moscow for poisoning the former spy sergei skripal and his daughter yulia in the english city of salisbury last month. the russian ambassador to the united nations said the uk was playing with fire and would be sorry. a court in south korea is due to deliver its verdict on the former president, park geun—hye, who was forced from office in a corruption scandal last year. prosecutors are seeking a 30—year prison term and a fine equivalent to more than $100 million. the doctor at the head of the us public health system says more americans need to carry a drug that can reverse opioid overdoses. surgeon generaljerome adams said 115 americans die from an overdose every day, and the drug epidemic is now killing more people than the hiv crisis did at its peak. you're up to date with the headlines. now on bbc news, it's hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur.

the best art helps us to see and feel in new ways. it can challenge and provoke. my guest today has made it his mission to test the boundaries of what we think of as art. michael rakowitz uses sculpture, installation and site specific experience to transmit a vision which reflects his iraqi—jewish heritage and preoccu pations, which range from war to family to food. he's won plaudits around the world. what does his work tell us about the state we're in? michael rakowitz, welcome to hardtalk.

thank you, stephen, thanks for having me. it's a great pleasure to have you. it seems to me, in your work, there is a duality. you are an american kid, stroke american man, yet you seem intensely conscious of your heritage that comes — certainly from your grandmother's side — from iraq. why is that duality so important to you? well, it became important when it went from being something that was so normal to being something that seemed so paradoxical for people. i grew up in a house where my grandmother and my grandfather on my mum's side and my mum had come from iraq via bombay to the united states in 1946, and i grew up in a house where it wasn't at all odd

to hear my mother and my grandmother talking in arabic in the kitchen and to smell the spices that were being used when they were making kibbeh or mashi, which is dolma in the iraquewish dialect. and to have that emanate into the living room where, you know, sometimes there were family gatherings where there were songs that came from the iraquewish community, and the melange that existed there at the time was that the musicians werejewish and the singers were coming from koranic tradition, from the islamic community. and so, it was like a bridge that i didn't realise i was hearing but it sounded so normal, it felt so normal. and then by the time i was 16 or 17 years old, i was more aware of who i was as a person in the world and where politics — and when the drums started to beat towards war in 1991, i became acutely aware of the fact that the place my grandparents fled from was about to be bombed

by the place they fled to. that's a crucial experience for you, when iraq became the enemy. saddam hussein became the hate figure for all of america and the country that you'd known through your grandparents and your mum as a place of heritage, of language, of food, of all of these positive warm feelings, suddenly was defined to most americans as somewhere hateful and frightening. yeah, my mother saw that happening right in front of us, and i remember seeing the first live real—time images of iraq that i've ever seen in my life, which were green tinted, coming from the night vision on cnn. there were pictures of buildings that were being blown to bits, that i was never going to be able to visit. as we were watching this, my mother turned to my brothers and i and said, "you know, there's no iraqi restaurants

in new york?" it was like the riddle of the sphinx. years later, i understood that she was pointing out that iraq was not visible in the us beyond oil and war. and we'll get to iraqi restaurants in new york later. sure. because although you're an artist, one of your installations was indeed inside a restaurant and was all about food and connections between food and culture and art. but we don't want to raise that here. sure. i'm just intrigued, as you talk about those memories of your grandparents and your mum, you're positing it very much in terms of the arabic language, in terms of a rich culture and food. you're not talking aboutjewishness and yet, they were iraquews. was it that they felt more in a way more rooted in their country and the culture of their country, iraq, than they felt in theirjewishness? i think that was a period of time that existed, and it's one of those periods of time that i tried to wield not as a nostalgia in the work that i do but as a blueprint,

going forward, of how things can be. because it was, and it wasn't so long ago. they always talk about how iraq, how baghdad actually, was kind of like a jewish city in the 30s and then the 40s and you even had the city shutting down on friday before sunset because of the sabbath. and that kind of relationship between people, regardless of faith, was something that i think a lot of iraqis, whether they were ofjewish or muslim or christian descent, really held dear. and nationalist programmes can complicate that. and that notion of an ancient culture where people could come together and share experience, it's very central to a lot of your work. i want to now fast forward from your memories of childhood and upbringing to the reason you're in the uk, in london right now, which is to unveil the spectacular public artwork which has perhaps the most prominent public art piece

in all of the country. and we can see an image of it. now, it's a recreation of a mythical assyrian lamassu, which is the sort half man, half bull or lion. it has wings, it's a mythical creature. and you've been given that spot on trafalgar squarem on the plinth. tell me the origins of this piece of work. because it has ancient mythical origins, and yet it's something you've made out of trash. exactly. well, the project is an extension of one i began about 12 years ago in my studio, with my assistants, which endeavoured to reconstruct the 7000 artefacts that are listed as missing or stolen or status unknown in the aftermath of the looting of the iraq museum in 2003. so i began there and i enlisted the detritus or the cultural visibility of arab communities around the united states,

