Remembering Al-Mutanabbi Street - Al

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Remembering Al-Mutanabbi Street:
An Interview with Beau Beausoleil
by Grendl Löfkvist
O
Images courtesy of the
Digital Library at Florida
Atlantic University Libraries.
n March 5, 2007, a car bomb exploded on Al-Mutanabbi Street
in Baghdad, Iraq, killing 30 people and wounding over 100 others. AlMutanabbi Street was for centuries the
center of Baghdad bookselling, the heart
and soul of Baghdad’s literary and intellectual community.
Although the ongoing war in Iraq has
generated significant resistance among
both established progressive networks and
grassroots groups in the US, there had
not been a strong, coherent reaction from
the letterpress community until that
bombing.
The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition,
formed in April 2007, sent out a call to letterpress printers to craft a visual response
to this attack. The response was immediate, and over forty printers enthusiastically
answered that first call with a powerful
edition of broadsides. Since that time, the
number of broadsides has grown to 130,
and the project has expanded to include an
as-yet unpublished anthology of essays and
poetry that also respond to the bombing on
Al-Mutanabbi Street.
The following is a conversation between
Beau Beausoleil, San Francisco bookseller,
poet, and initiator of the Al-Mutanabbi
Street Coalition, and Grendl Löfkvist, an
Al-Mutanabbi Street broadside printer.
During this interview, Beausoleil outlines his reasons for launching the project,
discusses the various facets of the Coalition and its work, including the letterpress
broadsides and the anthology. Beausoleil
has both inspired and infuriated people
14 / AMPERSAND • Spring 2010
over the last three years, and in our conversation, he describes the mixed reception he
and the project have received from the art
world, the letterpress community, and the
Iraqi embassy, among others.
Despite innumerable setbacks, Beausoleil is determined that the project will continue. To date, it shows no signs of slowing
down. Beau, where did you first hear about
the bombing?
I read about it in the New York Times. Over
the whole course of this war I would basically read the New York Times and get angry, then my wife Andrea and I would have
a discussion. Then we’d get the next day’s
paper and I’d read the next thing, and get
angry again. But part of what stymies you
is that you look for a way in. You look to see
a reflection of yourself in this conflict, and
as soon as this happened to the booksellers,
that was my opportunity to step into that
landscape.
What first gave you the idea for this project,
and how did you refine it as it evolved?
The project began in the first two weeks after the bombing on Al-Mutanabbi Street.
It came about because I was looking for
someone to put together a reading, a memorial, because I felt this connection between Al-Mutanabbi Street and here, and
myself, on a visceral level. If I were an
Iraqi, a bookseller, a poet, I would be on
that street. I felt we needed some sort of
response (to the bombing) from our own
arts community.
INTERVIEW
So when nobody did anything, I just
decided to do something. I started calling around, trying to put together a reading somewhere that would be a memorial
reading. And at the same time, I got the
idea of asking letterpress printers to do a
personal response to the bombing. I was at
the San Francisco Center for the Book one
day, and Kathy Walkup [head of the Book
Art program at Mills College in Oakland]
came in, and I asked her if she would coordinate this call to printers. So she issued
a call on behalf of the whole coalition. As
a result of that first call we got about 42
broadsides. Then in October 2007, we had
our first show of the broadsides at the SF
Center for the Book. Soon after, we had a
show at the Saratoga Library.
An Al-Mutanabbi
Street broadside,
Thirty-three Beads
on a String, 2006.
Cyndi Ingalls, printer;
Zaid Shlah, poet.
Spring 2010 • AMPERSAND / 15
INTERVIEW
In this digital age, why on earth did you
put out the call to letterpress printers?
I’ve always felt that letterpress printers
were essentially “first responders”—they
were the ones that showed both our aspirations for a better society as well as our
collective grief over any major thing that
had happened. And it’s been that way since
printing began, practically.
Historically, broadsides would just be
pasted up in a public square, or tacked to a
tree, or whatever. So I knew I wanted to do
that, and I wanted this personal response.
