It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq
Next Tuesday the sidewalk and street in front of Vintage Vinyl will host an important national event, where a renowned British artist and two experts on the subject of Iraq park their RV (and the remnants of a bombed-out car from Baghdad) for a day-long series of conversations with the public.
Jeremy Deller, a British artist and a winner of the Turner Prize (the most 
prestigious award for young artists in the UK), is embarking on a road trip across the country this week with two guests experts, in order to encourage an unmediated, unscripted, and nonpartisan public discussion about Iraq, its present circumstances, and our relationship to its people and as a nation.
Deller’s companions are Jonathan Harvey and Esam Pasha. Harvey is an Iraq war veteran and recently demobilized Psychological Operations platoon sergeant and Esam Pasha is an Iraqi refugee, artist and former translator for the Chief Advisor in the British Embassy of Baghdad.
For information on the project, please visit conversationsaboutiraq.com. For information on the project in St. Louis, please click here. The project is presented by Creative Time, New York, and hosted in St. Louis by the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis.
Tyler Green
on Mar 24th, 2009
@ 7:43 am:
Is it enough to assert it’s important without engaging in why?
Jennifer Gaby
on Mar 24th, 2009
@ 11:10 am:
Tyler, Great point – thanks for brining that up.
The scale of the project is significant as it represents an ambitious effort between a number of individual contributors, a large host of non-profit organizations nationwide, and the public. Yet, what I believe is perhaps the most important aspect of this project is yet to happen—it’s the dialogue, the conversations that can be generated between the public, who will bring a number of histories, experiences, and information, and those who have military experiences to describe, research to impart, and heritage to share.
Nato Thompson from Creative Time and Jeremy Deller will be both be contributing to written and video-driven updates throughout the road trip. First post should be live on March 27, the day after the RV’s stop in D.C. Visit this link to keep up: http://www.conversationsaboutiraq.com/journal.php.
Tyler Green
on Mar 25th, 2009
@ 6:03 am:
Fair. I don’t buy it, but fair.
FWIW… this kind of relational aesthetics-style stunt is to art what strat-o-matic is to baseball. It’s people who like something doing something, but it’s not The Thing.
Daniel McGrath
on Mar 30th, 2009
@ 4:29 am:
Tyler you shopuld check out Deller’s book The english Civil War Part II and his recreation of the Battle of Orgreave (2001)(The original battle was a 1984 a strike action fought between the police and the NUM.)
Deller’s also created a thing called the Folk Archive started in 2000. It preserves and records British folk art produced over the last 3 decades. He’s actually one of the most thoughtful artists you’ll ever run into.
Daniel McGrath
on Mar 30th, 2009
@ 4:31 am:
roughly what time does this start?
Jennifer Gaby
on Mar 30th, 2009
@ 10:18 am:
They should be ready to go around 12:00 noon tomorrow (Tuesday) and will go through 5:00 pm. The Contemporary is then hosting a reception for everyone from 6:00 - 8:00 pm. There will bea special Front Room performance that evening as well. More info at http://www.camstl.org.
Tyler Green
on Apr 1st, 2009
@ 6:06 am:
I’ve seen that Deller (and others). I’m not saying he’s not thoughtful. I’m saying that the Iraq thing is not art. Just because a guy who makes art, an artist, does something doesn’t mean it merits consideration. Especially as art.
Dave Lang
on Apr 1st, 2009
@ 9:16 am:
Tyler,
That depends on what you think The Thing is. If you consider critical dialectic and cognitive dissonance a medium (and I’m not saying if I do or not), then there is some Art to be had here. Perhaps it is enough that they take a strat-o-matic approach, and break down the “War in Iraq” into a a series of traveling esoteric exercises. If anything it makes me love the project more, that they are treating an ongoing and contemporary history and the tragedy of American and Iraqi lives as an aesthetic documentation. Taking something that has already been so poorly mediated by our popular culture and re-mediating it…What could be more of a contemporary American art experience?