Lecture date: 2008-02-29
Walid Raad is a media artist whose works to date include video, photography and literary essays. In ‘My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair: A History Of Car Bombs In The Lebanese Wars | volume 1 (21 January 1986)’, Raad examines the events, experiences, forms, objects and effects that surrounded the explosion of a car bomb on January 21, 1986, in the Furn Ech Chubak area of Beirut. This work is one segment of a wider historical study by Raad and The Atlas Group documenting the detonation of more than 3,600 car bombs during the 1975-91 wars across Lebanon. Mediating and navigating the liminal zone between documentary and fiction, the Atlas Group was a project undertaken by Walid Raad between 1989 and 2004 to research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon. Raad found and produced audio, visual, and literary documents that shed light on this history. The documents were preserved in The Atlas Group Archive which is located in Beirut and New York.
Raad is an Associate Professor in the School of Art at The Cooper Union. A recipient of the 2007 Herb Alpert Award, his work has been widely exhibited internationally. He lives and works in Beirut and New York.
