701 killed, 785 injured
By: Nicolas Frespech
Contributors: Mutanabbī, Abū al-Ṭayyib Aḥmad ibn al-Ḥusayn, 915 or 916-965, poet; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Nicolas Frespech]
Published: 2011
Place of publication: France]
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; Internet; Social aspects; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Other titles: Seven hundred one killed, seven hundred eight-five injured
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.

"Nicolas Frespech is a French artist born in 1971. He has worked with the World Wide Web since 1996, and taught net art at Paul Valéry University, from 2002-2005. Since 2009, he has taught digital practice at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyons. His varied projects combine to form a work that touches as much on identity and its virtual and commercial standardization, as on the concepts and phenomena of intimacy, Webcams and digital surveillance, media, games, or fiction. His best-known online work remains 'Je suis ton ami(e) ... tu peux me dire tes secrets' (I'm your friend; you can tell me your secrets), which was the first work of Net Art to be acquired by a public institution (FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon), in 1998. However, access to the project has been forbidden since 2001, provoking a debate on the presence of contemporary net art in the virtual and public space of the Internet. In 'I'm your friend, ' you could scroll through secrets sent in by Internet users or gathered from public artistic projects (Contemporary Art Days organized by the Ministry of Culture and Communication). Frespech chooses to explore the Internet because of its interpersonal and artistic qualities, playing with the paradoxes of the network and creating micro-creations that criticize the commercialization of the internet. He continually questions net art by creating ever-new experimentations, particularly in the realm of mobile telephony"--The Digitalarti website (viewed June 24, 2015).
Notes: "Bodies on the ground, these are the images that I have in my mind when I hear people talking about Baghdad. Previously places of life, of exchanges of knowledge and learning, markets, shops, toys, books. Then the explosion and the memory disappears. Images, always images ... too many images? In 2005, I had launched a creation on the Internet, a tentative artistic attempt to approach a world where in any instant and for a variety of reasons everything can come tumbling down. This book is an adaptation of this creation. I decided to make it by taking the 50 first attempts generated by my database, a sort of inventory of the horror and fear that I felt. In this database, all the capital cities and larger cities are indicated through typographic attention. Naturally this book itself creates a stressful, indeed nightmarish, atmosphere; it relates nevertheless only imaginary events ... but nevertheless! It really could be any street, anywhere ... I also felt obliged to create a physical version of this book, as well as offer it in the electronic format, as I wanted to talk about physical dematerialization (as a result of the explosion) and to consider the elements of archive and memory. This book is available in a real, tangible version but also as a free, accessible download everywhere (unless the state in which you live decides to block your access to the Internet!). I have produced it under an 'Art Free' licence, which means that you can modify it, circulate it, copy it ... in an approach that encourages free circulation of ideas ... Ideas beyond any frontiers or borders, political, social or economical control ... A phantom book perhaps?"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

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.

Also available on the World Wide Web.

Gift; Beau Beausoleil; 2019-2020.