Ruins are not empty

When the conventional human uses have ceased to exist, those places beat to the new rhythms that emerge: the sudden surge of wild flora, birds nesting in the cracks, insects swarming in crevices unseen, new informal human occupations that slowly become permanent.
And the wind. Always the wind. Witness and quiet agent, moving through and constantly reshaping landscapes, beyond human.
This experimentation is about expanding our vision of ruins to see them not only as absences, but as hosts to other presences—some human, many non-human—that weave together a constellation of vibrant ecologies.

In Fez, just above the crumbling northern ramparts of the medina, lies a centuries-old cemetery. Its scattered stone remnants shelter a multitude of overlapping realities, all very much alive.
From this high ground up the valley,
gusts of wind carry stories –
Of the drying rituals of hides under the simmering sun;
Of the disappearing lovers’ graffitis tattooing the rough grain of the eroding wall that suffered a millennium;
Of the sheep flock grazing right before sunset, guided by the gentle voice of a teenage shepherd between the vanishing tombstones,
Of dead leaves and wrinkled wrappers;
Of the occasional visitors who climb up the edge of the fading rampart, for a moment of stillness and contemplation.

In an attempt to interpret what the wind might say of this landscape if we care to listen— this work tells a tale of entropy: of order within apparent disorder; a celebration of the uncontrolled transformation of a wall, a ground, a site of heritage, that continually welcomes new chapters and renewed forms of occupation.
The audio-visual-textual installation seeks to imagine a genius loci that holds more than our human world, using the wind as an extraordinary storytelling vessel.
Through metamorphic subtitling— crossed by French, Darija, Arabic, and English— this work embodies a sincere attempt to recount an encounter with the wind on the heights of Fez: A wind that, like us, carries words, dust, and artefacts of spoken and inhabited landscapes in motion.

Grounding this exploration in Samia Henni’s Deserts Are Not Empty (2022) and Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (2010), the installation is a call to open our understanding of place beyond our human realities, a call for an anthropology of architectural heritage beyond the Anthropos. Recognising the expansion of other lives outside of us, and recognising ourselves as part of a whole. Rebuilding is but one answer among many.
Ruins are not empty.

Myriame Ali Oualla
August 13th, 2025

Acknowledgment
I feel deeply grateful to all those who helped this work come into being, through their attentive listening, sensitive questions, and always thoughtful feedback—sometimes in the most informal of settings. My thanks go first to the African Futures Institute and Professor Lesley Lokko, for creating the Nomadic African Studio, a unique space and time of collective learning and of celebrating the excellence of our continent. To the powerhouses of Unit 4—Meriem Chabani, Ana Monrabal-Cook, and Patti Anahory—who opened up unexpected horizons for our explorations on belonging and repair. And to all the participants of this beautiful residency, from teammates to friends: thank you for inspiring me to welcome unforeseen hybridities of reflection and practice.

Credits
Stop motion: Photos – Simba Mafundikwa; Content and Animation – Kham Studio
Installation video: Filming – Simba Mafundikwa; Editing – Kham Studio
Special thanks to the amazing audience, Sandra Mbula Nzioki.
Paper video: Simba Mafundikwa.