Response
By: Susan Mortimer
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: [Susan Mortimer]
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Durham, England?]
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; Zines; 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.

"The images in this zine are comprised from a number of projects I undertook throughout a twelve month period, in order to try to understand the issues in the brief of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Book Artists' Project. They range from a series of 'lost letters' that are words cut from pages of a book on psychosomatics and reconstructed in to messages, lost voices, to a photograph of protesters against Gaddafi here in the market place of Durham, in the northeast of England. And a suspended book being slowly destroyed by absorbing oil from a dish, which was a project to think about books used as cultural artefacts and containers of cultural identities"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"I am a visual artist based in Durham City, UK, with over 20 years engagement in creating artists' books. My ongoing practice includes producing limited edition hand bound chap books, zines, and photo books. Recent projects have included photo-documentary chap books focusing on Belmont parish, Durham, and disused council offices in Durham City. My work has been included in Graphics magazine and exhibited at the Glasgow International Artists Book Fair and at Minute Book Arts exhibition at the University of Northampton. Several examples of my work are held in the collection of artist's books at the British Museum"--Artist's statement from Fabulous Books, Fantastic Places website (viewed July 7, 2015).
Notes: 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.