October 24 Speaking of Golden Palaces

In the last years of his life, Saddam Husein built 80 to 100 palaces. https://failedarchitecture.com/architecture-after-excess-the-palaces-of-saddams-baghdad/ Portland has been a supporter of Irish photographer Richard Mosse. Mossee studied with Gregory Crewdson. Crewdson spoke in Portland a Ripe Family Dinner about studying at that selfsame university and then undertook unusual, almost social practice art, work. I'm a fan of many of his students, and comments are scattered in this blog about that. Mosse photographed a few of Saddam's Palaces. After Iraq, he traveled in rebel territory in Eastern Congo to make The Enclave. The conflict there, continuing to this day, broke out as a result of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, little connection by the central government in the far West to the far East, and the warlord-natural resource extraction economy. I've been in that area with gunshots, thankfully in the distance. The Enclave was shown at the 2013 Venice Biellialle. It traveled to the Portland Art Museum. Another folly of kings is in Gbadolite, Northern Congo, near the seasonal Mobayi - Mbongo ferry. It is home to the ruins of King Mobutu's jungle palace. Mossee was later selected as curator for Converge 45 and spoke about his Amazon project, broken Spectre, and exploration of migration. Ai Weiwei has worked on that topic as well. Here is Mosse's experience with Saddam's palaces. https://www.bldgblog.com/2009/05/saddams-palaces-an-interview-with-richard-mosse/ We can only imagine a cheescake restaurant designed by Saddam.