A Monument of Buzzwords (MOB) by Samir El-Kordy

[Samir El Kordy, image from series Monument of Buzzwords (MOB) 2012, digital prints and text]

A Monument of Buzzwords (MOB)

Samir El-Kordy in collaboration with Pericentre Projects

In a reflective gesture of self-defiance, A Monument of Buzzwords presents us with an architectural proposition that reproduces the workings of power. The work imagines a monument commissioned by the ruling authorities to celebrate a revolution that toppled their regime. The proposed monument is a series of continuous paths that trace key avenues of the uprisings around the city center. These paths take the shape of a 20-meter high wall that runs parallel to, and in the center of, the streets it marks. Compliant with the urban plan, the monument acquires its shape from the city’s flow of movement. Within its boundaries however, the visitor is completely cut off from the urban context, and is instead walked through sequences of activities that commemorate the people, the nation and their power. Here, architectural practice is approached from without, to consider instances wherein representation interrupts the links between a memory and its form, between an utterance and its meanings.

A Monument of Buzzwords (MOB) is one of the exhibited works at PHOTOCAIRO 5.