March | 2013 | geographical imaginations

As we approach the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, British Foreign Secretary William Hague has reportedly advised his coalition colleagues not to discuss the war… Fortunately we have people like Alan Ingram to help us revisit and re-imagine the war, and I’ve drawn attention to his important Art & War: responses to Iraq project before.

Now Alan has curated an exhibition, Geographies of War: Iraq revisited, which runs from 18-27 March at North Lodge, University College London, Gower Street, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day.

‘This exhibition explores how artists with diverse practices and perspectives experienced the invasion and occupation of Iraq, an dhow they responded to it by engaging with questions of space, place, landscape and territory. Bringing together artists from Iraq and Britain it shows six works that give material form to the violence, anxiety and ruin of war but which also raise questions about resistance, survival and dreams of peace. Opening in the week of the tenth anniversary of the invasion, the exhibition presents alternative perspectives on the conflict and challenges our ways of seeing war.’

The featured artists include the indispensable Peter Kennard and Cat Phillips – you will surely have seen their photomontage of a leering Tony Blair photographing himself in front of a huge explosion – and one of my favourite Iraqi artists Hanaa Malallah.

There’s also a series of other events associated with the exhibition: a day of talks and discussions with artists and writers, ‘Art, war and peace: responses to the invasion and occupation of Iraq’ on 22 March, and a workshop on ‘Beyond the geographies of war: exploring art and peace’ on 27 March.

More information here.

We’ve been in Mexico for the last two weeks – hence the silence – so there’s lots to catch up on and with.

While I was away Joanne Sharp wrote with news of her experience with CNN… Reader’s Digest is in trouble, and readers will surely know of Jo’s Condensing the Cold War: Reader’s Digest and American Identity (University of Minnesota Press, 2000). So CNN asked her for a commentary, which you can find here; here’s the conclusion:

Perhaps the decline of Reader’s Digest’s fortunes was inevitable with the longer-term social and political influences of 60s counterculture, the failure of general interest magazines, the rise of global media targeted at specific niches and the advent of the internet. But of equal importance was the end of the Soviet threat: With the fall of its arch enemy, the Evil Empire, there was no mirror against which it could present an alternative image of America and its historic mission.

As Jo ruefully notes, there is an irony in all this (and not only in being asked to condense her Condensing, if you see what I mean): ‘something that was rushed together between 1 and 4am (in Helsinki – I didn’t even have my notes!) – has reached a far larger audience than anything I’ve spent months sweating over.’ But, as she also notes, some of the online comments would provide material for another essay….