In February 2015, when videos emerged of Daesh (ISIS) ransacking the Mosul museum in Iraq, Morehshin Allahyari decided to act. Read more: Operation Troll ISIS: inside Anonymous' war to take down Daesh
An Iranian-born artist, whose work explores the implications of 3D printing, she began recreating the destroyed statue of King Uthal of Hatra, dating from the Roman Period, and released the 3D file online. "It is a 'fuck you' to ISIS in some ways," says Allahyari, 32. "But it is also a gesture for these things to be remembered."
However, as digital recreations of destroyed artefacts started to proliferate - notably a 3D print of Palmyra's Arch of Triumph, mounted in London's Trafalgar Square last year - she became concerned. To Allahyari, the growing practice of organisations such as US-based digital archiver Cyark selling access to their 3D files verges on a new form of "digital colonialism". "If ISIS takes over this ownership of cultural heritage by destruction," she says, "the other side of it is this simplistic, utopian Silicon Valley [approach]. Their claim is, 'We are saving the cultural heritage of the world' - actually, you are selling a product."
Allahyari's Material Speculation: ISIS, exhibited at Liverpool's Fact gallery from March 2, explores this emerging tension. The series includes 3D-printed recreations of 12 artefacts destroyed by Daesh in 2015. Each piece, assembled with the help of archaeologists, holds within it a USB stick containing its own 3D file for further reproductions, as well as a history of the original.
"I don't think it's possible to replace these artefacts," she says. Instead, Material Speculation is part conservation, part dialogue on the nature of cultural ownership in the digital age. Allahyari plans to release the digital files for all 12 pieces online, and is in discussion with arts institutions to conserve the material. Her latest work recreates female mythological figures, which she feels are under-represented in archives and public consciousness. In addition, she has co-written two books: The 3D Additivist**Manifesto and The 3D Additivist Cookbook, which explore the implications of 3D printing as a technology and provide examples of best practice. "[3D printing is] being used in simplistic, banal ways," she says.
It's not enough, Allahyari says, for companies to create simple facsimiles of destroyed or stolen works. "It's about ownership," she explains. "It's about taking the ownership of digital data as seriously as the physical."
Allahyari's 3D-printed work will be on display as part of the How Much of This is Fiction exhibition at Fact in Liverpool from March 2
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
