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It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq
Jeremy Deller, Nato Thompson, Esam Pasha, and Jonathan Harvey in conversation
A New Comission by Jeremy Deller presented by Creative Time and New Museum
Hosted and organized in Philadelphia by Slought Foundation
[Multimedia content blocked]
Listen to a 76 minute recording, or download the file
March 27-March 29, 2009
10am-4pm at 5th and Arch Street, in front of the National Constitution Center
and from 6:30-8pm at Slought Foundation
Reception on Saturday, March 28, 2009
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Slought Foundation is pleased to announce It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq in Philadelphia, a new project that it will organize and host in Philadelphia by Turner Prize-winning British artist Jeremy Deller, commissioned and produced by Creative Time and the New Museum. The project will encourage public discussion of the history, present circumstances, and future of Iraq through unscripted, nonpartisan conversations in cities across the country. Guest experts Jonathan Harvey and Esam Pasha, who were selected by Deller, will join the artist in these conversations. Jonathan 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.
On March 28, the project will arrive in Philadelphia as part of a three-week road trip by RV from New York to Los Angeles. Slought Foundation, working in collaboration with Creative Time and the City of Philadelphia, Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, has organized two public events which will broaden and deepen the dialogue begun in New York, extending the conversation to diverse audiences across Philadelphia. The public is encouraged to visit the project in its two parts, and to bring objects related to Iraq to converse about:
- From 10am-4pm at 5th and Arch Street, in front of the National Constitution Center, on Independence Mall in historic Philadelphia
- 6:30-8pm at Slought Foundation, where the artist will engage in a public conversation with the guest experts
Jeremy Deller conceived It Is What It Is to stimulate unmediated dialogue about Iraq, and our relationship to it as people and as a nation. Over 30 people with a variety of first-hand experiences of the country were available for conversations with thousands of visitors during the project’s installation at the New Museum in New York, from February 10 to March 22. More information about the project can be found at www.conversationsaboutiraq.org
Also traveling with the experts 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. When the road trip portion of It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq arrives in Los Angeles, the project will go on view at the Hammer Museum and will then travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago as part of the Three M Project.
In conjunction with It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, an international panel on curating and activism has also been organized at Moore College of Art & Design
from 9:30-5pm, featuring Martha Wilson, Karin Cuoni, Steve Kurtz, Sharon Hayes, Katherine Carl, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, and others in conversation (www.thegalleriesatmoore.org)
About the Speakers
Over the past ten years, artist Jeremy Deller has archived, examined, and often staged demonstrations, exhibitions, historical reconstructions, parades, and concerts as a way to both celebrate and critically examine them as forms of social action. His work focuses on cultural history—how it is made, recorded, manipulated, and remembered. One of his most well-known works,
a re-creation of a battle between pickets and police during the miner’s strike in the north of England in 1984, was subsequently made into a documentary by Mike Figgis called The Battle of Orgreave and was broadcast internationally. A more recent work, a film about Texas entitled Memory Bucket, won Deller the prestigious Turner Prize in 2004.
Jonathan Harvey has been a Platoon Sergeant in the United States Army since 1997 and is currently serving in the U.S. Army Reserve. A specialist in psychological operations, Harvey has lived in more than twenty-five countries, assisting in projects that include progressive teaching and leadership and management roles in academic and military environments. He has received many honors during his military career, including the Bronze Star Medal, seven Army Achievement medals, and an Army Commendation Medal. He is also an experienced teacher, including work at Veteran’s Upward Bound where he taught low-income military veterans basic skills to prepare them for college classes. Harvey received his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, politics, and economics from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is currently pursuing his Master of Liberal Arts.
Born in Iraq, Esam Pasha is a translator, artist, and journalist who has worked as an interpreter for the British Embassy in Baghdad and the Coalition in Iraq, including military groups such as the 101st Airborne and the Florida National Guard. Pasha has also been an interpreter at publications such as The Boston Globe and The Christian Science Monitor. He was a freelance journalist for the United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network and has written articles on art for international journals such as The Art Newspaper. Pasha, who is a well-known artist in Iraq, has also exhibited in the United States and Europe. In 2003, he executed the first post-war mural in Iraq, which is located in Baghdad.
About Creative Time
After 34 years of New York–based projects, It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq continues Creative Time’s expansion, presenting challenging art in the public realm in New York City and across the country. Creative Time’s national program launched with Paul Chan’s Waiting for Godot in New Orleans in 2007, and continued with Democracy in America: The National Campaign in 2008. Creative Time works with a belief in the importance of art in society, artists who make work outside New York City, and the transformative power of the combination of art and social action. Creative Time has a history of presenting timely ideas that challenge and provoke the public to think about the times from unusual vantage points. Past projects include the Freedom of Expression National Monument, a giant megaphone for public address, and Jenny Holzer’s For New York City, in which the artist’s truisms—including “ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE”—were pulled by airplanes over the skies of New York City. Recent projects include Tribute in Light, which served as a gesture of hope and healing after 9/11; Playing the Building by David Byrne, a musical installation in a disused building in Lower Manhattan; and Who Cares, a series of projects that explored art and social action. Creative Time is funded through the generous support of corporations, foundations, government agencies, and individuals. We gratefully acknowledge public funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency; New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn; and New York State Senator Thomas K. Duane.
Creative Time is funded through the generous support of corporations,
foundations, government agencies, and individuals. Our projects are made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency; New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn; and State Senator Thomas K. Duane. Special support for Creative Time for It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq has come from Charlotte and Bill Ford; Jed Walentas and Kate Engelbrecht; Michael
Gruenglas; and Stephen Kramarsky and Elise Mac Adam. The Three M Project is supported by Deutsche Bank. Additional support provided by the Toby Devan Lewis Emerging Artists Exhibitions Fund. It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq is made possible at the New Museum by a gift from Shane Akeroyd. The conversations are made possible by the Bill and Charlotte Ford Artists Talks Fund. Additional support provided by the Harpo Foundation.
"It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq" is made possible at Slought Foundation through the generous support of the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a program of The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by The University of the Arts, by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and by the Society of the Friends of Slought Foundation.
It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq is curated for the New Museum by: Laura Hoptman, Kraus Family Senior Curator, and Amy Mackie, Curatorial Assistant; and for Creative Time by:
Nato Thompson, Curator. The Conversations research team includes: Shane Brennan, Sarah Demeuse, Ozge Ersoy, Jazmin Garcia, and Terri C. Smith. "It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq" is organized for the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia by: Aaron Levy, in collaboration with the City of Philadelphia, Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, in conjunction with Moore College of Art & Design's International Panel on Curating and Activism on Saturday March 28, 2009 (for more information: www.thegalleriesatmoore.org). The Conversations team at Slought Foundation includes: Pernot Hudson, Tasha Doremus.
Media files on the Slought.org website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
MLA Style:
Jeremy Deller, et al. "It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq." Slought Foundation Online Content. [28 March 2009;
Accessed 18 March 2010]. <http://slought.org/content/11417/>.
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