NYC

Walid Raad LECTURE

My Neck Is Thinner Than a Hair: A History of the Car Bomb in the 1975-1991 Lebanese Wars_Volume 1: January 21, 1986

Presenter: Walid Raad, on behalf of The Atlas Group

A one-hour performance lecture, "My Neck Is Thinner Than a Hair: A History of the Car Bomb in the 1975-1991 Lebanese Wars" is the culmination of Walid Raad's fellowship at the Vera List Center for Art and Politics and will feature Raad simultaneously as historian, academic, journalist, filmmaker, and artist.

For the past year, Raad and artists Tony Chakar and Bilal Khbeiz have been working on the first volume of this multi-volume project and focused on a particular car bomb that was detonated on January 21, 1986 in the Furn Ech Chubak area of Beirut. The group examines the multiple dimensions-social, political, economic, military, technological, psychological and epistemic-of the wars and investigates the public and private discourses surrounding the 3,600 car bombs that were detonated during this period.

Lebanon-born but now residing in the States, Walid Raad is one of the most provocative and significant new voices in visual and cultural studies internationally. His works include video, photography and literary essays, often produced together with a number of mainly fictional collaborators, the so-called Atlas Group. By focusing on specific incidents of car bombings in the contemporary history of Lebanon, Raad investigates traumatic events of collective historical dimensions; and the ways film, video, and photography function as documents of physical and psychological violence. His work resonates profoundly within our current climate of cultural and political polarization and is of significance in the visual and performing arts, and the sometimes related fields of anthropology, history, terrorism and conflict resolution, political science, and the Middle East.

This project is co-produced by The Atlas Group (Beirut / New York), Ashkal Alwan (Beirut), Kunsten Festival des Arts (Brussels), House of World Cultures (Berlin), Spectacles Vivants, Centre Pompidou (Paris), and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.