After the show at Saratoga, the more I
thought about it, one thing that always
bothered me about responses is that people
do a public event, and then everybody goes
home and it’s all over. I didn’t want this to
happen. I wanted it to continue. I began
to think about extending the call to letterpress printers to reflect the number of people that were killed or wounded that day on
Al-Mutanabbi street, which was 130.
The very notion of Al-Mutanabbi Street,
for centuries, has been picking up the
book. I see the book and letterpress work
as incredibly connected. I think that the
letterpress community, over time, just kind
of drifted away from the political side of
what they were about. So many letterpress
printers have thanked me for the opportunity to print a personal response to what
happened, on that day, on that street.
How were you able to get such a great
response from so many printers?
I’m the kind of person who, if someone
writes me, I tend to ask them to do something for the project, as you well know. I
wanted to get printers from outside the
country. So I asked Steve Woodall [thenArtistic Director of the San Francisco
Center for the Book] if he knew of any
names I could write to in the U.K. He gave
me a list of four people.
The first person wrote me back and
said she wasn’t printing anymore and she
16 / AMPERSAND • Spring 2010
couldn’t do anything. I wrote her again
and asked her if she could forward this information to other printers she knew. She
wrote back and said she’d be uncomfortable doing that. So I wrote to the second
person. I didn’t give up, which is another
thing about this project.
The second person turned out to be
Sarah Bodman, editor of The Blue Notebook,
the journal for artists’ books out of Bristol
in the UK. She immediately said, as Steve
Woodall did when I explained the project,
“What can we do to help?” She began running the calls on their website and their
monthly newsletter. So by now we have
32 broadsides from the U.K. and Europe,
mainly through the connection with Sarah
Bodman.
We’ve also been greatly helped by a
couple of people who stepped forward and
included the Al-Mutanabbi Street broadside project in their curriculum. John Cutrone, Book Arts Coordinator at the Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book arts
at Florida Atlantic University, brought in
seven broadsides. Toby Milman, teaching
a beginning letterpress class at the College
for Creative Arts in Detroit, brought in 11
broadsides.
As the word got out, people brought in
other people. Every time I would write
someone, I would ask: do you know somebody else, do you know another printer
that you respect who would be interested
in this, I’ll be happy to write to them. And
that worked many, many times.
Others who have helped immensely include Seth Thompson, who works with
John Cutrone. He and John are the ones
responsible for putting all the broadsides
online. And Lisa Beth Robinson of North
Carolina, an Al-Mutanabbi printer, coordinated two calls for broadsides.
This project has had a lot of ups and
downs. There were times where I never
thought I’d reach 130. I had to do everything by the seat of my pants, and I’m not
INTERVIEW
a letterpress printer. I wasn’t plugged in to
that community. It took me three years, but
I finally got 130, and now I’m plugged in.
Can you discuss the evolving nature
of the project and its goals?
Our goal is to maintain this project. One
by-product will be the anthology, another
will be to give 130 broadsides to the Baghdad National Library. But we think of
things so much in terms of ending places.
The destruction in Iraq is ongoing. That
destruction hasn’t ended, our project hasn’t
ended.
If the goal of this project were to open
a donut store in Baghdad, to be able to
give American donuts to Baghdadis, I
would get donuts from every high school
class throughout America. There would
be a picture in the New York Times about
how Baghdad is getting back to normal
and they’d show the donuts being handed
out. But that’s not what the project is
about!
The project helps to illuminate the connection we have with everyday Iraqis and
with the Iraqi cultural community. When I
started with the idea of 130 broadsides, one
of the things I thought about was what to
do with them. So I started thinking about
multiple shows, where we asked the exhibitor to either host a reading or a panel, and
that any money raised would go to Doctors
Without Borders.
Of all the myriad causes to donate to,
of all the groups that are doing political
and humanitarian work in Iraq, how
did you select Doctors Without Borders?
