Ground to Pieces (Lesson 1) dimensions of room approx. 10x15 feet, rubble, wood, paper, duct tape
I'm not sure exactly how to categorize this work, but I'll do my best to describe it. I had been gathering concrete from demolished buildings and asphalt this semester for what I imagined would be a static installation of Arabic text in a large room written in rubble. I hoped that the text would write out a sincere apology to the people that I harmed directly or indirectly while deployed in Iraq. It was important to use the physical language of a destroyed urban environment (chunks of buildings and roads) to write this message as this was the only language I really learned while in Mosul and Tall'afar. But what I would say and how this message might reach the people it was intended for were (and are) two very large obstacles to deal with. I have spent years wrestling with what I might tell these people whose lives and country I took part in altering/up-ending/terrorizing, and I am still at a loss. So I decided that rather than translate words that fail in my own language into a language I don't even know, my time would be best used by first learning Arabic. My thought is that between these two languages, I might be able to find the right words.
So in a small critique room I poured out my rubble onto the floor, took off my shoes, and spent roughly seven hours pushing around the material into the form of letters of the Arabic alphabet as well as writing the alphabet on paper over and over. It was tiring and a bit painful, but I felt that any tiny bit of suffering was appropriate to what I was doing - a mild form of self-flagellation to help pay for my sins, so to speak. I'm ashamed to admit that I spent eleven months in a country and interacted with its people daily, and I know only bits and pieces of its language. It's one of those insane realities of war. At the time it seemed that the language of aggression, intimidation, and terror often made other forms of communication seemingly unnecessary and cumbersome, especially when the flow of information was dominantly headed in one direction. I don't want to get on a political rant here, but it seemed that this form of (mis)communication was the policy of those in charge at the highest level. And it doesn't take much research on the Iraq War to realize that this way of doing things has cost all of us dearly.