Missing Lebanese Wars, Linguistic

1996 - Photography (Photography)

112 x 127 cm

The Atlas Group


It is a little known fact that Lebanese historians were also gamblers during the war. They met every Sunday at the race courses. Race after race, the historians were positioned behind the press photographers who were there to take a picture of the winning horse passing the finishing line. The historians betted on how many fractions of seconds before or after passing the line the photograph would be taken. That is to say that no photo showed the horse on the finishing line. Each page of the notebook contains an image of the horse passing the finish line cut out of the Annahar newspaper on the following day. It features the annotations of doctor Fakhouri on the length and duration of the race, on the winning horse and his timing, his average speed, the initials of the different historians and their bets, the time between the snapshot and the passage of the finishing line, a very brief description of the winning historian (here the linguist). These documents provoke questions about historical fact. Why are there no images of the precise moment when the horse passes the finishing line? Does the press authorize the reproduction of false information? Conscious of the impossibility of capturing the exact moment, the historians bet not on the horses but on the photographer’s margin of error. The evidence about an event is not necessarily linked to the production of an objective document. There can be no certain objectivity with photographic material.


The Atlas Group is a research and artistic project founded by Lebanese artist Walid Raad in 1999. Presented as an archive project, The Atlas Group aims to investigate the boundaries between document and fiction, history and memory, discourse and experience. Through its different series, it questions historiographical processes in regards to one’s perception of time, space and events; manipulates vernacular images and archival documents to compose alternative narratives of Lebanon’s history, with an emphasis on the Lebanese wars of 1975 and 1990. The Atlas Group has been critically acclaimed and internationally praised for questioning the versatility and categorization of art forms, its capacity to serve a political and historical purpose, and to challenge notions of authority in the writing of History.


Colors:



Related works sharing similar palette

Adam
© » KADIST

Jean-Charles de Quillacq

2013

Adam is an emblematic work within Jean-Charles de Quillacq’s oeuvre...

How Collector Demand Impacts an Artwork’s Value - via Artsy
© » LARRY'S LIST

In this film, leading arts economist Clare McAndrew looks at the extent to which change in artworks’ prices and other factors can shift art collectors’ demand....

Wash & Go
© » KADIST

Alban Hajdinaj

2001

Wash and Go (2001) is divided into two stages and operates like a slide show...

Cumulonimbus capillatus incus
© » KADIST

Evariste Richer

2008

Cumulocumulonimbus capillatus incus functions on the mode of a mise en abîme: it is a cube composed with 8000 dice...

Fine Art Print Collecting — A Tell-All Guide of Do’s and Dont’s - via Cultbytes
© » LARRY'S LIST

The print market represents one of the few remaining accessible forms of collecting fine art...

Weekly Picks: Singapore (11 – 17 February 2019)
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Weekly Picks: Singapore (11 – 17 February 2019) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do February 11, 2019 I AM YOU by Elodie Chandernagor , UltraSuperNew Gallery, 15 Feb – 15 Mar The tale of the quest for identity through self and another...

zip: 01.01.15 . . . 01.31.15
© » KADIST

Yuji Agematsu

2015

Each day, Yuji Agematsu smokes a pack of cigarettes and wanders the streets of New York City looking for trash...

Dalloul Art Foundation Releases Huge Arab Art Collection Online - via Arab News
© » LARRY'S LIST

BEIRUT: Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, museums, galleries and art fairs around the world have launched sophisticated virtual tours, often paired with the hashtags #MuseumFromHome and #ClosedButOpen, to offer a much-needed path to calm, reflection and enlightenment...

Al final del arco iris
© » KADIST

Adriana Martínez

2015

Her work Al final del arcoiris (At the end of the rainbow, 2015) is a bundle of bills from Chile, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, arranged by color to form a tight spiraling rainbow held close with a rubber band...

Drowned Wood Standing Coiled
© » KADIST

Christopher Badger

2011

Drowned Wood Standing Coiled (2011) consists of two sculptures, inextricably linked...

Diversionist
© » KADIST

Cao Fei

2004

Diversionist is part of the Cosplayers Series from 2004...

La Ligne du Temps
© » KADIST

Valeska Soares

2012

Relying on repetition and repurposed materials, Soares works to interrogate time—its measurement, its passing, and its meaning...

University of Florida Offers a Funded MFA in Studio Art
© » HYPERALLERGIC

University of Florida Offers a Funded MFA in Studio Art Skip to content Natalie Novak, “Levitate (ʇɐolɟ ǝǝɹɟ)” (2023), synthetic nylon tulle, fluid acrylics, gloss medium, thread, air, inflatable blowers; potions made from expired makeup pigments, lotions, shampoos, hair gel, bath bombs, vaseline, nail polish, baby oil, wax, imitation pearls, iridescent beads (photo courtesy the artist) The University of Florida (UF) offers a three-year, full-tuition, stipend-funded MFA degree ...

Nothing Lasts Forever, Especially Not Digital Archives When Mergers Come Into Play
© » ARTSJOURNAL

Funimation Digital Libraries Were Supposed to Last ‘Forever.’ Soon They’ll Disappear | WIRED Skip to main content Backchannel Business Culture Gear Ideas Politics Science Security Merch Podcasts Video Wired World Artificial Intelligence Climate Games Newsletters Magazine Events Wired Insider Jobs Coupons Save this story Save Save this story Save How long is “forever”? When it comes to digital media, forever could be as close as a couple of months away...

National Landscape (House of Services)
© » KADIST

Nikita Kadan

2018

East of Ukraine became a place of armed conflict with Russia-backed separatists, who proclaimed parts of (the) Donetsk and Lughansk oblast (administrative region in Ukrainian) to be ‘People’s republics’...

Les allégories
© » KADIST

Chloé Quenum

2017

The stained glass windows of Chloé Quenum’s Les Allégories evoke the sacred and describe the movement of a rooster in the form of patterns extracted from a wax fabric found in Benin...

Weekly Picks: Indonesia (11-17 February 2019)
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Weekly Picks: Indonesia (11-17 February 2019) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Weekly To Do February 11, 2019 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Jakarta, Bandung, and Bali from 11-17 February 2019 We start this week’s pick in the capital city of Jakarta...

Untitled (Breathless)
© » KADIST

Ian Wallace

2000

Untitled (Breathless) presents a folded newspaper article on Jean-Luc Godard’s À Bout de Souffle (Breathless)...

aguamentos (sorvedouro series)
© » KADIST

davi de jesus do nascimento

2022

davi de jesus do nascimento’s earthy paintings, from the series sorvedouro , recall his memories as an essentially organic matter...