The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs

A videotape in three parts exploring the possibilities and limits of writing and imaging a history of the Lebanese civil wars (1975-1991). Setting up the viewer Ra’ad constructs a tape fictionally based on facts, but not necessarily his, they are hysterical symptoms of sorts that present imaginary events constructed out of innocent and everyday material. With seductive bites he ‘documents’ fantastic situations that beset a number of individuals during the civil wars. Voices feed us contradictory information questioning the construction of personal histories and collective knowledge while at the same time re-enacting such a script. The tapes do not document what happened, but what can be imagined, what can be said, what can be taken for granted, what can appear as rational, sayable, and thinkable about the wars.