Always Becoming

Several times a week, we drive from our office/house/classroom in the suburb of Ainkawa into Erbil proper.  Here a building is being transformed from an old public library to laboratories and classrooms and dormitories where people will come from all over Iraq to learn ways to save and share things that represent a past.  The Iraq Institute could be a place where people can come from all over the world to share ideas and knowledge about how to uncover, save and interpret traces of the earliest civilizations.  It might develop into a place that will help restore ancient and historic buildings.  It might help Iraq rebuild.  But as important as all that might be, the personal joy I find in being part of this project is in the ways it is bringing people together from all over the world to create something.

The Iraq Institute under construction

When I worked at the National Museum of the American Indian, I worked on a project that transformed an area outside the museum because a community of people came together to create sculptures titled “Always Becoming”.  These sculptures, conceived and orchestrated by the artist Nora Naranjo-Morse are made of natural materials that will slowly, slowly dissolve away.  You can find out more about the project here.

One of the lessons I learned is how a project can be centered around a product – but what’s more important is the community that grows at the same time.  For anything to be sustained, people have to believe in it and believe in working on it together.  Nora is now working on a film about the community that we all became a part of.

I hope that’s what we can do here.

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