance operations becomes a form of cut-ups that projects back onto itself simultaneously. Opportunistic architectural interventions cloak themselves in the historic narratives present in the Petit Socco, addressing a wide range of issues that affect modern society in Morocco.

Hidden in plain sight, the architectures play with their histories, revealing and concealing certain aspects via a series of exposed seams. Collectively, they form the Interzone.

over the night drift
the heartbeats of an eternal memory.
through a cross over
under worlds and within one,
blanket the earth tempered
to be finite.
come forth the murmur
the cry, the look.
pale white it is encircled in her arms.

The Gathering

Host and guest switch roles with increasing acceleration, the parasitic visitor corrupting the former only then to be corrupted themselves. The architectures operate in the intersections, folds, convolutions. Occupying buildings within tightly controlled incisions, they blend with the existing function below while gaining the horizon above. The historic seeping of parasite into host generates a novel architecture by way of palimpsest. It draws in, extracts, and imitates its architectural setting.

darkness fills the void
the ascent has left right down below,
pearls bleed over the iris
grasping visions
now and for the being it is no more.
spectres flicker pass shudder
they weep,
sailing through endless skies,
the crimson has kissed clouds,
vapour mists around ankles
chained no longer

A Wake

Bolstered by their endemic presence across the city, the parasites begin to embed themselves in aural, visual and textual forms of representation. The liminal threshold of entity and relation buckles. Using representation as a conduit to creation, the parasites embed themselves in the urban fabric of their conception – Chambers Street. The fleeting encounters across it instigate further proliferation, taking root both in the studio and in public space.

in dreams of mercury
the star glints
an eye,
the rope slips a grasp
tears stream from the stars falling upon us,
falling down never to reclaim
it is gone,
bound and loosed,
not of one but of all,
the haze drifts lazily on,
for all