When 'Thomas Strøbech' synchronously catapulted out of the Ministry of Immigration Affairs, out of his family, and out of academia (see Action #3.3.037), gravity lost its hold on him. Questioned about the nature of his, and the Parallel Action in general, he replied:

“The Parallel Action sets off in your mind, shoots through your private relations and the relations to your children, continues into the public space and grazes the nation, before it enters the exterior, the transnational anarchy, where its lines become the first pillars in a cosmopolitan world order. The parallel action demands rigorous discipline and tactical ingenuity on all levels; it depends on your ability to form your own life, the ability to form altogether; it becomes a question of the art of living or the art of dying. Only through the parallel action will you be able to be first past the post - one step ahead of death.”

En route on this outbound trajectory, ‘Strøbech’ happened across a small theatre- and arts house on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Here he befriended the house manager, Claus Beck-Nielsen, who very much shared the same overwhelming urge to wager something. So, they decided to conduct parallel actions together.

In the spring of 2003, Beck-Nielsen was staging a play called The Parliament. The play caricatures the chasm between an architect’s cosmopolitan vision of the ideal space for a world parliament and the parochial outlook of his fellow people who, working as construction workers, turn the bold draft into a fortress closed to the outside world. Leaving 'Strøbech' behind, I was assigned as dramaturg under the name of ‘Rasmussen’ to launch various interventions into the surrounding local and nationwide public sphere from a platform which was dubbed ‘The Extraparliament’.

The main event became the reinvention of the democracy in a 40×8 feet freight container on Kgs. Nytorv - a central square in Copenhagen - where results from the process in the theatre were exhibited.

At that time, the build-up to the invasion of Iraq was going into its final stages. The discussions in the theatre gradually shifted their point of gravity from abstract questions of constitutions to urgent questions of war and the agenda for Iraq.
Then a conflict broke out which divided the theatre staff after the management had declared the space of the theatre to belong to ‘Iraqi territory’ - in some sense making it prone to invasion. One faction didn’t accept the subjection to Iraqi supremacy and instead went to the freight container in the city and declared this space to belong to a new ‘Democratic Iraq’.

The story on the conflict was picked up by a local broadcaster - the caption read "Art-War"	The reporter apologized to us for having to document what must be "a painful process for all of you"- He concluded: "The future of Das Beckværk seems very uncertain"
The management (depicted in Sprechstallmeister-outfit) interviewed over the phone	An angry spokesman for the breakaway faction

After a reconciliatory meeting, it was agreed to settle the dispute and join forces to prepare a democratic model to be sent to Iraq in wake of the American/Danish invasion in the freight container.
Sadly, we never got the necessary permits from the coalition forces to ship the container to Iraq. The authorities wouldn’t allow a near empty container to enter Iraqi territory (disregarding the metaphysical aspect of democracy). Instead, we had to transfer The Democracy into a smaller metal container normally used by airline carriers to store meal trays.

On January 1 2004, Nielsen and Rasmussen walked across the border from Kuwait into Iraq, carrying the metal box stuffed with The Democracy and a uniquely designed ‘Nomadic Parliament’.
This blog is Rasmussen’s perspective on the journey.

THOMAS ALTHEIMER

City of Man

City of Man

Sometimes I think our perspective on Iraq is similar to that of the neoconservatives in the U.S. – especially those formerly known as leftists. The dramaturgy in our project The Democracy – Destination: IRAQ certainly shows some of the same traits as the process that began with the agenda of Richard Pearle and his fellow ideologues. Of course there is no such thing as a ‘beginning’ – only circumstances that for a time assist a particular world view and a particular dynamic.

When we first launched our campaign for democracy in Iraq it was characterized by an optimistic disregard for material conditions - on one side ignoring the logistic problems of sending the container to Iraq – on the other the belief in some sort of universal common ground shared by all individuals on this planet (not citizens of the Augustinean City of God, but of a cosmopolitan City of Man). By insisting on "The Democracy", in its substantive and not its adjectival sense, we place ourselves within a long tradition of idealist thinking, which furnish universals with an independent reality. But this is not done in the vulgar form of pure ideology – the kind that serves to avoid critique of material conditions. Instead our aim is scientific, in the sense that we seek to measure the distance between universals and their particular conditions.

