Conversations About Iraq

It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq
Nationally touring public art project by Jeremy Deller
Produced by Creative Time, NYC

In DC on the National Mall
Thursday, March 26, 2009,
11am – 6pm
Jefferson Drive SW, between 12th and 14th Streets

Provisions Library, Foreign Policy Focus, Institute of Policy Studies and Street Scenes are pleased to coordinate the Washington, DC presentation of It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, a new project by Turner Prize-winning British artist Jeremy Deller, commissioned and produced by Creative Time and the New Museum.

Deller's project is a catalyst for public discussion about the history, present circumstances, and future of Iraq through unscripted, nonpartisan conversations in cities across the country. These talks will be held in public sites such as shopping malls and parks by guest experts Jonathan Harvey and Esam Pasha, specially selected by Deller to participate in the tour. The presentation includes the remains of a car destroyed in a bombing in Baghdad.

Please come and participate and feel free to bring objects related to Iraq that could serve as a focus for discussion. More information about the project, including daily video updates as the project travels can be found at www.conversationsaboutiraq.org.

Washington is the first stop on a three-week, 10-city road trip from New York to Los Angeles, featuring Jeremy Deller and guest experts Jonathan Harvey (an Iraq war veteran and recently demobilized Psychological Operations platoon sergeant) and Esam Pasha (an Iraqi refugee, artist, and former translator for the Chief Advisor in the British Embassy of Baghdad).

Also on tour is a car destroyed in a bombing on Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad in March 2007. This tragedy killed over thirty people, and has taken on added significance because the street, named after a well-known Iraqi poet, was the site of numerous book markets and cafés, and was considered the nexus of Baghdadi cultural and intellectual life. The car is meant to ground conversations in the facts, figures, and eyewitness descriptions that have been lacking in most information about the Iraq war, and is intended to serve as a visual aid to prompt open dialogue and civil conversation. It was also one of a sparse selection of objects in the presentation at the New Museum.