Among multiple claimants to architectural and cultural heritage, how does one define ownership, understanding and belonging? As a site redolent with centuries of worship, the rock-cut churches of Lalibela are a unique and complex inheritance — but for whom? In this conversation, Ethiopian artist and researcher Miriam Hillawi Abraham and Javier Ors Ausín from World Monuments Fund discuss its imaginary forms and material realities.

This conversation is part of KoozArch's issue "Terra Infirma."

MIRIAM HILLAWI ABRAHAM For me, it was a matter of material heritage. Growing up in Addis Ababa, the Lalibela churches were always a part of the Ethiopian or Abyssinian imaginary, conjured constantly. But material heritage is haunted by other things — the religious ideals, the political ties that are attached to it.

When you visit Lalibela, you have questions of how and what and where. But this is almost blasphemous, becauseif you're the heir of this material heritage, it's as if your ownership comes with the caveat of already believing in and endorsing the myths that exist in that site. That's the beginning of my experience of that place — then returning to it over time, with this idea of reimagining, in order to bypass the things that I considered obstacles to my own understanding or belonging within that site. That's how this projectwas born. It was about reimagining a return and asserting a reason to belong there, and to have it belong within the architectural canon that exists in my mind.

FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZ Javier, did you encounter the Lalibela churches before working at the World Monuments Fund, or did that follow?

JAVIER ORS AUSÍN My introduction to Lalibela was really as an outsider, when I started working at World Monuments Fund (WMF). Perhaps because I was trained as an architect in Spain, then at graduate school in the US, a more Eurocentric perspective of architectural and art history really caused me to miss these extraordinary places. When I joined WMF in 2017, from the very beginning, I realised what an important site it is — and one where the organisation has been present for many decades, since the 1960s. The way I learned about these extraordinary places was really through my experience, through my colleagues that had been involved at the site and through the many videos, images and texts that I saw over the years. It was really, to me, very eye-opening. I was very curious to learn more about it; through the work that WMF has been implementing is how I learned about Lalibela. It's been an incredible learning experience.

KOOZ Within the canons and the architectures which are put forth, you usually encounter architectures of addition — rather than this idea of excavation and subtraction from the ground. Could you explain how the construction of Lalibela builds upon this centuries-old practice of excavating rock churches in Ethiopia?

JOA While my expertise is in architecture and preservation, I’m not especially qualified on Lalibela's architecture and history; my opinion on this is somehow anecdotal and rathersubjective, rather than representing WMF. In a very personal way, I would say that this site pushes the boundaries of what we think architecture is — again, based on a very traditional architecture education. When we learn about architecture, design, construction and even history, we are taught this idea of building, constructing or assembling something anew; from fragments that are extracted from nature and then reassembled somewhere else to build a new structure. Seeing a place like the incredible group of churches in Lalibela really makes you question your entire education and how you view the built environment, the very idea of construction, because there are many elementsthat completely oppose what one is exposed to when one is trained as an architect. Quite honestly, that's what makes my work at World Monuments Fund so interesting at the personal and professional level, because I am constantly challenged by my ideas of architecture and preservation through places like Lalibela.

MHAYou upend everything you know when you come and encounter a new place with these completely different building practices, right? I think one of the things that drew me in was this alternative to the additive architecture that I was learning in college. The immediate question it raises is why? Why would they choose to build in this way? Obviously it is tied to a lot of Coptic-Orthodox dwellings and monasteries in the north of Ethiopia where they carved into cliff faces — in Gheralta, Tigray, for instance at the church of Abuna Yemata Guh. I don't know that there is a definite answer to “why”, beyond being closer to heavens through this immediacy with the Earth, this immediacy with this rock, this ancient Precambrian rock that predates human life on earth, into which you’re ingraining your life and your religion — that is really interesting.

Another immediate question is, why is it so hidden? It is one of those places where the site only reveals itself upon approach, the elements disappearing right into the landscape, especially on a misty morning. Archaeologists and preservationists have speculated that it was a military strategy to hide the Lalibela complex from approaching invaders — and that the complex was in fact a royal residence. They might have not been intentionally designed as churches to begin with and perhaps their function changed over time. Either way, when you're there, there's a really interesting interplay of scale. You see that portions of the rock have been removed as if to make room for someone. It's not grand; it feels like it was formed around your own body. There are moments where a passage is just the width of your hips; you enter as if you're following in some specific person’s footsteps, in an intentional direction. There's a really intense aura to a place where you have this immediacy with Earth and with the ghosts of its past.