So we’ll travel to Iraq with a pure idea and expose it to the bewildering reality of particulars. This is where our project resembles the neoconservative American project. We cannot at the outset know how this idea will survive, if it will survive - and if - in what shape. Like everything else in this world the meaning and the real effect of an idea only manifests itself in its staging before an audience. The audience participates in its actual production thereby giving it life and reality.

Like the neoconservatives we were thrilled by the perspective of a new pulsating, cultural Klondike in the Middle East – like Lebanon before the civil war, or like the Soviet Union in the 1920’s before paranoia got the better of Stalin. The clock turned, but it didn’t stop in the 20’s, it went back to some time around the end of the Nineteenth century, where bombs and assassinations were the order of the day in international politics (I always picture this period as Goscinny did it in Lucky Luke – I’m thinking of that album called “The Tsar” where the Russian Tsar visited the Wild West. Here the Tsar was constantly followed by a little man in black clothes (a nihilistic anarchist) carrying a round, black cartoon bomb with its characteristic fuse and small ‘windows’ on its sides that are supposed to resemble the reflection of the sun). Then as now it is nihilists that confront each other on either side. And the space in between seems negligible.

Like the U.S. we had to modify our model of the democracy as it was too big and expensive for us to send. The shipping agent told me that the dimensions of the container were asymmetrical - therefore it had to be billed as three containers. On top of that it couldn’t be shipped directly from Copenhagen. It had to be shipped with a ‘feeder’ to Bremen, Germany, and then reloaded to a larger ship bound for Kuwait. We finally had to give up, when the CPA wouldn’t give us the necessary permits for its entry into Iraq. It didn’t contain any relief goods, which it had to in order to be permitted. I had a hard time explaining the shipping agent that it, apart from The Democracy, didn’t contain anything else than a couple of chairs and some small objects.

Today, the euphoria seems to have subsided. Commentators have noticed how Bush has stopped speaking of ‘democracy’ in his speeches concerning Iraq. Instead he now settles for ‘freedom’. It is our task to go on from here. The difference between our endeavour and that of the neoconservatives is that we from the outset admit the futility of our mission.

Kuwait City

Kuwait City

During transit in London, Britain, The Democracy is object to increased security measures and is held back. Nielsen & Rasmussen arrive in Kuwait without The Democracy, their only reason for being, there, now. The Democracy is delayed. The Democracy is always delayed. The Democracy is 48 hours behind the schedule, quarantined. The world is waiting. Meanwhile the British (Airways) has put up Nielsen and Rasmussen in a luxury hotel.

The unexpected two extra days in Kuwait City at the expense of British Airways (the former "Imperial Airways") actually turns out to be necessary anyway, as Kuwaiti red tape concerning the issuance of entry permits to Iraq is quite extensive. We used the better part of a day to find the relevant office – the so called ‘Humanitarian Operations Centre' - a unit staffed by Kuwaiti government officials and UK military officers (and the odd Polish, Rumanian, etc…). After some waiting, we are shown into the office of the man in charge, the retired Kuwaiti general Ali Al-Mumin (Arabic for redeemer). Big man, booming voice, behind a big desk with all kinds of golden things on it, wearing the omnipresent dishdasha and the head thing that goes with it. Inviting us to take a seat in his couch, while chit-chatting with a cousin or the janitor – he refuses to issue a permit as we don't fit any of the established categories for foreigners who are allowed entry into Iraq: journalists, politicians, aid-workers and businessmen. Our letter of introduction from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs doesn't seem to impress him. He clearly deems us too soft for the stark realities of Iraq.

In that moment, the two towering cosmopolitans kind of collapse, sinking deep into Al-Mumin's comfy sofa – looking like the sissies they are, with only their suits trying to retain some form and civility. The mission is over only a day after it took off. I focus my despondent gaze on a white board with a list of recommended measures in the event that you are taken hostage - or if one suspects a suicide bomber is in the building. If you find yourself in the former predicament – you should start to whistle some tune (not specified which – I would have expected something like the Colonel Bogey March – the one that the prisoners whistle on the River Kwai). If one suspects a bomber, then you are recommended to ‘fidget your clothes' in a distinct manner.

