Paul Chan begins his 2003 video Baghdad in No Particular Order with a title reading “order particular no in Baghdad”–a clear signal that he intends to provide an alternative perspective on Iraq to that offered by the nightly news. Chan spent nearly four weeks in the Iraqi capital last winter as part of the Iraq Peace Team, a group organized by Voices in the Wilderness to protest the imminent war. The Iraqis he met there face his camera in the casual, friendly manner of relatives and neighbors showing off in a home video. When twin sisters He’be and Du’a dance, Chan turns the camera over to their older brother Mohamad; at the Al-Shadbandar Cafe, he lets a 50ish former television director play with the digital camcorder. The resulting “ambient documentary” captures details beyond the range of both the press corps and the international community of camera-toting activists, sketching instead the scope of everyday life in Baghdad.
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His Web site, www.nationalphilistine.com, offers a hyperlinked set of observations about his experience in Iraq, juxtaposing miscellaneous impressions (the Iraqi liquor arak “tastes like licorice and stings like rock candy”) with heady allusions to Chinese scholar Qian Zhongshu and cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek and footnotes to his videos and other art projects.