I chose Doctors Without Borders because
. . . well, a lot of people gave me suggestions about organizations, where to give. I
wanted something that was so above board,
so humanitarian, that didn’t take any side
at all. . . . Working on a political project is
interesting because you become aware of
what people can use to dismiss the proj-
ect. Pick the wrong this, the wrong that,
and they just dismiss you out of hand, they
won’t give you a chance to talk to them.
With Doctors Without Borders, I went
to their web site, I read about what they’re
doing in all the different countries, and I
said, these are the people we should give
any money raised to. We’ve sold broadsides
at readings, we’ve raised money through
our events. To date, we’ve raised over
$5,000 for Doctors Without Borders.
The cover sheet
for a portfolio of
Al-Mutanabbi Street
broadsides, 2007.
Lisa Rappoport,
printer.
Spring 2010 • AMPERSAND / 17
INTERVIEW
An Al-Mutanabbi
Street broadside,
Night in Hamdan, 2007.
Lisa Beth Robinson,
printer; Saadi Yousef,
poet.
This project seems so inherently political,
yet you have stated that it is explicitly not
an anti-war project. What are the reasons
for this?
I always say this is not an anti-war project.
I say that because I don’t want people to
dismiss it out of hand, before they even give
us a chance. It’s too easy to dismiss what
we’re doing by pigeonholing it as anti-war.
And it’s not a healing project. Because
this wound is so big, that until you see the
wound, how can you begin to heal it? So
I had no real idea of what these responses
would be like, and one day, Lisa Rappoport [an Oakland-based letterpress printer]
entered the project. It was she, with some
friends, who created the initial, temporary
web site, providing works of Middle Eastern and Iraqi poets to inspire the printers.
So that gave [the first printers] a kind of
direction.
As time went on, and the anthology side
of the project continued, I was able to send
material from the anthology, including
Middle Eastern and Iraqi writers, to give
18 / AMPERSAND • Spring 2010
printers an emotional starting point. Some
broadsides are kind of subtle; some are really anti-war; some address the idea of censorship and the idea of attacking a street
that sold books, a place where ideas were
exchanged, and how no matter the devastation, whoever had done it could not erase
what was there, ultimately.
Have you (or the venues) had any issues with
the artwork from the printers?
The broadsides emotionally move around a
couple of different places, and I’ve come to
really like that. This is not a juried show (as
I’ve had to tell some people!)—we’re trying
to get a personal response from printers. On
a couple of occasions I tried to talk people
out of the broadsides they had printed, and
they wrote me impassioned letters explaining to me what they felt the broadside was
addressing. In each case I agreed and kept
the broadside.
It wasn’t immediately obvious that some
were about Al-Mutanabbi Street. It wasn’t
in the printing, it wasn’t in the image that
INTERVIEW
they chose, it was more like I couldn’t immediately see the intention. Part of my idea
of broadsides is that it has this immediate
connection with you. You don’t have to
stand over them and puzzle over what the
meaning is. That’s the kind of work I was
looking for. But I began to understand. . . .
if I issued a call that said I want a personal
response, then I better be able to accept
personal responses! So that was a learning curve for me. There have been a lot of
learning curves in this process.
So they wrote back and justified their
personal response, and you were able to see
their interpretation, and you said OK.
Exactly. The only thing I asked them to do
was to include that kind of information in
their printer’s statement, so it wouldn’t be
so opaque.
What has the official Iraqi response been to
this project, if any?
Well, as I mentioned, another goal of the
project is to send all of the broadsides
[and the anthology] to the Iraq National
Library. An interesting part is that so far
the Iraqi embassy doesn’t want to have
anything to do with us. But I know that
someday those broadsides will find their
way home to Baghdad.
How about the reception from the arts
community here in the US? Has it been supportive? You have an interesting and unique
idea, and some very talented and quite wellknown letterpress printers have participated
in the project. . . . it seems like a natural fit.
During this whole project, as I always say to
people, I have been insulted, ignored, and
patronized by some of the most famous arts
organizations in the United States because
they were uneasy with us and couldn’t figure out what we were about. When what
we’re about is so palpably visible, how can
you not see it?
