Art Metropole

#05540

On Democracy by Saddam Hussein

Artist

Paul Chan

Date

2013

Publisher

Badlands Unlimited

Format

Artists' Books

Details

Softcover

ISBN

9781936440320

Size

13.4 × 20.2 × 1 cm

Length

57 

Edited by Paul Chan, Karen Marta. Essays by Negar Azimi, Nickolas Calabrese, Jeff Severns Guntzel. Artworks by Paul Chan.

In 2003, after returning from a monthlong stay in Baghdad, American artist Paul Chan was given a gift from a colleague in the human-rights group Voices of the Wilderness: a copy of three speeches on democracy written by Saddam Hussein in the 1970s, before he became president of Iraq. The speeches, compiled here for the first time in English, are politically perverse, yet eerily familiar. The then vice president of Iraq characterizes social democracy as demanding authority, and defines free will as the patriotic duty to uphold the good of the state. This volume takes the speeches as an opportunity to ask what democracy means from the standpoint of a notorious political figure who was anything but democratic, and to reflect on how promises of freedom and security can mask the reality of repressive regimes. With drawings by Paul Chan, including a new suite in its entirety, and essays by Bidoun’s Negar Azimi, philosopher and artist Nickolas Calabrese and journalist Jeff Severns Guntzel, this book is the inaugural copublication of the Deste Foundation for Contemporary Art and Chan’s own Badlands Unlimited.