Walid Raad is an internationally acclaimed artist as a well as a professor at Cooper University in New York. He is one of the fundamental partners of the Atlas Group which is dedicated to the documentation of the recent history of Lebanon. Surrounded by violence and oppression, his use of fact and fiction captures the essence of the surrealism surrounding one’s existence in Lebanon. His work is universal, in that it captures the language of violence drowning the people of the world. By examining the car bomb in the way that he does, Walid genuinely captures the cynicism and helplessness that has hijacked the development of civil society throughout the Middle East. shakomakoNET recently caught up with Walid at the opening for his gallery at York University in Toronto, entitled: “I was overcome by a momentary panic at the thought that they were right”.

shakomakonet: How important is documentary as a credible source of information to you, and where do you do draw the line between documentary and fiction?
Walid: There is always a mix between that which is found and history, both of which can be imagined. Sometimes, the imagined is the documentary itself. Documentary and fiction have been set as bookends, as two binary terms. Fiction can connote modeling and fashioning as opposed to something arbitrary. Don’t view these terms as in opposition to each other. Documentary is thoroughly mediated and can appear as non-referential reality. The photo produces and disseminates sources of what is true and what one believes is true.

shakomakonet: How relevant are present day issues in the Middle East to your work. Do you draw inspiration from them?
Walid: This is a work not only about the history of Lebanon it could easily be Iraq, London, Madrid. What we are seeing today is the redefinition of cities. The definitions of time and space will emerge under the threat of constant terror. If you live in an area where there are car bombs, you have to know who your neighbors are. The metropolis no longer guarantees that anonymity. In the same way that rural life imposes the opposite. Outside of your ghetto there are people you don't know and fear, and after the war, that fear remains. This is dearly part of our experience.

shakomakonet: Do you feel that your artwork presents a different perspective of the Middle East to a western audience? Are you engaged in that discourse?
Walid: There are a number of western concepts dominate perceptions of the Middle East. These incredible weights. Presenting opposites doesn't prove anything. Yes, I take responsibility that I don't operate in a vacuum and I expect generosity and resistance and try to appeal to the generosity of the audience and try to tell a story different from the one they hear.

shakomakonet: What is the state of civil society in the Arabic world. Have you encountered any censorship in tour work? How much freedom is there?
Walid: I am going to talk about Lebanon, because that is what I am familiar with. The space is so polarized it is difficult to create a space. If you support right wing Christians you are an agent of Israel, although that is not necessarily true. We must find a place to produce a space where you do not have to be so rigidly political. This is happening in contemporary art. Even if the audience is 2000 people, ten years ago I would never have met them. That's one space in civil society where we are creating a space where you become a citizen of the city. In Lebanon it is different from here.

shakomakonet: Tell us more about the process of creating space in civil society, through the works of the Atlas Group.
Walid: It is a foundation interested in the history of Lebanon. It has operated mainly outside Lebanon. There is no space for installation there, you would be importing a system from elsewhere and says it works when I'm not sure it does. We don't do it by having shows, we do it by having lectures, publications, etc. Recently, in April, there was a Festival in Lebanon: The Forum. Two publications came out of it, they were called Homeworks, and they were excellent. Christine Tomme is the one who keeps us working, she's the pioneer. She brings people from all over the Arabic world. This is the most important thing happening in contemporary art in the Middle East.

shakomakonet: It seems that there is constant threat to artists such as yourself. Creating spaces in civil society threatens any government. How dangerous is the line of work that you are in?
Walid: I operate outside of it. You do your homework, bring allies, and shame the others into silence by being so rhetorically powerful so they can't answer you back. Eventually it gets to a point where they just say fuck off I'm taking this thing off. Christine has encountered this before.

shakomakonet: Doesn't that give you a sense of being a freedom fighter?
Walid: Here its different. In Lebanon you rarely get to a place where you can talk about politics, documentary, and alternative forms, imagination, etc. In Lebanon I would never have the space to discuss other things that are equally important.

shakomakonet: Mainstream media usually documents car bombs through either the perpetrators or the victims. You focus on the engine itself. Why?
Walid: I didn't focus on the engine but the focus is on the events. It produces a form, (people, car parts, size of crater, etc). With car bombs, the things we knew with certainty were technical, the rest were political, such as who did it and why. My job is not to accuse because I have no faith in an independent judiciary. I take forms of events seriously to find out how it is experienced; fetishistic forms. Blaming the engine is like blaming the black box. I don’t want to accuse politicians, but I want to defend the city.

shakomakonet: Photographers often use the camera as a tool to capture an impression of the real. Do you prefer to keep this impression in tact? Or do you treat it as a raw material?
Walid: I do both. The photo is thoroughly mediated. I think one needs to do both, to leave enough clues to permit intervention. You don't have to decide on one or the other. No. I want to do both and I will do both. Youssef Nassar (the photographs are presented as being a part of Nassar’s collection) is a fictional character based on someone real who I based this on. I found these photographs in newspapers and attributed the collection to him.

shakomakonet: The pictures are beautiful and have tremendous artistic quality, how did that come about when these pictures are meant to be for official use?
Walid: In each image, there is a different formal strategy. They ask you to think. Equally the index on the back colour of the ink does the same. As you look at each photo it becomes clear that the engine is equivalent to body parts.

shakomakonet: Are there always political undertones associated with your work?
Walid: People will always ask why are you showing this image and not that one.

shakomakonet: How will you escape the polarity?
Walid: I will delay presenting work like this until I create the space for it.

Walid is an activist as well as an artist, and is dedicated to other projects such as building an image archive for the entire Arabic World. We thank Walid for his time and patience on what was a very memorable day.

Special thanks to all those that helped in making this interview possible.