Comments on: more on Jeremy Deller http://www.transitlane.net/more-on-jeremy-deller/ Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:01:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Beau Beausoleil http://www.transitlane.net/more-on-jeremy-deller/comment-page-1/#comment-384 Beau Beausoleil Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:13:48 +0000 http://www.transitlane.net/?p=307#comment-384 I want to thank Maryam Rashid for her recent post on the Jeremy Deller exhibit. I was contacted early on by an assistant of Mr. Deller who was looking for information on al-Mutanabbi Street for this very exhibit. I shared what I had and also asked if Mr. Deller might incorporate some aspects of the work that the Mutanabbi Street Coalition has been doing. He declined, saying that his focus (on Mutanabbi Street) had shifted somewhat. I wrote to the Hammer Museum (I am in San Francisco) asking if they might consider showing some of the broadsides that have been printed as a response to the attack on Mutanabbi Street, or include a reading from an upcoming anthology 'Mutanabbi Street Starts Here', or show some of the photographs by a small group of Iraqi women created from a project called 'Open Shutters Iraq', or, perhaps show two documentaries, one by a Baghdad film student Emad Ali on the Shabandar Cafe (which was gutted in the attack) and one from the Iraqi documentary filmmaker Maysoon Pachachi, one of the contributing editors to the anthology. After several months they said they had decided not to have any 'supplemental' programs. They did offer me an 'expert' chair in the Deller show, which I told them would not work for me if I could not show all the responses (Broadsides, Photographs, Documentary) and the voices of Iraqi wrtiers who so treasured Mutanabbi Street. I, too, felt the danger of having the bombed out car slip into "art object" leaving behind the 30 killed and 100 wounded on Mutanabbi Street. I'd like Maryam Rashid to contact me, Beau Beausoleil at overlandbooks@earthlink.net and perhaps this University can join our broadside project (which is entering our third call for letterpress work) or to show the photographs from the Open Shutters Iraq Project. A dialogue needs to begin, it will be long and sustained, and I think that Art in its many shapes and forms can contribute to it. I do think that Jeremy Deller has begun something here, but the danger is in making something that is about 'us', I think as Artists and Writers we need to make and say someting but also try to take ourselves 'out of the way' so that the work itself prompts visceral questions from the viewer/reader. I think there needs to be an overload of context since this tragedy endured by so many Iraqis on a daily basis has remained at the far edge of our consciousness here in America. I could go on (for some time) about this but I welcome these comments on what exactly a Museum can do to help us understand 'the present' as well as the Impressionists. I want to thank Maryam Rashid for her recent post on the Jeremy Deller exhibit. I was contacted early on by an assistant of Mr. Deller who was looking for information on al-Mutanabbi Street for this very exhibit. I shared what I had and also asked if Mr. Deller might incorporate some aspects of the work that the Mutanabbi Street Coalition has been doing. He declined, saying that his focus (on Mutanabbi Street) had shifted somewhat. I wrote to the Hammer Museum (I am in San Francisco) asking if they might consider showing some of the broadsides that have been printed as a response to the attack on Mutanabbi Street, or include a reading from an upcoming anthology ‘Mutanabbi Street Starts Here’, or show some of the photographs by a small group of Iraqi women created from a project called ‘Open Shutters Iraq’, or, perhaps show two documentaries, one by a Baghdad film student Emad Ali on the Shabandar Cafe (which was gutted in the attack) and one from the Iraqi documentary filmmaker Maysoon Pachachi, one of the contributing editors to the anthology. After several months they said they had decided not to have any ’supplemental’ programs. They did offer me an ‘expert’ chair in the Deller show, which I told them would not work for me if I could not show all the responses (Broadsides, Photographs, Documentary) and the voices of Iraqi wrtiers who so treasured Mutanabbi Street. I, too, felt the danger of having the bombed out car slip into “art object” leaving behind the 30 killed and 100 wounded on Mutanabbi Street. I’d like Maryam Rashid to contact me, Beau Beausoleil at overlandbooks@earthlink.net and perhaps this University can join our broadside project (which is entering our third call for letterpress work) or to show the photographs from the Open Shutters Iraq Project.

A dialogue needs to begin, it will be long and sustained, and I think that Art in its many shapes and forms can contribute to it. I do think that Jeremy Deller has begun something here, but the danger is in making something that is about ‘us’, I think as Artists and Writers we need to make and say someting but also try to take ourselves ‘out of the way’ so that the work itself prompts visceral questions from the viewer/reader. I think there needs to be an overload of context since this tragedy endured by so many Iraqis on a daily basis has remained at the far edge of our consciousness here in America. I could go on (for some time) about this but I welcome these comments on what exactly a Museum can do to help us understand ‘the present’ as well as the Impressionists.

]]> By: some more on Jeremy Deller http://www.transitlane.net/more-on-jeremy-deller/comment-page-1/#comment-374 some more on Jeremy Deller Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:47:05 +0000 http://www.transitlane.net/?p=307#comment-374 [...] Maryam Rashidi’s post on TransitLane in response to an earlier post on [...] [...] Maryam Rashidi’s post on TransitLane in response to an earlier post on [...]

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