Jeremy Deller Artist Lecture: It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq

It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, a new exhibition by Turner Prize-winning British artist Jeremy Deller commissioned and produced by Creative Time and the New Museum. The project encourages public discussion of the history, present circumstances, and future of Iraq through unscripted, nonpartisan conversations in cities across the country. Talks are held in public spaces such as shopping malls and parks by guest experts Jonathan Harvey and Esam Pasha.

Website: http://conversationsaboutiraq.com/

This was by far my favorite lecture this year. Four men from completely different backgrounds have come together to have peaceful, meaningful, and productive conversations about the war in Iraq. Jeremy Deller came right out and said that protests were useless at this point. I have felt like this for some tome now and it was good to hear an intelligent person say this out loud. He felt that it was counter productive to argue over the war. "It Is What It Is", the itile of the piece speaks for itself. We're there, there isn't anything we can do about the past, so let's talk about it.
What I found to be very interesting was the variety of people that were in this project. Jeremy Deller is an artist from the UK, Jonathan Harvey served in Iraq, Essam Pasha was born in Iraq, and Nato Thompson is a gay, American artist. While listeneing to their panel discussion , I couldn't help but be amazed at how well they all worked together, and how how different they were form each other.
This was a very eye opening, informative, and inspiring lecture. I was happy to see that they were trying to start an intelligent proactive discussion rather than an explosive protest, which we see a lot of in the college world.