where beyond oil and war, where do you see it? well, you see it on the food packaging, it's in arabic and english. and you see it in the arab english newspapers that are given away for free to the refugees. and that extraordinary thing, the lamassu, is made, i believe, of something like 10,500 old cans of date syrup. exactly. and date syrup, there's a long, convoluted story that i could tell you about my experience with dates and reopening my grandfather's import export company to import iraqi dates. but i found out that iraqi dates are the best in the world. there's over 600 different varieties, and the date palm suffered alongside the people and the culture. so at the end of the iran iraq war, what was a 30 million strong date palm industry throughout the country was reduced to about half that, and the end of the iraq war, the estimates were something like 3 million. to you, is this artwork optimistic, in the sense that you could be saying to the world, look,

so—called islamic state or other extreme nihilist organisations can never destroy the idea behind these ancient artefacts? you could be saying that or you could be, on the contrary, be rather bleak and be saying, you know, they've destroyed something so ancient and all i can put forward now is a memory of it, a ghost of it that's made out of trash. so is it optimistic or is it bleak? ithink, you know, one of the things — it comes back to food. iraqi food is so great because it's hamid halu, it's sweet and sour. so if you make a kibbeh, that's sour, you want your stew to be sweet and vice—versa. so things are held in tension. right. so i absolutely believe that these desires, not only in my work

but across the world, where you've seen people now, like this wonderful young artist up in the north of iraq who started to reconstruct artefacts also from plaster, after daesh started to destroy things. this is a good intention, this is a good impulse — to want to rebuild. but i am saying that the past is the past, like you can't 3—d print the dna of the people that are killed alongside the artefacts because the artefacts always perish alongside people. and so, in some way... i just wonder if there was some anger in you when, for example, the international media made such a storm over the destruction of the wonderful remains in palmyra, also, one could talk about nimrud in iraq, nineveh as well, of course. ever time one of the most historic pieces was destroyed, or places was defiled, there was a storm of outrage which seemed to, in a sense, get under the skin of people more than the daily toll of deaths of human beings. was that anger in you? initially, when i started this long—term project back in 2006 to reconstruct things,

it was about a certain kind of anger that you can walk through galleries in new york and not know that we were living in a war culture. and i was wondering when the outrage around lost iraqi artefacts would turn into outrage around lost iraqi lives. but at the same time, i'm not a psychologist, but i do wonder where people put their morrning. you know, i wonder where they put their outrage into symbolic things. art often is about the kind of indirect reference to something that we're all feeling together, and what was useful about the outrage around the looting of the iraq museum was that it didn'tjust localise the problem, it wasn't an iraqi tragedy — it was an iraqi tragedy but it was also a human tragedy. this was our cultural heritage that was shared,

and if you can put people on the track towards thinking that way, that it's something we share, then there are all these other opportunities about sharing this sense of loss in other directions. will you everfinish this mammoth project of yours? because i mean, i know the thing you're calling the invisible enemy should not exist. will you ever get that done? you're only on about number 800 of 8000, i think. it's a lifetime task. that will outlive me and my studio. that's kind of the point, to show that history can't be fully reconstructed and we can't do it without everyone being involved in it. there're a community that has arisen, like i said, of people who talk about 3—d printing and there are conversations to be had there, but i also don't want it to be simply something that is fetishising only the artefacts, that like oh, we can just rebuild palmyra. but like you said earlier, you can't bring khaled al—asaad, this amazing archaeologist that

protected not only the... he was the 82—year—old archaeologist who was actually executed... a tragedy, tragic. by daesh on the site of his own pride and joy — which was safeguarding, being the guardian of palmyra. he wouldn't give up the location of certain items and he wouldn't give up the location certain people. this is somebody who understood what was happening. when books burn, people burn. you know, we've seen that throughout history. i want to widen this out now to think about some of your other work as well. would it be fair to say that that formative experience you had as a teenager watching the first iraq war with the us involvement in iraq, and then watching the second iraq war, with the us actually occupying iraq after 2002—2003. has that turns you into an anti—war artist? oh, i don't think i was ever a pro—war artist, um... no, but now, would you say it's one of your driving forces to deliver

