The art project entitled "Does Religion Kill?" was birthed almost 2 years ago. It was created with the intention of producing dialogue between people of opposing faiths.  The aim was for people from different cultures and beliefs to educate one another in hopes of creating bridges between various groups who normally would not interact together.  The catalyst for this dialogue was to be quality artwork, starting with the opinion and message of the artists.  I wanted the project to be as open as possible - no boundaries, no limits and no hidden agendas.  I wanted to put forth words like understanding, tolerance and acceptance at the forefront of the project.  I must also clarify this project to many artists who may view it as a mere tactic to spread a message or worse an exploitation of their work only as a means to an end.   On the contrary, however, being that I too am an artist, the work is very important to me and is itself an end.  Far too often we see open forums between art directors, curators, doctors, scientists, philosophers, etc. whose means of communicating are words.  I have created an open forum with art as the communicating tool and my hope is for the art to elicit a dialogue between all people who view it.  In its conception, “Does Religion Kill?” was a juried art exhibition that was held co-currently with the 9th International Istanbul Biennial and was also published as a book that included the winning artwork and various comments from dialoguing Istanbulites.  The project has now taken its own life form and will soon be traveling to other cities around the world.  In the future, however, we will no longer have a jury or prizes.  I will be acting as the concept engineer for the project, and wherever the project travels, I will seek out artwork that best adheres to the topic or artists who have already created works that have the aesthetics and aura that I am looking for.  I am seeking work that either attempts to answer the question from the artist’s point of view or replies with another question.  I am not looking for an answer per se, but work that lends itself well to the topic and can spur up dialogue.   As with the first exhibition, I will follow future exhibitions by seeking out comments from as many circles as possible to add to the future “Does Religion Kill?” books.  In the first edition of the book, I solicited comments from Agnostics, Atheists, Buddhist, Christians, Hindus and Muslims.  I will continue to seek out as wide a ray of opinions and perspectives as possible in future books and projects.  The next stop for this project is Los Angeles, California set for the fall of 2006.  In 2007 I will more than likely take it to Mexico City and Szczecin, Poland.  There are also talks of the project traveling to Germany, Indonesia and Malaysia.  My goal is to create a book in every country that will be in English as well as in the native tongue of the host country.  Each book will include artwork from artists native to the country as well as artwork from artists outside the country.  In the end, I would like to see an anthology of books that comprise the world’s beliefs elicited by thought-provoking artwork from around the world.  As an added feature to the “Does Religion Kill” project, this blog has been created to provide an opportunity for all who visit it to contribute their own thoughts on the topic.