Kabul: Reconstructions
Shaheen Rassoul
After a long hiatus during which this resilient little country helped end the Cold-War, endured brutal civil conflict and Taliban occupation, Afghanistan has suddenly re-emerged center stage as posterboy for post 9-11 national reconstruction on-the-quick: An important regional ally in the war on terror and a backwards society waiting to be brought up to speed. Behind the headlines reconstructing Afghanistan is a much more nuanced process. For those who remained in the country during the previous 30 years, traditions, languages, customs and political systems of proud cultures often collide with the prerogatives of reconstruction. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s), political and economic bureaucrats representing a whole slew of international governmental and private interests, security operatives and savvy entrepreneurs all pose as many challenges as opportunities.
To many foreigners, Afghanistan is a desolate and forbidden place, isolated, backwards and obsolete. Reconstruction offers untold opportunities for rebirth and rejoining with the civilized world. The Afghan expatriate community struggles to pull the two polarities of old and new together into a viable whole.
In her project "Kabul: Reconstructions," the media artist Mariam Ghani seeks to explore the unseen manifestations of the process of reconstruction. "Kabul: Reconstructions" was conceived as a two-tiered project that consists of a video installation housed in a refugee tent and a collaborative web-based forum for viewing, creating and exchanging information. The installation was exhibited at Exit Art in New York City in 2003; the web-based forum is still running as an interactive media artwork that stands on its own.
As a member of the diaspora, Mariam inhabits that ambivalent grey area. She is unable to fully be an outsider or insider, but can also be a bit of both. The Bronx-born daughter of a Lebanese mother and the former Afghan minister of finance, Mariam makes use of "Kabul: Reconstructions" as a allegorical vehicle to explore her own identity as an Afghan-American in the context of Kabul’s reconstruction; investigating her image of self by deconstructing the reconstruction of a home which is as much myth for her as reality. Thus, in the video installation, we see scenes of carpenters carving ornamental cabinetry to outfit her parents’ new home in Kabul and of Mariam undressing in front of a mirror then ceremoniously and methodically re-dressing in her father’s traditional Afghan clothing. Mariam’s use of these significant personal images in the video suggests that the examination of self-identity is an intrinsic part of Kabul’s reconstruction, but she doesn’t quite take us fully into the process. The tent also housed a computer from which visitors could ask a group of young journalism students from the AINA Afghan Media Center in Kabul about Afghanistan history, culture or politics.
For an exploration of many different layers, the piece comes off as surprisingly self-referential. It conveys an unresolved mixture of the distance from the experience of Afghanistan for the Afghan diaspora and nostalgia for an ephemeral sense of what it means to reconstruct. An injection of more real humanity would have helped, because this is about people and life and death, not policy and buildings.
The web-based component of "Kabul: Reconstructions" is designed as an online forum to give the public a view that Mariam calls the "private lines of insider-outsider communication, and the special kinds of information they carry;" a virtual point-of-access into the dialogue between Afghan-Americans and Afghans who are involved in Afghan affairs. Thirteen Afghan and Afghan-American participants who have familial or professional access to different aspects of Kabul’s reconstruction have been invited to the site. Viewers pose questions to these participants about reconstruction and present their own personal observations and thoughts. Although few participants appear to have posted any information, there is an interesting array of material. One participant recounts her impressions following the mysterious death of her father, then Minister of Mines and Industry, as he was finalizing a multibillion-dollar deal on a gas pipeline. While she vows to return to a country that welcomed her, she also questions her relationship with Afghanistan following the death of her only link to the country. Feeling betrayed after the President’s personal assurances to investigate yielded nothing but apathy she is struck by realization of the fact that that her people have felt this way all their lives, and this makes her feel more Afghan.
Not surprisingly, the most active participant is Mariam herself. The link to her page contains a wealth of information–from World Bank reports and think-tank stuff for policy wonks, to news on current Afghan affairs, to historical and academic materials and more of Mariam’s work. At the bottom of the page an interview with her father, Dr. Ashraf Ghani, offers a heady perspective on reconstruction from the view of a high-level economist and bureaucrat. Dr. Ghani’s analysis is grounded in the realities of policy formulation and is effectively juxtaposed by his daughter’s visual excursions.
Although only the truly committed visitor will look at all the materials, these highly personal accounts add texture to the enterprise that is reconstructing Kabul. However, the project also leaves one wanting. Following 9-11, when Mariam’s community suddenly hoisted her up as a bridge between two worlds, Mariam envisioned a space to facilitate Afghans’ and Afghan-Americans’ imaginings and hope for the country; a place to dream, to cultivate vision and to own that process, regardless of circumstance. However "Kabul: Reconstructions" is also a place for the negotiation of Mariam’s self-identity. The tension between these two goals is clear.
Rather than encouraging expansive envisioning, "Kabul: Reconstruction" presents a highly intellectual process of examination in retrograde. The overall impression is quite cerebral and offers less of a vision of reconstruction than an exercise in deconstruction. This is partly related to the format. Both the audio and the visual veins of the work fail to provide adequate interface with the rich experiences of the true insiders–Afghans on the ground who are living and experiencing the reconstruction everyday. Mariam’s use of multi-media technology is a fantastically effective venue for this type of exercise, but she falls short of taking full advantage of its potential for bringing her message home. Who are the students at AINA? Why can’t they use their own words or images to speak of reconstruction? Why aren’t there any clips of ordinary Afghans speaking, telling stories or somehow communicating their own vision? While this may have pushed the project away from the realm of abstract art and closer to documentary, it would have also made it more accessible to the outsider who wishes to relate to Kabul. After all, these are the people for whom the notion of reconstruction has the most profound implications, and whose impressions might offer the most significant insights. By avoiding the fully human face to the reconstruction, the project undermines the richness of this immense process. Although Mariam writes that her work seeks to provoke questions rather than provide answers, "Kabul: Reconstructions" does neither. It leaves one feeling empty and conflicted because it neither wholly commits to the search for personal identity and cultural affirmation, which Mariam seems to project, nor does it provide a sufficiently engaging forum for grappling with the many meanings of reconstruction to those outside of a small and select community.
