The Future is Unwritten: Rashad Salim, Ark Re-Imagined

Thor Heyerdahl’s Tigris Expedition

In 1977-78 Rashad was a crew member on Thor Heyerdahl's Tigris expedition, helping to build a large reed boat that travelled from the marshes of Iraq across the Indian Ocean, exploring possible trading links between the Sumerians and other ancient civilisations of the Indus and Nile. This experience sparked his fascination with boats and with unanswered questions about ancient technologies, particularly organic construction techniques that have left no remains.

The Tigris was burned at the end of its voyage (3 April 1978) in protest at conflicts inflaming the region, as a call to “open our eyes and minds to the desperate need of intelligent collaboration to save ourselves and our common civilisation from what we are about to convert into a sinking ship”.

The Origin of Ark Re-imagined

Ark Re-imagined challenges popular images of the Ark based on European boat-building techniques far removed from the time and place of the Great Flood, when in the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene, sea level in the Gulf rose 120 meters by around 8,000 BCE as part of a global climate event of unknown cause.

Instead, the project envisions a Mesopotamian Ark, based on boat types and vernacular architectural forms that persisted on the Tigris and Euphrates river system in an unbroken tradition for many millennia until the conflicts and disruptions of the late 20th and early 21st century brought them close to extinction.

This Ark is not a unique boat of monumental size that had never been built before, but a gathering of many ordinary vessels: a community bringing together what they already have into a structure of unity that would enable them to survive catastrophe.

The project does not aim to prove the existence or form of an ancient Ark, but uses the concept of the Ark as a catalyst to explore and revitalise Iraq’s craft heritage, and to invite cross-cultural conversation and re-imagining.

Boatbuilding Techniques in Iraq

Since 2015, through Ark Re-imagined, Rashad has worked with communities in central, southern and western Iraq to protect, document and revive their endangered craft heritage, particularly boatbuilding techniques of ancient origin.

Ark Re-imagined Design

The design of Ark Re-imagined has been modelled in collaboration with Iraqi craftspeople and visualised with help from architecture students and graduates (Iraqi and international).

Ark Re-imagined at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia

Rashad is preparing to present Ark Re-imagined as Iraq's first National Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, to be held in 2021.

This Pavilion explores links between Venice’s wetland environment and that of southern Iraq, and investigates boats from prehistoric origins to the apex of design in both the Venetian boating tradition and the disappearing boats of Basra’s canals and marshes. Like Venice, southern Iraq is now facing the critical challenge of a man-made climate event – the advent of the Anthropocene – comparable to the ancient Flood (sea level rise between the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs).

Ecological and Health Emergencies in Iraq

Environmental and public health issues affecting communities in Iraq include impacts of climate crisis, ranging from flooding to droughts and increasingly extreme heat; water quality issues and the threat of water shortages, driven by upstream construction of dams and lack of coordination in water management across the Mesopotamian region...

...high levels of plastic waste choking the waterways; air pollution and respiratory diseases from the concentration of oil industry sites in southern Iraq; and toxic remains of war including depleted uranium that causes birth defects.

Ark Re-imagined for Sustainable Development

Ark Re-imagined has activated a revival of Iraq’s maritime cultural heritage.

Through engaging communities in sharing the history and skills of Iraq’s boatbuilding traditions, the project aims to regenerate local economies and create sustainable livelihoods.

Intergenerational Learning and Sharing

This endangered heritage is a catalyst for intergenerational learning.

During boatbuilding workshops, all generations are attracted:

Elders share knowledge and memories; adult craftspeople hone their skills; children and young experience something they have never seen before.

Traditional Boats as Cultural Icons

Boats like the Meshouf canoe of the southern Marshlands, and the Guffa coracle of central Iraq, are cultural icons all Iraqis recognise from Mesopotamian art through the ages.

Archival photos of these boats are popular on social media, yet they have almost disappeared from the waterways of Iraq in recent decades.

Through returning the art and beauty of these boats to public spaces, Ark Re-imagined brings people together and generates pride in shared cultural heritage, an important step towards psychological health in a landscape scarred by loss and division.

Ark Re-imagined for Sustainable Development

As well as boats, Ark Re-imagined draws inspiration from vernacular architecture traditions including the reed structures, floating islands and Mudhifs (guest houses) of the Iraqi Marshlands, and the Arish palm architecture of the Gulf.

In fields including botany, materials science, architecture and product design, the value of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is increasingly being recognised and explored in combination with more contemporary approaches. Ark Re-imagined proposes that this engagement offers the greatest potential to enable economic regeneration in Iraq, as well as to address issues of pollution and strategies for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

As part of the ‘life in the Ark’, the project explores the Izar tradition: embroidered rugs (or marriage blankets) of southern Iraq, the iconography of which can be traced from ancient times, for example in painted ceramics and cylinder seals from the Ubaid period onward.

Rashad works to research, document and revive this vernacular art form in partnership with KBAFA, a women’s organisation with a mission to improve the situation of widows, divorcees and other marginalised women, of whom there are many, following decades of conflict and social upheaval.

Some have suffered severe trauma and the artistic practice of Izar making serves as a form of therapeutic engagement as well as a way to develop an independent livelihood.

Ark Re-imagined for Sustainable Development

Humat Dijlah, the Tigris Protectors Association, are partners in the Ark Re-imagined project. Through learning to use traditional boats – connecting directly with the river environment and their heritage – activists strengthen their determination to protect and restore the Tigris and Euphrates river systems. A network of youth Boat Clubs is now developing across Iraq, and expeditions are planned to explore local heritage and monitor environmental health along the two rivers’ tributaries.

A growing programme of events on the water – from heritage festivals and boat races to training workshops and research expeditions – is re-engaging communities with the ecological and cultural heritage of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the unique environments around them, from white water tributaries to ancient water wheels, irrigated palm orchards to marshlands.

The Ark for Iraq Network (AIN), developing out of Ark Re-imagined, is connecting local heritage experts across the country and creating opportunities for Iraqis of all ages and genders to participate.