At that moment, an English colonel enters the room. Ah, the British Empire – always showing up when you most need it. Colonel Andrzej Frank took a look at us, read through our letter of recommendation, looked at us again, and then exclaimed: “But they are Rosenkranz and Guildenstern!”
A living proof of the Oxford educated officer who upholds civilization in the most remote corners of the world, Colonel Andrzej Frank carries in his bag, regardless of whichever war zone he would travel across, an edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
With this seminal recognition of our true characters in such an unlikely setting, we felt an upsurge of energy and courage. A moment after what seemed to become one of history's most sorry retreats, we suddenly presented the hope of Iraq and the world – eclipsing the likes of Jeanne d'Arc, Martin Luther, Alexander the Great.

Enthused by the prospect of artists connecting and working with Iraqis, Frank recounted his experiences with theatre productions at Oxford. ‘Enter the Thespians' he called before he told Al-Mumin to issue the permits and then made us sign his copy of Hamlet as Rosenkranz & Guildenstern.

While I was trying to come up with something high-minded to write, Al-Mumin boomed ‘Ok, let's throw them to the Lions'.

A triumphant Rosenkranz with the permits outside the HOC

Into Iraq

Into Iraq

We leave the hotel early morning in a black Sedan to Kuwait International Airport where we hope to pick up The Democracy from the British Airways Agent. Behind the wheel is a very melancholic Palestinian who obviously hasn't done his Hadjj yet as he reeks of alcohol.

Anxious walk through the sterile, empty airport towards the BA office. Through the open door we see the box perched on the agent's desk – it came with BA 149 at 6 AM. A tiny Nepalese non-citizen takes The Democracy on his trolley to the exit. We then set out northwards through the desert. An hour from the border we stop at a filling station. Naked fear is strengthening its clench. The familiar, everyday loo routine suddenly feels like something very special and final. And yet, notwithstanding the fatal mood, I cannot get rid of this children's tune from a television program I watched with the kids three days ago. Martin & Kjetil on the road, out in wild nature, hooo-uh - they hear an owl, they have some food, they're best friends…

We arrive at the border at (high) noon and bid the Palestinian farewell. Carrying The Democracy - one hand each - we walk through the Kuwaiti check point. Approaching the Iraqi post after a mile's walk through desert sand, we both so very much hope that somebody is waiting for us on the other side.

Walking into Iraq from Kuwait

”Ils sont fou”

”Ils sont fou”

As we make our way across the mile-long desert strip which separates the two border posts, we are overtaken by a column of SUVs from Medecins Sans Frontieres. White paintwork, red lettering and fat antennas sitting on the tops. One driver leans out calling “ils sont fou” as he hands Nielsen two sealed plastic cups with mineral water.

We often stopped to switch sides because of the unwieldy handle on one side, which has given us both a sore left hand. (We couldn't just turn the box around - as we had to have the side with the sign to face Iraq, of course). Some would say this started as a practical joke as a result of overexcited adolescent exchanges at a late hour in the middle-class vacuum of Copenhagen. If so, the joke part was evaporating rapidly now; leaving only the practical bit and a lot of circumstance. As we have learned through this process, it is difficult to discern where irony turns into earnestness and vice versa.

We were both looking anxiously to the post up ahead; to make out whether the familiar figure of our Iraqi friend Adnan was anywhere to be seen. There was yet another hour before he would have to drive back to Basra in order to get there before sundown. He knew were on our way as he had been texting back and forth with our taxi driver using the Kuwaiti cell network which also covers the south of Iraq.

As we neared the Iraqi post, we could see him kicking dust, joking with the border police. Quite a relief – now everything was running according to the plan – we had The Democracy, we were about to enter Iraq, and we had secured the cooperation of the Iraqis.

The Democracy arrives in Iraq Jan 1, 2004

Zooming in we see Nielsen clasping his cup of French
mineral water - a souvenir of the Old World, Old Europe?