Another thing that I find really beautiful about Lalibela, and I'm sure there's many sites across the world that you've encountered that have this interesting quality; it’s that it feels immutable, having been carved from rock. It feels like it's not meant to change — beyond some decay and erosion; you can feel the desire for permanence. If you have the privilege of visiting the site more than once, you may begin to notice that there are grooves in the ground, where people have stood or knelt in prayer. The rock itself is a witness to human encounters, worn smooth and softened by touch. You could imagine the feeling of standing barefoot — because a lot of pilgrims would come barefoot, and sit in the alcoves to be alone. It's really interesting how the material moves against the human body. In a sense, it's super primordial, but I hesitate to use the primordial in the context of Lalibela, because it's also quite elaborate and masterful as a design. There's something really complicated about being in its presence, in its space.

KOOZ I was reading the recently-published book Changing Heritage, by Francesco Bandarin, which challenges the idea of preservation as keeping something fixed. How do you position the activities of WMF between this discourse of temporality and permanence?

JOAThat's a really good question. The field of preservation, like that of any other profession, is not monolithic. There are many different theories about how to preserve, restore, and conserve sites around the world and cultural heritage more broadly. Because I'm an architect, I was trained to design, to build, to think also about the larger urban fabric and landscape.Even though I've been working at the World Monuments Fund for the last seven years, I sometimes like to consider myself an outsider in the field. This is because there are such different theories on preservation practice that the way I like to see the field — and some of my colleagues at World Monuments Fund would agree — is as a way to manage change, not to impose change. Because historic places such as Lalibela and many others are really places that need to be relevant today.

To be relevant today, you cannot completely stop any type of change or activity or development. Every site is different, every reality is different and the fragility of each site is different. Each requires a specific approach, specific discussions and solutions that engage different stakeholders and communities in the process. But really, we like to see the preservation field as a way to manage change; to make sure that sites and places that people care about are still relevant and active. Having places frozen in time, passive, empty without a specific specific use would kill these places. Spaces of worship need to continue being spaces of worship. There are places within our network where new uses might be happening informally; professionals in the field can really make sure that those uses are fully embraced. Every place where we work really is the gateway of a bigger project that may address a lot of different questions beyond the specific challenges of that site.

For instance, the main reason why the World Monuments Fund was brought to Lalibela was really to address a set of technical challenges, issues that the site was facing in terms of cracks, weathering and damage produced by water filtration. But as Miriam says, the site is also facing the passage of people moving through these places over time, over the years. WMF got involved by working with local authorities and local professionals in developing site management strategies, to ensure that while the site is visited by the pilgrims who go to pray as well as visitors, tourist, it's also well maintained — especially in the era that we live nowadays of massive tourism that is killing places, communities and damaging physical spaces, producing issues of gentrification. Having a set of visitor management ideas and strategies is always important, and Lalibela is no exception.

KOOZ WMF has been working on Lalibela for a very long time; has the approach changed with the progression of attitudes towards conservation? You also mentioned working with local experts, even while preserving the fact that it is still a site for worship. How are these two forces accommodated and at play on the site; how do you negotiate between these two realities?

JOAOur initial involvement began in the 1960s; in fact this was one of the first projects that World Monuments Fund engaged, leading to the establishment of the organisation. Back then, WMF was called the International Fund for Monuments. As I mentioned, the main issue was to address some technical challenges that the sites were facing — mainly connected to water filtration, cracks and damage produced by roots of plants. WMF, in partnership with the local government and UNESCO, brought a team of international experts to Lalibela to conduct a survey, to do a damage assessment of these structures and to propose solutions.It takes a while for these solutions to be fully articulated and fully implemented, and they are ongoing. No report that presents a set of solutions is fully finalised. These places are, in a way, living elements in the environment; they are constantly changing and constantly being impacted by the climate. Back then, the approach was to approach these technical challenges and bring in a lot of international experts.

Nowadays, our approach is different. This not only applies to Lalibela, but to the rest of the world too. We rely more on local professionals and experts — unless, for some reason, there's truly no one who knows about the specific type of building or construction where we are working. Really, as an international organisation, WMF tries to create a platform for an exchange of knowledge; we bring some international and local expertise, so we can learn from local architecture skills, traditional construction and conservation skillsthat might be applied to places like Lalibela.

It could be seen as a shift from a rather colonial approach, bringing a group of outsiders on site and telling local authorities and professionals what to do, to a more grounded approach where every decision is made based on local knowledge and expertise. Also, we don't look at the site as a purely physical space with technical issues to resolve, but also in terms of the important cultural meaning and dimension that these places have for the people who live nearby; for the people who benefit from and really care about these places — we try to really include that other human and social dimension as part of our decision-making process when we work at places like these. We consider the management of visitors, as I was saying before, trying to create opportunities for education and for capacity building.

