The event of a chair once used for sitting
By: Moira Williams
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library); Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Publisher: [Moira Williams]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New York City, NY]
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; Personal space in art; Symbolism in art; Chairs in art; 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.

"Moira Williams combines the ephemeral presence of time with material tactility to create the event of a chair once used for sitting. The book is an artefact of a performance, and made from individuals crumpling, twisting or folding the paper to express loss. It is a single gesture repeated differently by many hands. The crumpled pages are then hinged together with cotton thread to convey both a collective, and an individual, sense of activity, movement and fragility. Repeated images of a chair with a soft, sprawling object resting in its arms is on one side of the page, while an empty chair is on the reverse side. The chair image references the chair's specific architecture as a place to rest, a place for listening to someone speaking with us or to us, to interiorise and to go within. Moreover, the chair reminds us that it can be a place for receptivity, individual encounters and social gatherings all of which have animated the chair's rich social history. The chair is an identifiable human element and acts as a portrait, as do the gestures within the crumpled pages. A portrait that is informed by the chair's varied historical significance and defined through its ongoing metaphorical role in society as academic chair, the cathedra, the judicial bench, and the throne. Illustrating how society places an importance on the chair's role. The chair's positioning and style also create a continual dialogue that engages with the social. Placing a chair on a threshold like an entrance into an image or actual steps, the artist expresses multiple connections to social space (the chair in the image was placed on the steps of the Kings County, NY Housing Court, where Moira sat inviting people to crumple the chair's Xeroxed image). Although the event of a chair that was once used for sitting is now an artefact of a performance, it is an error to witness the previously occupied threshold space as passive; doing so is to deny its spatiality, and limit its potential for interrogation. The threshold space becomes transformed by the occupant, as well as by the viewer. These two positions construct interpretations of the space. Both the viewer's and the occupant's interpretations have vital significance when the threshold space is considered in the context of an ongoing social commentary. The threshold space is not insignificant, and the perception of this space is not an insignificant act. Moira's work, 'The event of a chair that was once used for sitting' enacts the remains of an individual, yet collective, perception and dialogue of a threshold space between the occupant, and the viewer. Each page is meant to remind us of the individual's active relationship to social places, places of exchange, and community. And to consider what it means to loose such places and the people who positively activate them like Iraq's al-Mutanabbi Street's bookselling community"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.
Notes: Printed in a variable edition of 3.

Dimensions of book are approximate.

Medium: A4 paper, laser jet ink, black cotton 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.

"Moira Williams is a transdisciplinary artist focusing on public interactions and exchanges. Recent work has been seen at the Festival of Electronic Arts M.I.T, Rumite in Beweging Netherlands, D.U.M.B.O. Arts Festival, Lost Horizon Night Market, Flux Factory, the Philadelphia Marathon, as well as throughout public spaces in New York City. She has guest lectured at the National University of Columbia in Bogotá Columbia, Andres University, Bogotá, Columbia, the TransCultural Exchange Conference in Boston, and at Women's Week in Suffolk County Community College. Moira has also created a residency for herself in the Pioneer Balloon Canada Ltd. factory located in Hamilton Ontario, and is currently working on a mobile living shelter created entirely of indigenous live plants, for her upcoming New York to New York walk. She holds a BFA in Sculpture and Media Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, a Cultural Studies Certificate in Spatial Politics from Stony Brook University, as well as an MFA from Stony Brook University"--The Contemporary Performance website (viewed July 31, 2015).