Tony Blair joins the mission (and sees that all is well)

Tony Blair joins the mission (and sees that all is well)

We've been standing for two hours outside the Coalition Provisional Authority in Basra. Like many others we stand at the gate and chat through the wire netting with the soldiers from Fiji who stand guard. Some Fijian words are sprayed on a large lump of cement - 'Na Bu Lane' - or something similar to that. The access to the palace is littered with these huge cement boulders that protect the CPA from suicide attacks.

Like the Iraqis we've tried to get an appointment with someone important inside the palace. But the problem for us, and Iraq, and the Iraqis is that most of the CPA-staff are off-duty due to the season.
The locals think it is funny that we are standing with them outside the palace as we are seen to represent the coalition.

Actually this situation is tragic, but for the moment it is funny, because it says everything about the absurdity of the new order.
Big SU-vehicles with huge antennas drive past us occasionally with small bald fat white males inside - they all wear helmets and bullet proof wests. The caravan is surrounded by military jeeps with machine guns and British soldiers with spots looking to be no more than 17 years of age. You can tell that they are all very scared.

Some Iraqi businessmen have appointments with officers or bureaucrats inside. They all meet at the gate and the Westerners try to seek out their appointment among the crowd of locals by calling on their cell-phones. They never go outside the gate, and they give us some strange looks when they spot us talking among the crowd.

In the beginning I found it to be an interesting experience, but at some point the hot sun and the strain begin to take its toll. Unprepared I am suddenly overwhelmed by anger: I am a westerner. I demand better treatment.

At this point a helicopter flies by at close distance. It shoots flares to avoid any missiles from shoulder carried launchers. A journalist from Reuters comes jumping out of a taxi. He's talking on his satellite phone while he asks us if we heard the news: Tony Blair is here, Tony Blair is coming to Basra today! Could be that Blair is in that very helicopter preparing to land far behind the gates in the middle of palace ground where nobody, but Saddam Hussein, representatives from the coalition, and a few select Iraqis have ever gone.

Arming The Democracy

The question of arms has plagued The Democracy for some days. Does The Democracy need weapons to defend itself? The Danish side see no use for such tools. As for the Iraqi side we cannot get too many - so I scribble away on an improvised napkin application which I hand to a soldier through the wire netting in front of the CPA. We're going for an AK-47 and a 9 millimeter Glock.

Luckily, the problem is solved by CPA red-tape. The staff have no categories in which we fit, so they see no possibility of giving us a permit (at the same time warning us from going anywhere without).

A caravan of democracy

Today, nobody is worrying about weapons. That is, we do not need them any longer, as our travelling party has turned into a caravan of democracy with a pick-up truck filled with gun-toting teenagers and colourful posters of Imam al-Sadr closing the column.

The effect we've had in Basra has turned the project into something similar to an American campaign trail leading up to the presidential primaries. We've been broadcasted on radio and television and we've had numerous rallies with enthusiastic audiences.

So in effect, we're stand-ins for the politicians of the coalition. Of course the accents are put slightly different. Foremost we emphasize the uniqueness of the situation of Iraq as we see it from outside. The message is to keep perspectives open (not to stuff the hole in the Flag of Democracy). And we appeal to the artists, intellectuals, and everyone else, to throw all their energy into producing visions for a new society.

Amara

Amara

A city of one million residents. The local artists and intellectuals are very distressed. They are not optimistic about the future. Some of them see no change in the way power is excercised either now, then, or tomorrow.
We, on our side, talk about empowering people - about the power of aesthetic forms in presenting arguments, strategies, and visions.
I emphasize the internet as an example of a new powerful strategy that mobilizes many on a broad basis to circumvent the old, hierarchical forms of political organisation.

But of course the argument dissolves, when they tell that they have no internet access, because religious factions blew up the only internet cafe in Amara two months ago - a fate which a local tv broadcaster also suffered.

At this moment the electricity goes, and we all sit silent for a moment in the darkness.
Somebody scrambles for a candle.

The Democracy trapped

The Democracy has been trapped inside the CPA offices in Amara for several hours now. A huge crowd of locals have gathered outside to express their frustration about the lack of jobs and basic requirements. British riot troops try to calm the crowd with wooden sticks reminiscent of the days of the former regime.

