The Mosaic Room in London opened the first solo exhibition by artist David Birkin. The exhibition entitled ‘Mouths At The Invisible Event’ brings together a series of works centred around censorship, spectatorship and the legal and linguistic frameworks underpinning war. In January the public programme accompanying the exhibition included an artists talk and a screening followed by Q&A with the director and producer of Drone, a documentary examining the CIA drone war.
February saw two panel discussions, ‘Unmanned’ and ‘Banned Books of Guantanamo’. ‘Unmanned’ reflected on the growing use of armed drones in modern warfare, the panel included Chris Woods, Elspeth Van Veeren, David Rodin and Edmund Clark. ‘Banned Books of Guantanamo’ panel included Andy Worthington, Ian Cobain, Clare Algar and Jo Glanville in discussion about the list of books banned in Guantánamo Bay, as well as the wider issues pertaining to this: censorship, the politics and perceived threat of literature, and the use of indefinite detention. February also saw the film screening of Harun Farocki’s War at a Distance and a book launch of Raja Shehadeh’s new publication Language of War, Language of Peace.