CONFLICT RESOLUTION -
Teddy Cruz and Pedro Reyes

List of Works by Pedro Reyes:

Ideas for Iraq, 2007
Wooden table map of Iraq with acrylic pieces
Courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York and Paris (http://ideasforiraq.org/)

Ideas for Iraq is an active think tank and discussion forum focused on the state of the war in Iraq. The project centers on a
table cut in the shape of the map of Iraq, reminiscent of scaled relief maps used by the military. These maps are used to plan and strategize military attacks or missions. The table serves as a tool for managing and resolving conflicts rather than for creating new ones. The prerequisite is that all suggested ideas must arise from the conscious intent of fi nding a viable solution to the conflict in Iraq.

The surface of the detailed map/table is a bas-relief of Iraq’s hydrography, its main cities, and its principal geographical characteristics. Acrylic pieces represent infrastructural, demographic, civil, and military objects: oil production facilities, natural resources, and key civil and religious buildings. Additional figurines represent civilians from different ethnic groups, journalists, soldiers, and armed forces both from Iraq and from other countries.

The piece functions as a discussion roundtable, where experts in different disciplines—the arts, design, political science, Middle East studies, economics, military history, and conflict resolution— are brought together to participate in an exercise of devising new ideas that aim at conflict resolution in Iraq. Participants are invited to use the elements on the table to illustrate their strategies for possible solutions to various war problematics. Ideas are arranged on the table similarly as they would be on a checker- or a game board.

Ideas for Iraq will take place in several places throughout the world, traveling and creating a discussion forum for local experts on Iraq. As the piece changes locations, the various discussions that arise will be updated on the website, increasing the size of the think-tank community. Ideas for Iraq is a project initially created for the Experiment Marathon in Reykjavik, Iceland.


Palas por pistolas (Pistols into Spades), 2007
Shovels
Courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York and Paris

Palas por pistolas is a project that was initially conceived for the Botanical Garden in Culiacán, a city in western Mexico with the highest rate of handgun deaths in the country. With what some consider the best collection of tropical plants in the Americas, the gardens in Culiacán are evidently beautiful and bucolic, but outside their walls, violence prevails. This project aims to create a bridge between both worlds. Aided by a campaign organized by the city government, 1,527 weapons were collected and later melted in order that they be re-formed into 1,527 shovels, shovels that, in turn, would come to be used for the planting of 1,527 trees in the city and beyond. Agents of death turned into agents of life, the transmute metal handguns testify to the causal force of social acts and designs. Félix Guattari discusses art “not purely as agency for communication but as a catalyst for change with the potential for collective and social reinvention.” From guns to gardens, Palas por pistolas demonstrates this Guattarian process of socio-physical metamorphosis. Initially exhibited at Museo de la Ciudad de México and issued anew at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the project of planting trees throughout the city will be reactivated in San Francisco in conjunction with the Bureau of Urban Forestry in San Francisco’s Department of Public Works and with Friends of the Urban Forest (San Francisco).