Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm

11.02.2021

Introduction Stefanie Böttcher (Director Kunsthalle Mainz)
followed by artist talk with Walid Raad

12.02.2021

Introduction Dr. Laliv Melamed
followed by small talk with Lina Krämer (curator Kunsthalle Mainz) and Yana Prinsloo (theater scientist)

Video Works

Four canonical video works provide an overview of Walid Raad’s artistic work and its recurring themes. This compilation, hand-picked by the artist himself, opens the viewer’s perception to improbable truths, transitions between stories and history, and the poetry of doubt, astutely taking on cultures between art, violence and capital.

Hostage: The Bachar Tapes (2000)

“Hostage: The Bachar tapes (English version)” is attributed to Souheil Bachar and is about the abduction and detention in Lebanon in the 1980s and early 1990s of Western men like Terry Anderson and Terry Waite by “Islamic militants.”

I Only Wish that I could Weep (2002)

This document is attributed to Operator #17, a Lebanese Army intelligence officer who was assigned to monitor the Corniche, a seaside boardwalk in Beirut. From 1997 on, the officer decided to videotape the sunset instead of his assigned target. This videotape recounts the operator’s story and concentrates on the footage he was permitted to keep after his dismissal.

We Can Make Rain But No One Came To Ask (2004)

This videotape imagines a collaboration between Yussef Bitar, the Lebanese state’s chief investigator of all car bombs detonations, and Georges Semerdjian, a respected and fearless photojournalist and videographer who, until his violent death in 1990, tirelessly chronicled the Lebanese wars of the past three decades.

Les Louvres: Section 7, 11, and 17 (2019)

For two years, between 2010 and 2012, Walid Raad was an artist in residence in the Louvre in Paris. He was documenting the building of the Louvre’s newest and eighth department, Le Département des Arts de l’Islam, as well as the building of another Louvre in Abu Dhabi.