messages through your art that are about, i don't want to put words in your mouth, the negative impacts of war? i think so. i mean, it's notjust that i do with the work. i think i do a lot of things, hopefully, with the work. if i think about my long—term engagements with iraqis and with iraq war veterans back in the united states, it's looking at the way in which both the soldier and the refugee experience the dehumanisation of that experience of combat and occupation. yeah, i mean, you have got these extraordinary... i don't know what to call them, actually, and it will be interesting to know what you call them. you couldn'tcall them pieces of art, they're more experiential. you've got this one project in chicago where you have iraqis who have fled from iraq, for all the reasons we have just discussed, they are cooks and chefs,

they serve food, they also have helping them who are us military veterans who fought in iraq and they are the sous chefs and the waiters. the food is iraqi and it is delivered to people in chicago. first of all, that is fascinating, but is it art? iam i am less interested in what people call things. it actually is not a business model. the people would wa nt business model. the people would want to. i think bad business could be art. do you want people to go there because they want the food? to treat it just as there because they want the food? to treat itjust as a restaurant or a kitchen? 0r treat itjust as a restaurant or a kitchen? or do you want them to go there because you want them to be open to an artistic sensual sensory experience. of course, the latter

excites me more than the former. we have had folks, to the third reich to buy our kebabs sandwich and all ofa to buy our kebabs sandwich and all of a sudden they are realising the person that is speaking to them is speaking in english and the person in the back, they are speaking in arabic. there is a distribution. it isa arabic. there is a distribution. it is a syrian recipe. getting the sense that art and food are very much mixed together. notjust that fascinating experian shall art but

this extraordinary thing you did in new york where you took over a posh restau ra nt. new york where you took over a posh restaurant. —— experimental. it was a 1—off. it took over the posh restau ra nt, a 1—off. it took over the posh restaurant, you served iraqi food but you served it on plates you specifically requisitioned through ebay from saddam hussein's personal household. what is it about food which speaks to you in such an artistic experience? well, just as a point of clarification, which is interesting in answering your question, i was collaborating with a chef at this restaurant called park avenue and the chef's name was kevin lasko, and what we did with that project was really kind of look at the way that a menu happens. and a menu is presented to you almost like, almost like the accession cards in a museum

now that tells you exactly what kind of pigment is used and so, the menu tells you where your rugelach comes from, it tells you where your meat is harvested from. it's a way of making the dinerfeel good, and i wanted to make the diner felld bad. so iraqi date syrup in the united states hasn't been labelled as "product of iraq" for years because it's been impossible to get it through customes without event, and so it says "product of lebanon" or weirdly enough, "product of netherlands", where i've never seen a date palm grow. and to be able to actually reveal, you know, on the menu that there was a dish that was made with iraqi dates syrup was part of it, so for me, it came back to not only yes, the culinary experience being like something artistic. and ifeel like when i am making kibbeh, i feel like a sculptor. when i'm making kabob, i feel like a sculptor. but it was also about taking that kind of like

way of enticing the viewer, enticing the reader. i get — there's a playfulness in europe, a sort of provocativeness and a playfulness, and it works on many different levels. ijust wonder — and i want to bring in a second image — i just wonder whether sometimes you're at risk of taking that playfulness to a place where it can be seen as disrespect. sure. this image is taken from, i think something that you put on in london a while ago. a show that in many ways made comments on saddam hussein's reign in iraq and this very famous, notorious symbol of his power in iraq. he had his own arms and hands cast in bronze for this sort of victory arch, which of course the real one, which i have walked under in baghdad, it had these vast, monumental sabres in both hands. you, with your playfulness, have turned it into light sabres from star wars. yes. now, some might look at that and say given everything we know about saddam hussein's iraq, that's disrespect. sure, sure.

well, i know that i work with difficult material from time to time and, to be honest, this is the most uncomfortable sculpture i've ever made because — not because of what i used to make it, but because the original is alsojust so, i mean, hard for me to get down with. you know, like, it's his hands blown up a0 times. it's using the melted down metals from munitions from the iranians, that the iraqis... it's the personification of his tyranny, really. yes, it is, and it's narcissism. it's... you know, these kinds of monuments exist everywhere but, but you know, when i was on ebay — and what really brought me to ebay first was the fact that mesopotamian artefacts were showing up

there after the looting — was i wanted to know what iraq didn't want back, and one of the things i found online was a helmet that was being sold by a member of the us armed forces that was based in mosul, in the 101st airborne division, that was cast directly from darth vader, darth vader's helmet, and it belonged to the fedayeen saddam, and when the soldier... they really used these darth vader helmets? they used these. they used them. and so, then the soldier asked the locals what this was about, and he explained that saddam and uday were huge fans, and after all of this kind research that i did ifound out that saddam was a collector of an american artist named rowena morrill, and rowena morrill‘s mentor was an artist named boris vallejo and boris vallejo designed a poster for the empire strike back that has saddam — uh, saddam, that has darth vader holding two light sabres over his head. it's clunky story but somebody‘s has got to tell it because it's true, you know.

