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The Tigris Woods project

Reclaiming the River
Free Flow From Baghdad

Meet Me At The Bank Of The Beautiful River - Burning Spear

Aziz Iraqi diaries & dagboek, April 2004

The River

The Tigris winds like a serpent through the city of Baghdad. In its fold one finds the Palace of Saddam Hussein and Paul Bremer. Under Saddam the Tigris and its banks were a forbidden area, likewise now the Coalition has decided that the river is not safe: ?for your own good, stay away from the river?, the guardians of the Colaition will tell the ingenuous tresspasser. The reason for this prohibition is that from the Tigris you have a perfect view and shot on the palace. So the river has been taken away from the city. If not a crime against civic life, this is at least a serious infringement on the freedom of movement. Therefore the proposed intervention aims to recover the river as a fundamental element of public life, a stream of consciousness and a source of inspiration. The Tigris is much more than just a streaming river: it is a cradle of civilisation, a stream of water for fishing, swimming, drinking, irrigation and dumping, hiding and shaving . And it may be a vehicle for anybody's imagination. From the Gilgamesh Epic to Mehmet Uzun, from Rotterdam to Baghdad. From me to you. And back. Like a kellek. The Tigris, or Dicle (Turkish), or Dijla (Arabic) is also subject to geopolitical strategic interventions like the Turkish Great Anatolian Project. Megadams built in the Tigris would affect first of all the Kurds in Turkey, drowning the ancient city of Hasankeyf and radically shake up economic and political affairs in the whole of the Middle East. And yet, we don't want to do ordinary water management, nor play politics. We just want to go with the flow in any way we can.

The City and the Crisis

Lebbeus Woods (1940) is an imaginary architect, or as he calls himself occasionally: an anarchitect, or even meta-architect. He interrogates architecture, subverts institutions and creates mind expansion rather than solid construction. His basic observation is: when in crisis, unexpected forces may take a city for a ride. If one can charm or mobilise these forces in advance, there is space for visionary and imaginative intervention. And one may be ahead of time. Woods wants to serve and heal, but first of all articulate and explore the crisis in all its vehemence. To bring out the underlying, the subversive, the explosive, the destructive and the innovative.

However he did make an object in Eindhoven which was doomed to extinction, when the White Lady building that the "Hermitage" was attached to, was torn down. And the object detached.

Then the Nederlands Architectuur Instituut grabbed its chance: they adopted it and have it now migrating to their own facade in Rotterdam.

In fact this migration triggered the idea of a workshop with Lebbeus Woods. In Holland? Better in Baghdad!

The City and the River

For radiomaker Jo van der Spek (1956) this project started when Majed al Jarrar (1986), wizkid blogger and technical director of AlMuajaha in Baghdad told him that the Tigris and its banks are, again, forbidden area.

Now the Tigris is of old the ideal public domain for fish eaters, flaneurs and other varieties of the Homo Ludens. Without the Tigris Baghdad has lost its charm, if not its soul. Cut off from the river the citizens are orphans in their own city, separated from their stream of consciousness, bereft of...?

Hence the attempt to relocate to a Baghdad that has lost itself, cut off from the river, from its soul?

Reclaiming the River Tigris means regaining the pleasure, but also processing the pain. This is what he documented in the first half of April, when he went out to Iraq, to document the poetry festival Merbed in basrah and to map the Tigris and its meaning in Baghdad.

Project Content Coordinator Jo van der Spek is a media activist since 1977, radio maker since 1986 and net-active since 1993: jo@xs4all.nl. Since the outbreak of war in ex-Yugoslavia in the summer of 1991 he has been engaged in developing free communication between crisis areas and people in diaspora. In 1999 he started to conceive combinations of radio and internet. He has worked in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosov@ (in Dutch), Southern Africa and Afghanistan.

In 1993, while living in Zagreb, he became acquainted with the work of Lebbeus Woods, especially his drawings for Free-Zone-Zagreb and Vukovar. In 2001, a month after 911, he made a short documentary of Vukovar, ten years after its loss. Also in 2001 he initiated Radio Reed Flute, which started to create communication channels between Afghanistan and the Afghans in diaspora, using a mix of community radio and internet..

Lebbeus Woods: "I need political tension. I investigate them and try to give them a form. The idea of cities, of city life, is closely related with tensions, sometimes even tremendous tensions."

Concept

Ideally the project consists of a permanent audio stream from the river itself, which we call "wet radio", by setting up microphones at certain points in and along the river, and a smooth transfer to the internet.

This audiostream would then be programmed as an open channel for all to insert data of any kind: audio, poetry, graphics, music, video, information, contestation, etc.
Locally the audio may be (re)broadcast by existing radiostations, new radio initiatives, event-oriented micro radio, real human gatherings, etc. And of course we can distribute it via internet, CD-Rom and cassette.
It would provide an invitation to bloggers, artists, activists, fishers, farmers, rafters and passers-by to plunge, project and navigate the Tigris.
To realize the full potential of the concept there must be access and production points ("wet spots") in various shapes and places, so that active participation and collaborative programming can develop on the ground (and in the water).
Finally I envisage a dynamic platform which lends itself for global exchange and events.

Guidelines

The right to communicate, a sense of solidarity and a desire to relate are the leading principles.

The flow of this project will be determined by the shared needs, skills, knowledge and experiences of all involved.

The design should be guided by openness, free publishing (copyleft), easy access, low-to-no literacy and multi-linguality.

Open source software will be preferred and stimulated.

Salam Aleikum. No cursing please. Go with the flow. Mos ban ljuft, ban dashuri. Easy does it. Khuda Hafez.

contact: jo at xs4all.nl
"http://www.radioreedflute.net"