Musha’: The Ground as Commons

Qiuyuan Gao

Independent Research Project

The interactive film below imagines an alternative future of the archaeological site that was excavated by Harvard in 1908. In this film, Harvard apologizes to the residents of Sebastia for exploiting the residents as labourers and extracting the artefacts from their ground. This film imagines a future/past where the site returns as a communal space, a Musha’, where the extracted and cut fields and orchards are refilled and regrown, where fruits and crops are equally shared with the community as they were prior to excavation.