Al-Amok

Things are heating up here. Yesterdays riots are repeated in front of the CPA today; but this time the mob seems to have more than doubled. We've gone to the CPA a couple of times earlier as it is the only place in town with an internet connection. It was a totally absurd feeling to be trapped within the compound, hanging out among bald vigilante Blackwater security geeks and surfer soldiers in Ray-bans, riot gear and M15 automatic rifles cocked. We're on their side. Because of our suits, they think we're contractors or politicians. They're guarding us and we're guarding them. It's like being in a locker room with all your buddies just before a big game.

Not so today. Now we're standing like decadent Europeans on a balcony some five hundred meters from the CPA, overlooking the action on the main street down below - with nice drinks in our cocktail glasses – like Duke in Doonesbury's Al-Amok. Armoured personnel carriers and fighting vehicles are down on street the heading for the CPA-entrance. It's their problem to deal with now. We're no longer sharing the same fate.

Not in the same boat any more.
A tank driver breaking new semiotic ground.

Baghdad

Baghdad

This is a world flickering through the mind of a paranoid author - a fiction somewhere between Naked Lunch and Thomas Pynchon on acid.

Every gesture, face, child, or furrow in the mud seems to hide the essence of truth. Nothing exists without meaning, or traces of purpose. Omens are taken from dead cows in the road side and ravens sitting on top of bombed out Iraqi tanks.

We're reliving the life of a RAF-faction that forgot whatever cause it was fighting for. Constantly on the move. Leaving cities when they're about to erupt in chaos. Hiding as a city guerilla among the squatters in former government buildings.

The sound track is littered with the popcorn sound
of AK-47s, occasional blasts of more adult fire-works. Overhead the rumblings of military carriers, helicopter gun-ships, and jets.

Every day a plume of black smoke colours the morning horizon telling of nightly encounters between proud men working graveyard shifts to feed their families.

Nobody knows where this is going. You just keep walking. The path will tell what was, and what was to be.

Barriers of rice, not concrete

Barriers of rice, not concrete

We've been put up in a shack among a cluster of run down buildings which housed a police academy only a year ago before the war. We're in the middle of Baghdad with a direct view of the spaceship-like interior ministry. The police academy and Uday Hussein's Olympic village together form a huge compound now taken over by Shiite squatters. It's pretty weird to see the numerous manifestations of the Olympic rings in these surroundings. Children play in a wrecked plane with the rings printed on its wings.

        
                                                                The 'House'                                   The View - The Interior Ministry

We first planned to stay in Adnan's house, but it was deemed too risky as the neighbourhood is peopled with well-off officers from Saddam-times. Adnan's wife seemed nervous. Nielsen was very unhappy about us having to leave. He was playing with the children and felt more secure being with family. I didn't like either option. I guess, I most favoured going to an impersonal luxury hotel with large slabs of concrete and razor wire all around. At the house, I took a call from an arts journalist from the Danish Public Radio. During the interview, we had a very authentic soundtrack of Kalashnikovs popping out in the street across.

The family that usually inhabits the shack left it some days ago to stay with some relatives, following the loss of their youngest daughter aged five in a traffic accident. She died on the way home from school when she and her grandfather were hit by a truck as they crossed a road. The grandfather survived with a pair of broken legs. A picture of the girl sits beneath a magnet on the yellowed fridge door next to commercials for Iranian dairy products. She's wearing a bow of white crepe nylon.

The ‘house' makes out one half of a low white concrete cubicle surrounded by a strip of grass with tin plates serving as hoarding. Whenever Emir comes, you're always warned beforehand as the rusty plates make an awful lot of noise when somebody tries to stride over them. This contributes to our sense of security. Nielsen figures this gives us a five seconds lead before attackers reach the door step. An extra five seconds respite is given by virtue of the big sack of rice which blocks the lockless cast-iron front door. Emir lives with his wife and three children in the other end of the cubicle. I'm not sure if his family has got a DVD-player as Emir often brings a disc to our house for us all to watch. Our absent hosts have a huge television sitting in the middle of a large combined TV and book case that serves as an intermittent partition between the sleeping spaces which Nielsen now inhabits and the ‘living room' that was allotted to me.

