Interzone — 

an Ecology of the Strait

Fall 2022, Theoretical Statement, EPFL

Un cut-up du détroit, October 2022. Inspired by William Burroughs’ photographed collages (the ‘cut-ups’).

The theoretical research carried out as a preamble to the project Gleaning Interzone, uses the ‘interzone’ as a working hypothesis to understand the phenomenology of Tangier, from the formation of its rocks to the occupation of its streets. It highlights a set of informal practices that enable the inhabitants of the Strait to safeguard a way of life and a political agency. The Strait's landscape is cultivated through a ‘know-how’ or a set of practices on land and at sea that are integrated into the city's economy: gathering from the hills, as much as fishing from the cliffs; harvesting in makeshift gardens, as much as gleaning from the forest. These improvisations construct an ‘in-between’, a real and imaginary space, the ‘interzone’, in which the individual realizes themselves as an actor in the territory. If the interzone is a way of appropriating the city that goes beyond development plans, how can the architectural project stimulate it without spoiling it?

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Fragments from the printed theoretical statement:
1- Leporello accompanying the publication with fragments of poetry written during fieldwork in Tangier (textual cut-ups).
2- Introduction to the publication with a photograph of the strait of Gibraltar taken by the author
3- Key Map and photograph of the chapter “An island, a river” diving into the strait’s mythological and medieval representation.