Title: Biblioclast
Description: "Biblioclast is simple, but layered, and strongly influenced by Fernando Báez's powerful book, A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern Iraq (2008, NY, Atlas & Co.). Its main text is an abbreviated reprint of Jeffrey B. Spurr's compilation of reports enumerating the staggering bibliographic losses that were sustained following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, when the most significant Iraqi cultural institutions, existing in a power vacuum and unprotected by the American occupiers, were looted and burned. The destruction of Al-Mutanabbi Street in 2007 sounded as a coda to those events and a continuation of the ongoing human frenzy to annihilate the cultural and intellectual body, as well as the human body, of 'the other.' An ordinary book, produced in trade format, Biblioclast was printed on archival paper, carefully handbound in quarter cloth with gold title stamping and then partially burned - in reference to its contents and in memorial to history's lost bodies of literature"--Statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website.

"Lyons is the founding coordinator of Visual Studies Workshop Press, a leading publisher and printer of books by artists and photographers. She was editor of Artists' Books: A Critical Anthology and Sourcebook"--Vamp & Tramp website (viewed June 30, 2015).
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, Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition
Places: Iraq, Baghdad, New York (State), Rochester
People: Joan Lyons (1937-)
Time periods: 21st century