For instance, in Lalibela, we brought local and international schools together at different moments over the years to produce another kind of knowledge exchange, between students of architecture in Ethiopia and students of architecture from other parts of the world. WMF has brought students from Columbia GSAPP — as we are based in New York, we have a good relationship with the School of Preservation here in New York, really producing these moments of encounter for local and international students, in such a significant place. We really try to come up with solutions together; it produces a certain excitement to be thinking about future preservation.

KOOZ Miriam, you obviously work in a very different way, to the point of engaging with a ‘digital twin’. What narrative opportunities come from that model? Could you talkus through your project, the Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus?

MHAI was interested in this idea of an inexact sort of preservation; not like a LiDAR scan that can then be used or referenced in the future for its accuracy, but something immeasurable, something more... It was a personal pursuit. Initially, the digital twin for me was this no-contact method of materialising this architecture and its history. At the beginning of this project, I was not working on-site. I started building the model using all this data that I found online, through other people who had surveyed and scanned the site. All of the information we have on a lot of these historical sites is personal accounts, surveys and drawings done by travellers that had visited centuries ago. So you're already getting a biased or very narrow perspective of the site. That then becomes the essence or twin of that site, fixed in a certain moment in time.

I found that there were many differences between all the accounts and images I had on Lalibela. If they were decades apart, there would be a missing door, a missing something. These discrepancies were really difficult to wrap my head around. My interest became less about accuracy and archaeological objectivity and instead grew towards the gaps in information. Essentially, this potential for error became the potential for speculation and for fiction. So the areas that I couldn't really read — they became places where I could create a more playful reimagination. For me, the digital twin is not just a way of reproducing a site and preserving it through digitisation, in this boundlessness that we have assumed is the digital world but it's also a moment fixed in place, transcribed in data, stored on a server. So, the work stopped being about seeking permanence when through its errant digital twin thesite becomes more of a continuum, something that keeps changing with every interaction or with every added story, every added element and error — errors of interpretation or accuracy.

KOOZ Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus is formatted as a video game. How does it work: how does one navigate the space? Through your prompts and the way the space is designed, what are people unlearning and relearning? What new stories are being told?

MHAI'm not necessarily a gamer, but I was always interested in games, and gaming as a really interesting way of experiencing space — also designing space around the body, in the way that I described Laliwala where something fits or encapsulates your body. When you get into it, games are designed not from the outside, but from inside out; from the experience. So if you are imagining how a player is meant to navigate through a tunnel, you start by planning it around this movement so that the tunnel can accommodate the mission in motion and then you're building the space outwards. There's also this technique called billboarding, where you place two-dimensional images in the distance — this gives the impression that there's more of the world over there, but there's not necessarily any navigable space to get to it. Effectively you build this Hollywood set while you focus on creating the experience at the center. That aspect of storytelling is really interesting because it's the inverse of master planning, of working from this God's eye view. In my case, that was already a crucial method for destabilising the narrative of Lalibela, into what I then considered as three separate narratives.

I separated them into three because I wanted to tackle them individually, but also because I wanted to create characters and perhaps even players who need to unlearn, essentially. I found that all my characters or narratives were archetypes of the things that I wanted to resist. They were all patriarchal figures. One is the colonial white saviour, an Indiana Jones spoof, called Kentucky Johnson, a fictional heroic conservationist. Basically, these Egyptologists were considered adventurers, but without any critical lens of the actual colonial plunderer they were responsible for. The second player or hero, Yohannes — the one that feels like more of a personal adversary — is an Ethiopian conservative, Orthodox male who resides on the site. In reality some of these men are actually trained to be guardians and help maintain the site, but I feel like quite a lot of them are just there: either as churchgoers or opportunistic tour guides, they meld into one character for me. As a visitor myself, these characters have often approached me to repeatedly tell me that construction of Lalibela can only be credited to God and his angels and not to raise any questions on how the site was dug up or the rock was carved and at the same time reminding me how to conduct myself and dress appropriately in holy site. It’s as if they are placed there to block the inquiry into what the structures were intended for, especially if the answers step beyond the Christian imaginary.

