I dare you
By: Stephanie Sauer
Contributors: Copilot Press; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Copilot Press]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Brazil]
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; Culture in art; History in art; Cultural property; Destruction and pillage; Photocollage; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
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 dare you is a hymn to each and every page, person, symbol, codex, mural, tapestry, scroll, carving and oral account throughout history that has been banned, shamed, destroyed or subverted. Each collaged image is a surviving piece of a work or a culture or a tradition whose destruction was attempted or achieved. Somehow, always, these pieces survive or are remade. So, destroy this book. Drown it. Question its legitimacy, relevancy, need. Strike a match and light this book aflame. This impetus to make and impart cannot be erased"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"Stephanie Sauer is an interdisciplinary artist and the author of The Accidental Archives of the Royal Chicano Air Force (University of Texas Press, forthcoming 2016). Her writing and artist books have appeared in Verse Daily, So To Speak, Alimentum, Alehouse Press, Boom: A Journal of California, and Plastique Press. She is the recipient of a Corporation of Yaddo Fellowship, a So To Speak Hybrid Book Award, two Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission grants, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Fellowship in Writing. Her visual works have been exhibited at the De Young Museum, New York City's Center for Book Arts, and ArtRio's Fábrica Aberta VIP Studio Tour, among others, and are held in the permanent collections of the Baghdad National Library, Chicago Cultural Center, and various universities. She holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is the founding editor of Copilot Press, and co-founding editor of A Bolha Editora, an in-translation press with headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. She teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute"--Artist's statement from the artist's website (viewed July 16, 2015).
Notes: Medium: paper, White-Out, thread, ink, and sandpaper.

"Made for Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here."

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.