Walid Raad

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Walid Raad. My neck is thinner than a hair: Engines. 1996-2001 282000

One hundred inkjet prints, Each 9 7/16 × 13 3/8" (24 × 34 cm). Fund for the Twenty-First Century. © 2024 The Atlas Group/ Walid Raad

*Walid Raad:** The Atlas Group presents itself as an archive of documents related to the Lebanese wars of the past four decades. And most of the documents that are displayed are ones that I created and that I attribute to various imaginary or historical figures.

This is My neck is thinner than a hair, a history of car bombs in the Lebanese wars. The images come from newspaper archives in Lebanon. They are historical photographs re-presented as found.

The engine itself looks as if it's the black box of some airplane crash. Whenever there are people, they are looking at it as if it contains the secret of something. But it’s unclear what secrets it has to reveal. Finding the engine was important because you'd identify the engine number. The engine number would lead you to the car's owner. And the car's owner possibly to the person responsible. But almost all cars used as car bombs are stolen cars, which usually means that the information you gather from the car, its engine, has no juridical value.

But nonetheless, time and again, politicians would gather next to the engine to pose next to it to prove that they are doing everything in their power to catch those responsible. And in the reporting, what was amazing to me is that we got to know a lot more about the car that exploded than about the political or criminal motives behind the explosion.