THE ATLAS GROUP
The Atlas Group was established by Walid Raad with the purpose of researching and documenting the contemporary history of Lebanon. The name is deliberately misleading, however, since it is mostly a one-man venture, imagined by Raad in order to locate, preserve, study and produce audio, visual, literary and other documents about this history. Its investigative research results in lectures, photographs, notebooks, installations and other documents that are sometimes real and sometimes fictive. Many of these are preserved in The Atlas Group Archive, located in Beirut and New York.
My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair: A History of the Car Bomb in the Lebanese Civil Wars, 1975-1999 (1996-2004) is a project about the use of car bombs by various militias during the Lebanese civil wars. Between 1975 and 1999, as Raad explains: "Approximately 145 car bombs exploded in Lebanon, killing thousands, and causing unspeakable carnage in the neighborhoods of Lebanon's major cities, Beirut, Tripoli, Saida and Sidon. The car bombs were used as weapons by militias across the political spectrum, were detonated with a remote -control unit, and were placed in neighborhoods with high population density in order to kill, destroy, terrorize as much as possible Newspaper reports of the car bombs consistently included, along with the images of blown-up bodies, images of the crater left by the car bomb as well as of the engine as it was found on someone's balcony or roof." My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair archives the images made by photojournalists who found and photographed these car engines. For Raad, this documentation traces the complex reality of violence: "The history of the car bomb is also a history of the way that wars were physically and psychologically experienced."
Raad's imaginary foundation and investigation into the nature of the archive partly investigates documentary as a form of truth and realism in the writing of history. As Raad says: "the documentary quest (a critical documentary) has long abandoned as its project the location of truth. The question for me is; what is the notion of the document, evidence, and testimony that one can proceed from in the writing of the history of Lebanon."-B.V.
http://www.theatlasgroup.org/
http://www.bigtorino.net/english/projectpool/art079.php
http://www.weltinbasel.ch/produktionen_6.html
http://www.sfeir-semler.de/sites/Raad/startraad.htm
http://www.in-transit.de/2004/content/en/productions/prod_atlas.html
http://artnet.com/magazine/features/eller/eller3-15-04.asp
http://www.photography-now.com/artists/K15867.html
http://www.iniva.org/season/site/project_03
http://www.kunstenfestivaldesarts.be/front/projectdetail.action?projectid=538&id=331
http://www.artnet.com/artist/423927078/The_Atlas_Group_walid_Raad.html
http://www.the-artists.org/ArtistView.cfm?id=A9C0B9CB-7C41-48BA-94EB3D49187B9983
Founded 1999 by Walid Raad (Born 1967 in Chbanieh, Lebanon) in New York, United States
My Neck Is Thinner Than a Hair: A History of the Car Bomb in the 1975-1991 Lebanese Wars, 1996-2002
Archival inkjet prints, printed with archival pigmented inks Set of 100 plates, UV-plexiglas and wooden framed, 25 x 35 cm (each)
Private Collection New York
Courtesy Galerie Steir-Semler, Hamburg
Archival inkjet prints, printed with archival pigmented inks Set of 100 plates, UV-plexiglas and wooden framed, 25 x 35 cm (each)
Private Collection New York
Courtesy Galerie Steir-Semler, Hamburg
Date: 1 February 1985
The Atlas Group Archive: Annahar (Beirut) / Photographers: unknown / Reference: Lebanon / Crimes and Criminals Explosions / 1985 / Nort
The Atlas Group Archive: Annahar (Beirut) / Photographers: unknown / Reference: Lebanon / Crimes and Criminals Explosions / 1985 / Nort
The Atlas Group was established by Walid Raad with the purpose of researching and documenting the contemporary history of Lebanon. The name is deliberately misleading, however, since it is mostly a one-man venture, imagined by Raad in order to locate, preserve, study and produce audio, visual, literary and other documents about this history. Its investigative research results in lectures, photographs, notebooks, installations and other documents that are sometimes real and sometimes fictive. Many of these are preserved in The Atlas Group Archive, located in Beirut and New York.
My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair: A History of the Car Bomb in the Lebanese Civil Wars, 1975-1999 (1996-2004) is a project about the use of car bombs by various militias during the Lebanese civil wars. Between 1975 and 1999, as Raad explains: "Approximately 145 car bombs exploded in Lebanon, killing thousands, and causing unspeakable carnage in the neighborhoods of Lebanon's major cities, Beirut, Tripoli, Saida and Sidon. The car bombs were used as weapons by militias across the political spectrum, were detonated with a remote -control unit, and were placed in neighborhoods with high population density in order to kill, destroy, terrorize as much as possible Newspaper reports of the car bombs consistently included, along with the images of blown-up bodies, images of the crater left by the car bomb as well as of the engine as it was found on someone's balcony or roof." My Neck Is Thinner Than A Hair archives the images made by photojournalists who found and photographed these car engines. For Raad, this documentation traces the complex reality of violence: "The history of the car bomb is also a history of the way that wars were physically and psychologically experienced."
Raad's imaginary foundation and investigation into the nature of the archive partly investigates documentary as a form of truth and realism in the writing of history. As Raad says: "the documentary quest (a critical documentary) has long abandoned as its project the location of truth. The question for me is; what is the notion of the document, evidence, and testimony that one can proceed from in the writing of the history of Lebanon."-B.V.
http://www.theatlasgroup.org/
http://www.bigtorino.net/english/projectpool/art079.php
http://www.weltinbasel.ch/produktionen_6.html
http://www.sfeir-semler.de/sites/Raad/startraad.htm
http://www.in-transit.de/2004/content/en/productions/prod_atlas.html
http://artnet.com/magazine/features/eller/eller3-15-04.asp
http://www.photography-now.com/artists/K15867.html
http://www.iniva.org/season/site/project_03
http://www.kunstenfestivaldesarts.be/front/projectdetail.action?projectid=538&id=331
http://www.artnet.com/artist/423927078/The_Atlas_Group_walid_Raad.html
http://www.the-artists.org/ArtistView.cfm?id=A9C0B9CB-7C41-48BA-94EB3D49187B9983