The last character is Sebi, an Afrodiasporic man, sometimes referred to as a hotep. This sort of Rastafarian coded character is interested in claiming Black sovereignty and using very ancient civilisations like Abyssinia and Egypt as ways of ratifying those beliefs —again, without a critical lens and also with a very patriarchal understanding of monarchy and gender binaries. When you're navigating this VR game that I've constructed, you get to pick from these three players. You're not told what you’re going to unlearn; rather, you choose the character with whom you might have an affinity. It's interesting to watch people play because you see what people reach for (this holds true for normal games too). They want to play the hero or invert what their body would normally be.

Within each of these three different trajectories, you're still sharing the same sites or spaces. I'm using game tropes “loot” and gaining points, so I'm leaning into this very popular visual language in gaming, where you see a shiny object and you know you have to collect it in order to progress. As a player,you unknowingly start collecting and collecting — and then you're met with a confrontation with one of the other characters (NPCs) who asks, why are you stealing? So that conversation starts to happen. Why is there this almost innate understanding of conquest or penetration as the way to move through a foreign landscape, in order to advance through most commercial games? Why is there this logic of collecting and accumulating, without thinking of where you're taking it from? The contentious conversations around repatriation of looted artefacts enters that sphere — but playfully, and in a way that is not immediately apparent to the player or to the visitor. That's one example. But basically, that's how you would navigate this terrain.

The way I replicated that terrain is specific; obviously, when you create these copies of sites, you're picking a certain timeline to preserve. Because I was not obliged to adhere to the present state of Lalibela, I could borrow from moments in history, finding things that seem significant and interesting to the plot I was creating — like the collapse of one the roofs in Beite Gabriel-Rufael. Even though I learned of this incident through drawings rather than through visiting where today a newer bridge is used to access the church’s balcony, details such as this weave their way into the digital twin.

MHAI think… It's a topic that I tend to avoid, partly because it's so frustrating. Lalibela and other protected historic sites are collectively understood as important or valuable; you’re always examining their histories and working out how to maintain them rather than an active living history that people are residing in and constantly changing. Modernist buildings of Addis Ababa were built during a time when the idea of African Modernism was evolving on the continent. It was a post-independence, post-colonial endeavour in various countries like Cameroon and Burkina Faso. It belonged to a new era of collective identities and political futures that needed to be articulated and symbolised through public architecture. All of these new nation states were defining an identity separate from a colonial past. But when that sentiment arrived in Ethiopia, it became a more complicated notion. It was more of the continuation of a local or native imperial project that was originally spearheaded by the late Emperor Haile Selassie I. This Modernist stemmed from his desire to modernise the country. At the same time, the Italian occupation (1936-41) following the Second Italo-Ethiopian war had an obvious impact. Those buildings were, up until recently, very much in use and still quite monumental, especially in the historic city center, Piassa. Now under the current administration, these active relics of the past, colloquial landmarks, nostalgic cafes, homes, and other past structures that formed the architectural identity are being quickly demolished, or poorly altered in order to fit into a new masterplan of a “green” Addis Ababa.

It's interesting because I think that people in that city already know and are able to name those sites as part of the African modernist's identity. At the same time, a lot of African Modernist buildings and designs were developed through collaborations with international architects from France, Italy or the Eastern Bloc in many cases. There was a lot of co-designing or again, having outsiders come in and reinterpret Africa through their eyes, whether ina newly independent nation or under the continuation of Ethiopia's briefly interrupted Imperial project. There was also a question in terms of how do we modernise ourselves, but also how do we own this new identity? There’s this idea of abstraction, of weaving traditional forms into new geometries. One of the best examples of this in Addis Ababa was the thermal baths, Filwoha, where the designers used this tessellating octagonal pattern in concrete to echo the footprint of the Coptic Orthodox churches.

With the loss of this architecture we also begin to literally lose our way in terms of navigating the city itself. We don't necessarily use street names in Addis Ababa, we use descriptions, like “the thing near that area”... A whole area might be named after something that was once there, an old cinema, a market, a gas station. If you remove that landmark, it literally terraforms the city and our memory of it.

KOOZ Miriam, when you started working on the digital twin, you were not visiting and making a point cloud — which would have a mechanical form of translation; rather, you focussed on the subjective and multiple translations drawings and written reports, themselves later submitted and filed. That project became a physical reality when you participated in the Sharjah Architecture Triennale. What prompted this reenactment in physical space? And what realities did you want to surface there?

