The book of witness and words
By: Lisa Olson
Contributors: Beausoleil, Beau, 1941- dedicatee; Parula Press; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library); Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Publisher: [Parula Press]
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Belmont, Massachusetts]
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; Loss (Psychology) 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.

"Although I often work with themes of loss and resilience, I found that making this book was a challenge - its focus on a specific horrific human action was difficult and oppressive. My usual tendency is to soften and abstract, to wander into worlds of fairy tales and metaphor, but here I felt that I had to be direct and accessible. For content, I settled on the very basic idea of letting my confusion about how to respond become the topic itself. I give facts - contrasting details of the bombing with my trivial journal entries from that day. I present words - tangle, bind, hold, touch, break, remember - with their long histories of cross-cultural meaning, and I weave the writing together with a personal (and hopefully also communal) musing about how we can try to navigate these terrors, try to understand, to acknowledge and move forward"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Lisa Olson is a mixed media and book artist currently living in Belmont, Massachusetts. Her work has been collected by various institutions including The Universities of California, Los Angeles and San Diego, The Cleveland Institute of Art, Brown University and Columbia College. She is proprietor of Parula Press, a small letterpress and printmaking studio, and is an artist member at Boston's Bromfield Gallery.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 8.

Medium: Letterpress and etching.

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 book was made for the Al-Mutanabbi Coalition's book arts project - Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here. It is wholeheartedly dedicated to Beau Beausoleil - his tremendous energy and determination has inspired so many artists and writers to work in community to a magnificent end"--Colophon.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.