To the power of three
By: Abigail Thomas
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Abigail Thomas]
Published: 2011
Place of publication: London, 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; Cultural property; Destruction and pillage; Conceptual art; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Other titles: Google.
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.

"To the power of three started out as an exercise or personal performance, which consisted of repetitively copying out lists of Google search results by hand, into an old style school exercise book. The first search was through Google Web, the second Google Books, the third Google Scholar; the results restricted to just three web pages in length. The search term used is the same for each search: 'Al-Mutanabbi Street.' The process of making was also a process of learning by repetition through Google search results, copying them in order to better retain the information, and discovering what happened to links, and the information contained within them, when taken away from their web of endless connections. The next stage in the making of the work was another form of copying; photocopies of an exercise, documentation of a document. Withdrawing the original from the work further removes the information's usefulness and readability, rendering the document an ephemeral reproduction, or an imperfect copy. These gatherings of documents provide a snapshot into a particular moment of time, a time where we are well within the 'information age, ' where we now believe we have the potential of access to all information collected on the WWW. The internet dominates how most people get their information, how they communicate with each other, and how they access the most up to date news stories. There is a sea of endless articles, web pages and documents with links to more information and links from those, but how much can you really find out about something when you try to? This bookwork is an edited, uncomprehensive, and effectively unusable list of hyper-link opportunities; a frustrating document that captures non-information (if there is such a thing) in a rote school fashion. The exercise book as document, but a document to what? Al-Mutanabbi Street as a name, as a search term, as a group of words, as information, or even as non-information?"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"In a time when the act of reading is changing significantly, the physical book as a mechanism for reading, is being brought into question. My practice is concerned with the book as machine, or reading machine, and bound up with an imagined escape from the page. Interests in Bob Brown in particular, and his own imagined reading machine, have led my practical work to develop into a combination of written, live and visual practices. Through these practices, I am currently examining how we read through machines and, in turn, how we interact with them. Using the physical page to describe or interrogate the way we read, especially through digital screens, and in so doing escaping or re-imagining the page as the conventional container for written language. Another thread of my practice originates from site and location. Researching and investigating a specific history to a place; making connections to reading and the page, as well as connections to the current situation of the site and surrounding area, and then using and re-projecting this information within my work. Local archives and libraries are central to this investigation, often sparking relations to previous work and interests and becoming part of the re-projection of the work"--Artist's statement from the artist's website (viewed July 24, 2015).

Abigail Thomas is an artist, currently living and working in London, England. She obtained a Visual Arts (Book Arts) MA. from Camberwell College of Art, UAL, in 2012.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 3.

Medium: Google search results, photocopied into an old-style school exercise book.

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.
Table of contents: title: [Part I].; title: Google Web -- -- [pt. II].; title: Google Books -- -- [pt. III].; title: Google Scholar.