When we were taking around the poster
for the show at the San Francisco Zen Center, one arts organization here in the city
said to me, I don’t think we can put this up,
there’s too much blood on this poster. Give
me a break, look at pop culture—there’s
tons of blood! I said, well, there’s too much
blood in Iraq, and that’s what this poster
is a reflection of. We’ve run into variations
on that.
They know it’s there, they just don’t want to
have to confront it—they might be compelled
to stop navel-gazing and do something!
I was invited at one point to be an “Iraq
expert” as part of the Jeremy Deller show at
the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles [It
Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq], but
they wouldn’t show any of the broadsides,
even though I said you could put them in
a far-off room. Deller was staging these
one-on-one conversations with people on
couches, people talking about Iraq, including U.S. war veterans and Iraqis. Interestingly enough, Deller had a car that had
been on Al-Mutanabbi Street. It had been
bought and shipped to Europe and used on
display. And so he carried it through the
U.S. I hate to use this term, but it was like
a conversation piece.
This car was completely rusted and mangled. It was bombed. As soon as that car
entered the museum space, it was no longer a car that had been on Al-Mutanabbi
Street, it was an art object. The connection
between Al-Mutanabbi Street, that attack,
it kind of drifted away.
When I suggested that [the Al-Mutanabbi Street project and broadsides be
part of the exhibit], Deller’s assistant wrote
wanting to know more about it and if
they could talk to somebody about it. He
dropped that idea at a certain point. So I
wrote to the Hammer, I suggested that we
could do a reading, they could hear some
Iraqi voices, we have a documentary about
the bombing, we have the broadsides . . .
well, they didn’t go for it.
Spring 2010 • AMPERSAND / 19
INTERVIEW
It seems really odd that you would separate
that car from its context.
That’s what I said. I can’t go there. I refuse
to go there. I’m surrounded by these powerful broadsides that speak to what happened that day, and we have this work—I
felt I would be betraying what we’re doing.
One thing I’ve realized is that as long as
the project continues, as long as we keep
having readings and panels, it keeps raising
our visibility a degree. A lot of these arts
organizations, they look at me, and they
say, can this guy help us or hurt us? Who is
he? What kind of juice does he have? And
when they determine that I have no juice
at all, that I’m with a bunch of poets and
writers and ink-stained printers, they turn
away.
One of my hopes for the project is to raise
our visibility to the point that people don’t
turn away from us, that instead they extend
a hand to help. I always say to people, if
you extend a hand to help this project, be
careful, because I will not let go of it.
So the broadsides are one project, and
the anthology is a separate and parallel
entity. Tell me more about the anthology.
Who has contributed, and does it interact
with the broadsides?
They both feed each other. There are poems
that have been made into broadsides that
are now in the anthology. The broadsides
have opened doors for the Al-Mutanabbi
Street readings. The anthology is a separate
and parallel entity. It’s not complete. . . .
it’s a work in progress, and I’m looking for
a publisher. We may end up publishing it
ourselves.
People who have offered to publish the
anthology have wanted to reshape it into
various forms. It stands at about 285 pages.
One publisher wanted to cut it to 65 pages,
but I knew what that meant—that they
would take every single well-known name
that’s in the anthology and print only those.
So I wouldn’t do it. It was just too small.
20 / AMPERSAND • Spring 2010
Somebody else in the U.K. wanted to do
it as a limited edition of 100 copies selling
at $1000 apiece or something along those
lines. I wrote to her and said, that’s fine
(with the profits going to Doctors Without
Borders), but we also need an affordable
book that people can put in their hands.
She wrote back and said, “Well, Beau, we
could do an e-book.”
I said no, this is about a street where
people picked up books and held them and
read them. So we’re still looking for a publisher.
It’s interesting to hear about the conflicts
and tensions that have developed. One
reason I think this has been a great project
is that it helped to overcome the artists’ egos
to achieve a greater good. I felt that from the
panel discussions; the participants weren’t
just sitting there talking about themselves.
