Walkthrough

The third installment in the series produced in collaboration with the Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Walkthrough is the resulting publication from artist Walid Raad's contribution to their summer school programme. Since 2007, Raad's work has been concerned with the history of art in the Arab world, exploring the recent emergence of large new infrastructures for the visual arts in and around the Middle East. These developments, when viewed alongside the geo-political, economic, social and military conflicts that have consumed the region in recent decades, shape a rich yet thorny ground for creative work. In Walkthrough, Raad presents several 'chapters' from this ongoing project. He concentrates in particular on the history of the visual arts in Lebanon; the emergence of new museums, art galleries, cultural foundations in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere in the Gulf; technological innovations in the areas of statistics, data mining, and finance as well as their manifestations in art databases and art funds; the development of the high-tech sector in Israel in the past two decades; as well as the books and concepts of Jalal Toufic, especially his concept of "the withdrawal of tradition past a surpassing disaster".