MHAI finally had the opportunity to work in a physical reality, having spent so much time building, populating and inhabiting this digital space. I've built this world, and now there's this desire to build something in real life. It grew into this idea of maybe non-extractively taking some archaeology from the twinned world. It also had to stand alone in itself as a work and not belong to the gaming vernacular because it was again, a physical intervention. Initially, the idea was about impermanence; the overall theme of the triennial was about scarcity or impermanence. After visiting Sharjah, I was thinking about the material scarcity that led early settlers — pearl divers, merchants — to build walls and structures using coral stone, in an area where there were very few rocks to build with. That idea was really interesting to me, thinking about building with these once living things.

Another interesting aspect within Sharjah was the demarcated or designated heritage zone. For us, as tourists, these seem like authentic buildings from a historic past. But they often turned out to be re-fabricated versions because original structures that had maybe been removed before the desire for cultural tourism around heritage sites had emerged in the region. That materiality and that play of deceit was so interesting to me; I was thinking, again, about heritage as a way of telling stories, as a way of telling ourselves we belong to a certain place and our right to possess it. That was the starting point.

KOOZ There’s also something worth noting about the artefacts that were looted; this brings us back to this idea of repair and reparations, in terms of drawing attention also to the displacement of heritage.

MHAThat was also very interesting to me, this idea of looted artefacts — in most cases, these objects are very meaningful and sacred to the places that they're taking from, but no longer meaningful in the context in which they are kept. Communion cups and crosses and incense holders, suspended for the gaze of the museum visitor, or the scholarly expert. So I wanted to take back such an object and to dispossess it from that museum by creating a replica. When you create bootlegs, counterfeits, replicas, you're cheapening the original, diverting attention and diminishing the aura of whatever the original is, the same way in which the Egyptian Museum in Berlin initially refused to allow full access to the 3D scanned digital copy of Nefertiti’s bust; they were worried it would infringe on their copyright and impact items on sales in their gift shop.

So you already create this complication by making a copy. Finally, I used images that were in the public domain; that is, in the Creative Commons from the museum's websites to operate within the legal, albeit, unjust dynamics that favour these institutions' dominion over the cultural production of the Global South. When these replicas arrived in the Museum of Artifice, I wanted, again, to artificially establish that they had already existed and belonged in the current site. They had to look like they had been excavated from the same salty ruin. That's why they're encrusted and crystallised in the salt — to create this claim or perform this trickery.

JOAResponding to Miriam, as a practising architect and a preservationist in the field: I think these meaningful installations and interventions raise questions and open the doors for change, for restitution. The challenge for all of us is how to really move from timely and meaningful interventions into actual systems that would produce real change. But again, critical installations like this are very important; they can change the course of a site or of artefacts that were stolen from one place and displayed in another. We need their continual challenge to all of us, to museums, educational institutions, governments, to produce a larger change. We work at implementing preservation projects on the ground but these are questions that are very much connected to a lot of the places where we work, and they need to be addressed. Sometimes it's through art that we are able to connect with larger audiences and raise this question. I applaud your work, Miriam, really. I hope we will continue the conversation.

MHAThank you so much. That's really meaningful, especially with the perspective that you're coming from.

KOOZ Thank you both for the conversation.

Bios

Miriam Hillawi Abraham is a multi-disciplinary designer from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. With a background in Architecture, she works with spatial design to interrogate themes of equitable futurism and intersectionality. She holds an MFA in Interaction Design from the California College of the Arts and a BArch in Architecture from the Glasgow School of Art. She is a Mellon researcher for the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s Digital Now multidisciplinary project. Abraham's work has been featured in the 18th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia as part of the Special Project “Guests from the Future”, as well the "/imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual" exhibition at the MAK Museum of Applied Arts, the 2nd Sharjah Architecture Triennial and the 14th Shanghai Biennale, “Cosmos Cinema.”

Javier Ors Ausín is an architect from Spain and Senior Program Manager at World Monuments Fund (WMF), where he oversees the organisation’s Special Programs that focus on Modernism, Jewish Heritage, and Crisis Response. Since Javier joined WMF, he has managed a diverse portfolio of projects and programs in different countries around the world, including India, Sri Lanka, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Romania, and Burkina Faso. Javier has presented his field work and research at various forums, including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Royal Geographical Society, the Society of Architectural Historians, and various ICOMOS symposiums, and has been a guest critic in many universities, including the University of Toronto, Columbia University, Harvard University, and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, among others. Javier holds Bachelor of Building Engineering and a master’s in architecture from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia in Spain, and a master’s in design studies in Critical Conservation from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Federica Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and storyteller whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2022 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Prior to dedicating her full attention to KoozArch, Federica collaborated with the architecture studio and non-profit agency for change UNA/UNLESS working on numerous cultural projects and the research of "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.