Many thanks to all the artists and writers who contributed broadsides to the project from the calls to action. We are very pleased to say that the total number of 130 broadsides needed by the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition* were achieved! Thank you all so much for your generosity. We received many broadsides to pass on to the USA Coalition headquarters in San Francisco from artists in Europe. Some special thanks to Danny Flynn and Andy Gossett for their work at Middlesex University in 2009, to encourage others to join in and helping them to contribute, and Jane Kennelly for travelling to all the way to Paris from York, to get her broadside printed at Michael Caine’s Atelier de la Cerisaie, in time for the last call!
The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition sent out a call to letterpress printers to contribute a personal response to protest & commemorate the bombing on al-Mutanabbi Street.
On March 5th 2007, a car bomb was exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. Al-Mutanabbi Street is in a mixed Shia-Sunni area. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. Al-Mutanabbi Street, the historic centre of Baghdad bookselling, holds bookstores and outdoor bookstalls, cafes, stationery shops, and even tea and tobacco shops. It has been the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual community.
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'Any group that wants to control a people also wants
to control the content of every printed page, and they inevitably come
to regard any other unsanctioned page as a possible threat. Oppression
extracts not just a terrible human toll, but it also subtracts the words
and images of the writers/artists who hold and express the cultural memory
of any people.'
Beau Beausoleil
A selected gallery of Broadsides
You can view broadsides from artists from the first calls at the Florida Atlantic University/Jaffe Center for Book Arts site:
www.library.fau.edu/depts/spc/JaffeCenter/collection/al-mutanabbi/index.php
All of the 130 broadsides will also be archived on the Jaffe Center website soon.
The Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition is continuing to organise readings and other events around exhibitions of the broadsides to keep raising funds Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
We will be hosting an event here in Bristol later on in 2010, to help the Al-Mutanabbi Street Coalition start the European tour of events. If you are also interested in helping to raise funds by hosting an exhibition of the broadsides alongside some readings or discussions then please do get in touch with the Coordinator of the al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project Beau Beausoleil via the e-mail address below.
* For further information on the Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadsides project, please contact: Coordinator of al-Mutanabbi Street Broadside Project Beau Beausoleil at: overlandbooks@earthlink.net
Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here.
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