How to measure the temperature of a body
By: Salli Yule-Tsingas
Contributors: Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition; Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Artists' Books Collection (Columbia University. Rare Book and Manuscript Library)
Publisher: [Salli Yule-Tsingas]
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London, England]
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; Science in art; English Collage; Temperature; Juvenile literature; 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.

"The work is enclosed in a simple pocket-sized sketchbook, something personal and portable. The jacket is of untreated brown card, electrician's tape, hand-set Letraset text, and collage. Science, technical drawings of automobile engine parts, social etiquette and the resilience of the human. By using low-tech methods of collage and hand-written text, each book is unique. The work is tied together by a continuous meandering motif, a thin red line that winds through the book, a story of sorts that brings together disparate subjects, the event and place, and the anonymity of those affected and those involved by other means"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

Yule-Tsingas appropriates found texts, and images in her work, in this case a children's magazine from the 1940's, The World of Wonder edition: "10,000 Things Every Child Should Know." The images original use was scientific pedagogy for young children. The selected images and text from this edition thematically explore what an explosion really is, and further images inform us how we measure the temperature of a body. By juxtaposing these images with technical drawings of automobile parts, etiquette and a meandering red line throughout, this work attempts to tie these disparate subjects to a single place at a particular time, Al-Mutanabbi Street.
Notes: Printed in an edition of 4.

Material: Individually collaged, pocket-sized sketchbooks. Images from 1940's science magazines for children, books on etiquette from the same period, technical drawings of automobile engine parts, electrician's tape, Letraset, and hand-written text.

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.