i've interviewed a lot of artists on hardtalk, but i've never interviewed one who intrigues me in the way that you do because most artists clearly, you know, have a commercial impetus toward most of their work. they end up with a thing which can be put in a gallery, bought and sold, it can be moved around the world and invested with value, but so much of what you create can't really fit in any of those categories. for example, we're talking about the restaurant in new york or the enemy kitchen in chicago. these are experiences but, but they only exist in their own time and place. you can't sell ‘em. frankly, you can't really make money ora living out of them. so, are you a commercial artist or not? i wouldn't consider myself one, no.

it's not the place that i come from. i come from working in public space, i love working the city, i love working with architecture and i love working with the people living inside those buildings. however, there is a kind of component to my projects that really does look not at the market per se, but at the way that markets emerge as a sight specific place. so it was the existence of an antiquities market that allowed for the iraq museum to be looted in the first place and for a lot of people, those artefacts were the ticket out of the country. and so, with that kind of market, being where it was, and thinking about the contemporary art market and the fact that those things do intersect sometimes, you go to most collectors's houses that collect contemporary art and they'll have an antiquity that they may or may not want to talk to about. that's an interesting take on the art market, but i want to end by taking us back to the beginning, which was that discussion that you're so passionate about, about iraq,

family and memory. it amazes me that despite your preoccupation with your heritage and what it's given you, you've never been to iraq. well, my family left because they felt like they had to leave and they were heartbroken. but you could go now. i could go, of course, i mean, and that to me, i think about that all the time. i think about, you know, going back and i have that privilege of the american passport, but over the past 12 years, i've been working with a lot of iraqi refugees as well in my projects and they can't go back and they're injordan, they're in the united states, they‘ re in canada, and we've forged close relationships with each other, and in a way, i feel like that distance has almost become like a material in my work. but they said to me, "i'll tell you how you are going to go back, we're going to go back and we're going to invite you to visit us." and that's how i would do it. and when you do it, we want to talk to you again. inshallah.

but for now, michael ra kowitz, thank you very much for being on hardtalk. hello. thursday always was set to be one of the best days of this week and so it proved and our weather watchers were very much out in force, probably encouraged by the fact that it was such a glorious day all the way from scotland to the south coast and across the irish sea and into northern ireland, but that's really rather cruel to use that particular picture to bring you the message that it will be on friday another glorious

day for many parts of the british isles because, i'm afraid to say, that belfast and indeed much of northern ireland, it won't be that way for you, and the seeds of the destruction of your glorious friday were there being sown on thursday with this veil of cloud moving in from the atlantic and as we get into the first part of friday, well, the rain will already be there, and how, across northern ireland, and it may already be flirting with the western side of scotland as well. but at least underneath that veil of cloud, it won't be such a cold start to friday in the west as it will be in the east because your skies will be that bit clearer. and it's still that sort of time of the year where if the skies are clear, the heat will dribble away and you'll start off with a pretty cool start to your day.

there, the bigger picture, one of the benefits of having that low pressure out towards our west, is that on its eastern flank, we're sucking up all this mild air from the western part of the mediterranean and from iberia. so eventually, as you will see, our temperatures really will respond to that. but, i'm afraid, out towards the west, there is no disguising the fact that once the rain has set in, it will probably keep on coming across northern and western parts of scotland. certainly for the greater part of the day for northern ireland and for the western fringes of wales. but further towards the east, somebody is going to see 16 or 17 degrees somewhere across the south—eastern quarter. from friday into saturday, we'll push that initial pulse of rain away. but we've still got a linkage, actually, that frontal system bringing the prospect of yet more rain, somewhere across central and eastern parts of the british isles in the first part of the day. i think northern ireland, central and southern parts of scotland, maybe the western fringes of wales and the south—west, could get away with a dry day. there is some uncertainty, but i think one of the things that we can say about the weekend is that the temperatures for many of us, because of

the southerly flow, will stay in double figures and there is just this prospect on sunday of rain for some, but many could stay dry. and, on the mild side. hello. this is the briefing. i'm maryam moshiri. our top story: "horrific and unsubsta ntiated". russia once again denies any involvement in the poisoning of a former spy and his daughter. south korea's ousted president awaits her fate. a court is due to deliver its verdict on corruption charges. making history. why south african swimmer chad le clos is hoping to break records at the commonwealth games. and sweet teeth, beware. the uk's sugar tax hits soft drinks near you from today, in an effort to fight obesity. but critics say taxation is not the right way to change behaviour. i'll be speaking to the chief executive of the food