Manuscripts don't burn
By: by Dan Wood
Contributors: Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1891-1940; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Dan Wood]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Providence, RI]
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; Scrolls; 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.

"'Manuscripts don't burn' is from the novel 'The master and Margarita, ' written in the 1930's by Mikhail Bulgakov, the Soviet writer and satirist. The line is spoken by the devil to a writer who had destroyed his own work, which then magically reappears. It has been interpreted through the years as a testament to the writer and artist's perseverance through oppression, and became somewhat prophetic for Bulgakov's own life"--Middle East Revised website (viewed July 31, 2015).

"Dan Wood is an artist and printer living in Providence, Rhode Island. After a brief stint studying history at McGill University in Montreal, he received a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1994. He has continued his education in printing ever since, learning the crafts of offset lithographic and letterpress printing in commercial printshops from Washington, D.C. to Providence, Rhode Island. He is presently immersed in his work in letterpress printing, establishing Garbaszawa Press in 1994, and re-inaugurating it as DWRI Letterpress in 2004 to work collaboratively with other artists and designers. He has shown his own work nationally and internationally, and is represented in private and public collections, including the print collections of the New York Public Library, and the RISD Museum of Art"--The Rhode Island School of Design website (viewed July 31, 2015).
Notes: Printed in an edition of 25.

Medium: Letterpress-printed scroll book, twine, wooden rods.

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.

In English and Arabic.