Other//colours of a day
By: a book by Sara Elgerot for an inventory of Al-Mutanabbi Street
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Sara Elgerot]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: [Great Britain]
Language: eng
Subjects: Violence; Pictorial works; Booksellers and bookselling; Bombings; Iraq War, 2003-2011; Protest movements; Books and reading in art; Intellectual life; Social conditions; Censorship; Terrorism in art; In art; War and civilization; Vehicle bombs; Visual literature; Specimens; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Other titles: Other colors of a day
Description: This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content.

"'I was born in Sweden of Swedish parents. Sweden has not had or been in war since 1814. It is not the same. I've lived most of my adult life in the UK. I lived in London on 7/7/2005, very near to where the bombs went off. Then life moved on. It is not the same. I knew Baghdad only from history lessons and books. I knew its book market from 'We Came To Baghdad, ' and a documentary which chronicled Agatha Christie's life in Mesopotamia and talked at length of Baghdad's bookstalls and book market. 'One day, ' I thought, 'one day I will visit.' Then I knew Baghdad from a war we marched against, terror that doesn't stop. Years, a decade, later it hasn't stopped. It is not the same. The book was inspired by transformation and the phrase 'The River Turned Black with Ink.' It was made by taking newspaper photographs of the destruction on and of Al-Mutanabbi Street treating them with water, painting with the water on the paper until all the colours had emerged and blended together. Cut up and assembled into books, they have turned into 'other'"--RareAutumn.blogspot.com website (viewed June 23, 2015).
Notes: Edition of 3, plus 1 artist copy. All copies are made up of different parts of the original sheets, which means each copy is different. Each copy is also bound with different coloured (exposed) threads.

Materials & technique: Newspaper photographs printed on paper, treated with and painted on with water. Scanned in and printed out unaltered. Gathered, folded, cut and assembled. Cover: ancient Baghdad map printed on paper and treated with water. Hand-bound with white and coloured thread.

On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is located in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the longstanding heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community for centuries. In response to the attack, a San Francisco poet and bookseller, Beau Beausoleil, rallied a community of international artists and writers to produce a collection of letterpress-printed broadsides (poster-like works on paper), artists' books (unique works of art in book form), and an anthology of writing, all focused on expressing solidarity with Iraqi booksellers, writers and readers. The coalition of contributing artists calls itself Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.