They were talking about how they could
contribute, how we could all contribute.
This project is a search for the power of our
own art. What are the limits of it, how can
we address something like this, as artists
and writers and printers? Through what we
do and who we are?
There’s a frustration that we have, a feeling of powerlessness. It’s a beautiful paradigm, to be able to take some kind of action. Because we really reacted to this as
artists by doing what we do.
Is there anything you would change about
the project or how it evolved if you could
start over?
There really isn’t anything I would change,
except it’s been a constant two steps forward and one step back. Every time something happens, something goes wrong. I
learn something as we move forward, and,
frankly, if it’d been a smooth journey, I
don’t think I would have stuck with it. Part
of it is the abrasive nature of organizing
something. You become stubborn, and I’m
already a stubborn person. It’s not even a
INTERVIEW
challenge, it’s the right thing to do, and I
can’t get away from that.
I was on a TV show when an ArabAmerican technician came up to me and
said, “This is really great what you’re doing, but why are you doing this? You’re not
Arab-American.”
It’s interesting that she would ask your motivation. I feel that as an American, I need to
do something. I can’t just sit in silence and let
these things happen in my name. Americans,
more than anybody else, have a responsibility
and the ability to affect this situation.
That’s a powerful idea, a key phrase that
I’ve heard before, that of “in my name.” If
you’re quiet, not saying anything, then it IS
being done in your name.
One of the things about the project that
makes it different is that we draw our inspiration from a street in Baghdad. We’re
not taking our ideas of freedom of speech
and censorship and trying to bring them
to a street in Iraq, we’re trying to draw our
inspiration from that street. That’s what
makes this project really different from any
colonial or western idea.
Another thing I’ve wanted to do was to
start having, every year, a memorial reading to Al-Mutanabbi Street. That’s still one
of my goals. But the nuts and bolts of the
project still reside in the letterpress printers. I still look to them as people who can
find us more venues to show this work. I
even would love that the project can call on
those same printers for another broadside,
that we keep this network of committed
printers.
As I always say to people, we’re just not
going away. &
The Future of the
Al-Mutanabbi Street Project
An exhibition of 30 broadsides is planned for the fall of 2010
at the Tides Foundation building in the Thoreau Center in
San Francisco. Also in the fall, Florida Atlantic University will
host a show of all 130 broadsides. In the spring of 2011, the
broadsides will go to Arizona. The broadsides are scheduled
to travel through the U.S., the U.K., and the Netherlands in
2011, and possibly the Middle East.
Right before this article was scheduled to go to press,
Saad Eskander, the director of the Iraq National Library, expressed his interest in hosting an exhibition of the broadsides in Baghdad. A date for the exhibition has yet to be
determined.
As part of ongoing efforts to amplify and enhance the
project, the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition is poised to issue a worldwide call to book artists. The hope is to find 130
book artists willing to craft editions of three books over the
course of one year. This call, “An Inventory of Al-Mutanabbi
Street,” will be coordinated by Beau Beausoleil and Sarah
Bodman. Artists will be free to work with whatever materials they wish. The work should reflect on the attack on AlMutanabbi Street and the issues raised.
The Al-Mutanabbi Street Project Online
To see the digital collection of broadsides, go to
http://www.library.fau.edu/depts/digital_library/mutanabbi_
index.htm
To hear an interview with Beau Beausoleil on KALW
radio, visit http://kalwnews.org/audio/2010/04/13/littlepiece-baghdad-bay_298524.html
get involved
To help with the project in any way, including possible venues for shows, technical or financial support, or to find out
more information about the upcoming call to book artists
or to receive updates on the Al-Mutanabbi Street Project,
contact Beau Beausoleil at overlandbooks@earthlink.net.
Grendl Löfkvist is an offset press operator at
Inkworks Press in Berkeley, a typography instructor at City College of San Francisco, and
an Al-Mutanabbi Street broadside printer.
Spring 2010 • AMPERSAND / 21