Biblioclast
By: Joan Lyons
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Spurr, Jeffrey B., author; Báez, Fernando, 1970-; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [publisher not identified]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Rochester, 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; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Description: "Biblioclast is simple, but layered, and strongly influenced by Fernando Báez's powerful book, A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq (2008, NY, Atlas & Co.). Its main text is an abbreviated reprint of Jeffrey B. Spurr's compilation of reports enumerating the staggering bibliographic losses that were sustained following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the most significant Iraqi cultural institutions, existing in a power vacuum and unprotected by the American occupiers, were looted and burned. The destruction of Al-Mutanabbi Street in 2007 sounded as a coda to those events and a continuation of the ongoing human frenzy to annihilate the cultural and intellectual body, as well as the human body, of 'the other.' An ordinary book, produced in trade format, Biblioclast was printed on archival paper, carefully handbound in quarter cloth with gold title stamping and then partially burned - in reference to its contents and in memorial to history's lost bodies of literature"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"Lyons is the founding coordinator of Visual Studies Workshop Press, a leading publisher and printer of books by artists and photographers. She was editor of Artists' Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook"--Vamp & Tramp website (viewed June 30, 2015).
Notes: Printed in an edition of 6.

Materials: Hardbound in quarter cloth with gold stamping.

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.

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.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.