Nielsen's quarters

Emir's latest disc is a widely circulated copy of the footage from Saddam's capture interspersed with pictures of Saddam from happier times where he's commanding a power boat sitting in the front stripped to the waist, sporting sunglasses like a scene out of a Fellini-movie. The zany cutting technique, the unintelligible narration, the style - which seems to be an attack on the concept of style altogether, - nothing resembles anything I've seen before. The overall aesthetic impression is a mix of Al Jazeera, America's Funniest Home Videos, Al Qaeda-tapes, Zapruder-footage, and Egyptian comedies from the seventies.
We watch it standing for half an hour. Chairs are apparently not paramount to Arabian furnishing. Every once in a while I try to make basic human gesticulations towards Emir to reassure a communal feeling as we do not share a spoken language. The ‘film' is definitely not a thriller. The same makeshift pictures are just shown again and again in a seemingly endless loop – the only apparent variations lie in the tone of narration which, now that I come to think of it, more resembles singing. A hairy caveman saying ah to a doctor, images of a trunk filled with dollars, the entrance to Saddam's hideout, and pictures of the speeding power boat.

Rasmussen's quarters

In these situations - when confronted with an aesthetic which is in every way unfamiliar, bizarre, and incomprehensible - I feel alienated and disheartened when I think of the prospects of a wider cosmopolitan political future. Sure, Emir and I can exchange cigarettes and share the microcosm of universal smoking-rituals, but when it comes to the exchange of political views, proper dialogue, commitments, and necessary compromises between citizens who are strangers to each other (not to mention enemies), I intermittently lose faith in the heterotopia of a unified City of Man. Here I am, posing as a man without qualities, and yet I'm immersed in a maze of cultural particulars, perfectly illustrated by my eerie, pre-cognitive, animal-like horror when, out of the corner of one eye, I saw Emir squatting to take a piss as we relieved ourselves in a ditch on the road to Baghdad (the feeling was mutual, I found out later). This sight re-mobilized my demand for a constrictive republican model where the private is strictly separated from the public sphere to avoid the cabinet of horrors which every self harbours according to Richard Sennett. In his book on the Fall of Public Man, he goes on to say that civilized relations between selves only come about to the extent that nasty little secrets of desire, greed, or envy are kept locked up. Of course pissing and greed are different things, but for me all aspects concerning private bodily routines belong in this cabinet.

The library of the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Baghdad

Scores of books are piled on the floor between messy shelves mainly carrying pre-1900 English titles. The piles on the floor tell of happier times when Iraq was an ally of the Soviet Union; class sets with 20+ copies of works by unknown Soviet writers - a gift from the people of the Soviet Union to the Iraqi people, according to Ala, the librarian in charge. Right now they are reorganizing the library with financial assistance from the CPA. First to go are the Soviet titles, of course. Many shelves are empty or only half-filled – often with charred volumes. Looters stripped and torched the campus library following the fall of the old regime. I try to ascertain an aesthetic pattern to the literary preferences of the looters. – All titles by the Brontë sisters are gone. Just beneath the empty Brontë shelve, works by and on John Donne abound. Shakespeare is there along with Shelley, Sheridan, and Spenser. Tennyson and Trollope are there, but Twain's Collected Tales are conspicuously absent.
I fail to make any sense of the looters philological profile, I am left with a somewhat disappointed feeling of insufficiency on behalf of my education. Here, at last, was a chance to relate pulsating, actual world political events to the literary canon in an unprecedented way, and then my disconnected mind betrays me so blatantly. Maybe there wasn't any pattern at all… Poe was also left untouched; at least you feel that a gothic group of literary looters would have grabbed Poe's Imaginary Voyages.

Institute of Fine Arts

Institute of Fine Arts

Nielsen is sitting in the nomadic parliament surrounded by a crowd of curious students - all male. Westerners are a rare sight on campus. People stare at us, as if we we're monkeys in a zoo. The women keep their distance and settle for our leaflets written in Arabic. - The flag of democracy is hanging on the wire netting of a basket ball court.

