LE MARCHÉ ORIENTAL|2008

A 2-minute intervention inside Cape Town’s disused Oriental Plaza, an Apartheid-era shopping mall designed to control Indian trade. On the 4th day of Ramadan, 2008, Sheikh Mogamat Moerat of District Six’s Zeenatul Islam Majid mosque was invited to sing the Adhan (call to prayer) inside the empty remains of the building a few weeks prior to its demolition to make way for luxury apartments.

The artwork is exhibited as a wall-sized video projection with quadraphonic sound.
The audio in the video was recorded in one take, and was not spatially enhanced in post-production. The reverberation you hear on the voice is the acoustic of the building, an acoustic that now no longer exists.

Medium: Video, audio
Dimensions: Variable
Duration: 03:00
Date: 2008

View a low-res version of Le Marché Oriental here.

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VIDEO CREDITS

Direction: James Webb
Camera: Norman Servais
Sound recording: James Webb & Vanessa De Michelis
Video editing: Matthew Kalil
Sound editing: James Webb
Thanks to: Sheikh Mogamat Moerat, Carine Zaayman

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