Islamism and Women Artists

Post questions 8, 8/3

Professor Jaleh Mansoor

Hello Class,

We have been exploring the numerous strategies visual artists of the Middle East
deploy to make an intervention among Western audiences as well as audiences in
their “native countries” (if such a thing exists; Hatoum was exiled before she was
even born, her family having emigrated to Lebanon in the 40s when they were
dispossessed of their home). We discussed Hatoum’s use of abstraction, which
disarticulates a problematic notion of universality and redefines in order to
address the singular and particular in a larger project of addressing identity and
difference (See Chukwuemeka Ikebude’s excellent pos of 07/28 to review these
issues). In order to articulate such problems visually, Hatoum needed abstraction
as a formal tactic and as a historical artistic trope. We then addressed Jacir’s
strategy that initially appeared to look to conceptual art practices (as does
Anastas’s) but exchanges conceptualism’s cerebral logic for an interpersonal
economy of intimacy and assistance. Throughout, we have been trying to think
about how politics and aesthetics conjoin, if at all. I had attempted, last week,
to ask if Jacir and Anastas’s work operated more as art or as activism, and if one
category compromised the other.

This week, as we turn from the Palestinian context to that of Lebabnon, we are
looking at the work of Walid Raad (one of the only male artists on the syllabus,
although we need to re-raise the thread of Feminist practices and Islamisms).
Raad’s strategy markedly differs from Anastas and Jacir’s work, although he too is
formed by the basic precepts of Conceptual Art (i.e. Art is not about beautiful
objects but crucial interventions in thinking). Raad inaugurates what we might
call the “para-fictional,” the use of fiction to explore the real, and in this
case, politics. One of Conceptual Art’s privileged formats is documentary (film
and photography). Raad thus turns conceptualism in on itself, introducing fiction
and humor to the cerebral space of conceptualist documentary. But he uses the
“appearance” of documentary.

Raad’s work investigates Lebanon’s violent contemporary history through a focus on

the wars in Lebanon between 1975 and 1991. Raad appears to be documenting
elements of historical events, collective history, and trauma. But….he does so via
fictive “documents.” For instance, in 1999, Raad founded the “Atlas Group,” of
which he is the only member. The “group” is a fictional foundation whose task is
to research and document Lebanon‘s contemporary history. The Atlas Group’s work
is presented through lectures that include films and photography. The Atlas Group
(and herein the debt to Conceptual Art) primarily places its archives on view.
The files comprising said archives are also fiction, the notebooks of the
fictional director—one Dr. Fakhouri--of the group who has been recording the
violent wars. So, for instance, many of the images on this week’s presentation
are pages from the Dr. Fakhouri’s notebooks presenting car bombs around Beirut
from 1975-1991. Raad spoofs conceptualism’s love of empty dry facts by recording
the dimensions and other such empirical information about the cars and their
destruction next to the image of the cars, albeit in Arabic. Let’s be Honest, The
Weather Helped, 1984-2007 similiarly “documents” sites of violence. Finally,
“Hostage, the Bachar Tapes” (200) of which you have a still, is a spoof of CNN
style footage.

1) Why the parafictional? Why “para,” and why is this not mere fiction? What
it Raad saying about media, think tanks, the very format of the documentary, the
facticity (as opposed to factualness) of the document?
2) Is this Art? Activism?
3) How do politics and aesthetics speak to each other in Raad’s work?

The reading, the Intro to a volume entitled “Communities of Sense: Rethinking

Aesthetics in Practice” will help you. Although very little directly addresses
the work of Raad, it is an extended inquiry into the intersection of art and
politics now, indeed on methodology, very much influenced by Raad’s work.
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