We're told that 75 percent of the campus students are happy about the deposition of Saddam Hussein. The rest are not. After the capture of Hussein the two groups exchanged blows on campus. A rather peaceful encounter compared to the gun fights at the neighbouring Faculty of Letters.

Everything is on the edge here in Baghdad. People are frisked before entering campus. Discussions are more polarized and agitated. Our form is fragile as a frame for such violent energies, but still it seems to be able to bear the strain.

Our box of democracy is tumbling down a slope towards the shallow waters of Tigris. A crowd of filthy Dickensian children laugh enthusiastically as we engage in a rather graceless pursuit. My travel companion Nielsen, with his pointed nose, is faster than me and intercepts The Democracy inches above the black garbage filled mud of the river side. Now Nielsen poses with his boots fixed in Iraqi mud among multicoloured plastic bags holding the heavy grey box as if it was the catch of the day with the 5 o'clock Baghdad afternoon sun illuminating the proud moment. Our sturdy driver, Emir, who received a medal for bold driving during the war with Iran, regards us dispassionately from the parking lot far above. He's guarding the car, we're guarding The Democracy. That's how the division of labour was laid out from the beginning.

At this point we've survived our first fourteen days in Iraq, which goes beyond our initial criteria of success. In a spout of joy over still being alive we started going around Baghdad to take pictures of The Democracy in different settings. My newfound master, the local god, who I until now have only known through the Arabic word ‘Inshallah' (translates to something like ‘if god is willing'), apparently punishes us for our vain and presumptuous conduct by hurtling The Democracy down the side of a Tigris levy thus putting us on a level with the current Iraqi reality.

The Democracy is installed

Today it has finally happened. We've passed The Democracy on to the Iraqi People.

The final walk with The Box – entering the Academy of Fine Arts

We chose the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad as the new cradle for The Democracy. The decision was reached while considering two factors: First of all the students have shown an overwhelming degree of commitment, enthusiasm and initiative. They've created their own showrooms out of nothing on campus, all kinds of art groups are blooming as well, the court yard campus is echoing with heated discussions on art and politics – a Baghdadi historical parallel to the bustling courtyard of what was known as Palais Egalité during the French revolution.
Second, the statistical prospect of not getting blown up looks good as the space on campus, which it now inhabits, has already been hit when the neighbouring Turkish Embassy was bombed two months ago. The likelihood of a bomber hitting the same place twice is slim, even in Iraq.

Nielsen & Rasmussen about to speak – the Democratic Flag in the background

The ceremoniousness of it all heightened when it turned out that a dignitary from French Embassy would be present at the instalment of The Democracy. Sadly he missed the historical moment as he completely ignored not only the presence of us, but also of the box, as he was shown around the space (the French Embassy had sponsored some $800 worth of paint to a refurbishment). Maybe the French Medecin Sans Frontieres bellowing “Ils sont fou” were still somehow echoing in the air around us?
- Another distressing illustration of Europe's complete failure to act in unison outside Europe. National pride and vanity are still the determining factors in all their adventures abroad. If two Europeans accidently were to bump into each other somewhere near the South Pole, they wouldn't care to greet. They would rush along with their little coloured flags in order to be the first, whatever that means.

A view of campus seen through the opening of the Flag of Democracy

I suspect the “Ils sont fou” approach points to a deeper truth in this whole thing. Not able to do a proper analysis, I just state the fact that our democratic mandate has been acknowledged by most of the Iraqis who we have encountered, whereas almost all Westerners have refused to take The Democracy at face value. Just two hours ago on our way here, we had an incident with four American troopers crossing the street in order to stop us from taking pictures. One of them jerked the camera from Nielsen while another pointed to the box and asked “what is that, a bomb?”

The Democracy in its new habitat

Out of the Zone, into the Zone

The journey has finished. We're in Kuwait - in a hotel room – Rasmussen is watching ZDF - a German broadcaster – Elke aus Oberhausen is interviewed by an astrologist – something about her relationship with her mother – something about an ascendant in a house. He's drinking a non-alcoholic beverage and splitting pistachios. Nielsen is on the other bed. Sleeping.