Memory device
By: Sumru Tekin
Contributors: Darwīsh, Maḥmūd, writer; Blanchot, Maurice, 1934- writer; Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940, writer; Kilito, Abdelfattah, 1945- writer; 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: Charlotte, Vermont]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 40
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; Grief in art; Memory in art; Artists' books; Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Other titles: Arabian nights.
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.

"Memory device is a visual and textual response to a specific violent event, manifested as uncertainty, absence, disorder, and possibility all at once. The book is comprised of forty unbound, unnumbered pages of images and text in Arabic and English, (inspired by a variety of sources including The Arabian Nights, the writings of Mahmoud Darwish, Maurice Blanchot, Walter Benjamin, and Abdelfattah Kilito, as well as an illustrated encyclopedia of technology published in 1967 - The Way Things Work), enclosed within 5 accordioned book covers. While working on the project, I thought a great deal about our universal desire to make sense of what appears to be senseless, and our attempts to make whole something that has been taken apart. We search for the 'how' and 'why' of an event - collecting information hoping that knowledge will secure and fix what is broken. I imagined Memory device as an imperfect manual for grief and memory; a space that requires a suspension of what we 'know to be true' - wherein a contingent relationship between an I and a You - a text and a reader, can be activated"--The Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Sumru Tekin is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines the relationship of language and the image to the construction of identity. Specifically interested in notions of originality and the copy, she re-contextualizes found and constructed drawings, texts, and photographs, creating inconclusive narratives within the contexts of historiography, memoir, and the limits of apology and forgiveness. Born in Erzurum, Turkey, Tekin has a MFA in Visual Art from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a BA in Art History from the University of Vermont. She is a recipient of an Arts Endowment Fund Grant from the Vermont Community Foundation.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 4.

Medium: Inkjet printing, 40 sheets copy paper, found book covers, linen tape.

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.