Walid Raad

Scratching on things I could disavow:

A history of art in the Arab world

Archive 2010
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Scratching on Things I Could Disavow:A history of art in the Arab World
Concept and Performance, Walid Raad
 with Carlos Chahine

Production Walid Raad

 

Executive Productor, Klein verzet vzw
Coproduction Festival d’Automne à Paris ;Wiener Festwochen ; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary(Vienne) ; Kunstenfestivaldesarts ; Les Halles (Bruxelles) ; Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin) ; Le CENTQUATRE ;

Public Commission by leministère de la Culture et de la Communication - Centre national des arts plastiques
With the support of  Galerie Sfeir-Semler (Hambourg / Beyrouth), Anthony Reynolds Gallery (Londres), Paula Cooper Gallery (New York)
With the support of Zaza and Philippe Jabre and Sylvie Winckler
Thanks to réseau TRAM

Walid Raad benefited of an Artist residence at CENTQUATREand to the Couvent des Récollets.
With the support of la Ville de Paris and Ministry of European and Foreign Affairs under the aegis of artist Residence to the Récollets

This performance coincides with Walid Raad:Miraculous Beginnings : a major Exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery (Londres) du Octobre 15, 2010 to January 2, 2011
www.whitechapelgallery.org

An English-French Book, devoted to the artistic course of Walid Raad will be co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and Festival d’Automne à Paris. 
With the support of Fonds de Dotation agnès b.

In 2007, Walid Raad initiated a research and art project about the history of contemporary and modern art in the Arab World titled Scratching on Things I Could Disavow:A History of Art in the Arab World.  Raad’s project explores the recent emergence of a new physical infrastructure for the visual arts in the Middle East and the Gulf. In a context where cultural tourism has become an instrument of economic growth and power, Raad’s project leans on the ideological, economic and political dimensions of this phenomenon to ask whether and how culture and tradition in the Arab world may have been affected, materially and immaterially, by the various wars that have been waged there by native and external powers.
Scratching on Things I Could Disavow expands upon the intensive, research-based methodology of Raad’s 15-year art project The Atlas Group that examined the social, political, psychological, and aesthetic conditions of the Lebanese wars.  This new project marks a critical juncture in Raad’s practice, at once a departure from The Atlas Group while expanding its historical and theoretical framework.

In the same place

CENTQUATRE-PARIS
octoberoct 5 - november – nov 5

LIMINAL, Forensic Oceanography, Border Forensics
From Sea to Sky

Visual arts
Free

Featuring different works by the LIMINAL, Forensic Oceanography and Border Forensics collectives, the multimedia installation From Sea to Sky approaches intersectional immobility and frontier-based violence at sea. The objective is to highlight the way in which the Mediterranean maritime space has been transformed into a militarized border zone.

CENTQUATRE-PARIS
octoberoct 5 – 10

Lawrence Abu Hamdan
Zifzafa

Performance
Buy tickets

Zifzafa, is an arabic word to describe a wind that shakes and rattles all in its path. Here, it becomes the title of a performance of artist and researcher Lawrence Abu Hamdan, that enmeshes sonic composition, video game engines and spoken word, to immerse us in the heart of a movement to resist green colonialism in the occupied Syrian Golan heights. 

CENTQUATRE-PARIS
novembernov 5 – 8
Maison de la musique de Nanterre – Scène conventionnée d’intérêt national
novembernov 9
Théâtre Louis Aragon, Scène conventionnée d’intérêt national Art et création – danse – Tremblay-en-France
novembernov 30

Alessandro Sciarroni
U. (un canto)

Performance
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A year after the premier of IRIS at the Butte-aux-Cailles swimming pool, commissioned by the Festival d'Automne, in which he explored the Italian polyphonic repertoire, Alessandro Sciarroni brings us U. (un canto). This music-based performance piece evokes the profoundly mysterious relationship between human beings and nature.

CENTQUATRE-PARIS
decemberdec 4 – 8

Lina Majdalanie, Rabih Mroué
Quatre murs et un toit

Theatre Portrait
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In 1947, the trial of German playwright Bertolt Brecht took place in the United States in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), responsible for combating communist activism. It was here that Brecht wrote a declaration which he was forbidden to read out. The minutes of the trial, as well as this declaration, constitute one of the axes of this exuberant show.