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" The Border Bureau "
Mkhwanazi, Terrence Mxolisi
Vally, Sumayya
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1107891
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2458984684
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| Main Entry
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Mkhwanazi, Terrence Mxolisi
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Vally, Sumayya
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| Title & Author
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The Border Bureau\ Mkhwanazi, Terrence MxolisiVally, Sumayya
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| College
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University of Johannesburg (South Africa)
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| Date
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2019
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| student score
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2019
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| Degree
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M.Tech.
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| Page No
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123
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| Abstract
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The focus of my Major Design Project lies in understanding contradictions and complexities in systems of border control to produce new, subversive readings and configurations of border forms. For systems of power and control to be deployed, they rely on institutional frameworks and protocols of standardisation which are projected onto ungoverned or otherwise-governed elements. Control cannot exist without the definition and quantification of what it seeks to regulate. Border architectures are shaped by these systems, regulations and analyses. There are disputes in how the Moroccan government and the Algerian Polisario Front demarcate the border between Morocco and Algeria. These disputes result in contested 'slivers' which are claimed by both sides. This project is situated in and amongst these 'sliver zones', through which I explore the concept of the border as 'an in-between space'. Not least to note, the Algeria-Morocco border has been in a state of closure since 1994 due to the politics between the nations, with no land-crossing legitimised between the nations, and the borderlands heavily surveyed by law and order officials. This costs the Algerian and Moroccan economies in excess of usd2 billion annually - has separated many families, undermined business prospects, and affected tourism in the nearby areas, etc., with many resorting to risky methods of achieving this. My Major Design Project, the Border Bureau investigates the architecture of borders as political projections of nation-state. In the context of the sliver zones, where two competing notions of the nation-state exist - the Moroccan and the Algerian - I explore how a new concept of the border can be produced. Instead of the border simply presenting a barrier, I offer an architecture of the border which is simultaneously a 'connection, transition or threshold, a line of tension' (Brookes 2012 in Shahlaei et al 2015:75) - by producing new 'utopian' port of entry architectures that allow for a set of functions to take place in these no man's lands. The border architectures misuse translation, scale, shifting, etc., in producing open or more accessible spaces within and around the port of entries to facilitate functions that can't take place at the moment, such as trade between Morocco and Algeria, spaces for conflict resolutions, and a meetings/gatherings venue that could possibly host cross-border weddings, funerals, etc. These architectures are located within these territorial slivers and subvert the typology of the defunct port of entry that lie in the current borderlands. Drawing on Boeri's concept of 'other' gazes, which subvert the plan view of the border and Weizman's (2017:58) work which manifests invisible systems of control through forms of architectural representation, my project further seeks to find ways of representing the border as 'an in-between space' through working with multiple perspectives in parallel. Through this, I offer a mode of representing borders as unstable delineations where power, economy and security are constantly in negotiation.
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Architecture
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Design
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North African studies
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