The Iraq study group report/the way forward/a new approach

This collection supports and promotes awareness to the important mission and framework of the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition's focus on the lasting power of the written word and the arts in support of the free expression of ideas, the preservation of shared cultural spaces, and the importance of responding to attacks, both overt and subtle, on artists, writers, and academics working under oppressive regimes or in zones of conflict, despite the destruction of that literary/cultural content. "To convey the horror and despair of the Al-Mutanabbi Street bombing and this assault on artists, intellectuals and culture in an already fragile city, I altered three books that might have been found in Bagdad's bookshops and stalls: an English-Iraqi/Iraqi-English Dictionary; Winter in Arabia by Freya Stark, a British traveler through the Middle East in the 1930's and 40's, and The Iraq Study Group Report by James Baker, the United States diplomat. The books hold elements of Iraq's rich history and language, and are a gateway to a wider global world although much can be challenged in the Report and as later learned. The books are intact half way through with gold lettering, attractive end papers, gilt-edged pages with ribbons marking the reader's place; they symbolize the profound pleasurable involvement by people who interact with these beautiful objects. Their second halves however, are totally annihilated by the force of the explosion, shards of shrapnel, fire and smoke, and convey little hope for a better future. The books' violent destruction symbolises how much is lost when the arts and learning are exterminated along with a society's collective memories, hopes and ideas"--Artist's statement from the Book Arts at the Centre for Fine Print Research, UK website. Susan Newmark has had solo exhibitions of collages and artists books at the Figureworks Gallery in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Public Library/Grand Army Plaza, the Garrison Art Center in Garrison, NY, and in New York City in the galleries of Long Island University, John Jay University, St. John's University, and St. Joseph's College in a two-person show with Miriam Schaer. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Parrish Art Museum, the Islip Museum, the Cummings Foundation, Brooklyn College, the Center for Book Arts, and the Rotunda Gallery, and was recently in Collage at 100: Strange Glue at the Thompson Gallery in Weston, Mass., and Creative Structures at the Philadelphia Center for the Book. Ms. Newmark has had residencies at the Lower East Side Printshop, the Women's Studio Workshop, and the Byrdcliff Arts Center, and is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Center for Book Arts, the Lower East Side Printshop, and the Medical Library of the University of Southern California. She was the curator for Rare Editions:The Book as Art at Lehman College Art Gallery/CUNY, and coordinates Dialogues in the Visual Arts, a conversation series with artists and arts professionals at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.