Walid Ra'ad
For a very brief moment in history, Walid Ra'ad was my academic advisor in college. Since his work as an artist is all about challenging the meaning of history itself, I find it most fitting to include him in this record of art history.
Much to my pleasure, I made the roster. My next memory of Walid is one of the first videos he showed us in class, titled something like "The Black Box". The video was probably about five minutes long, seemingly shot with a home video camcorder that was zoomed in all the way on an indescript black blob falling endlessly through the sky. There must have been some sound or on-screen text as well.
My first memory of Walid is sitting on the floor of the television studio at my college. I was one in a long line of students hoping to claim a prized, limited edition seat on his 'Video 1' class roster. Maybe it was while we were waiting for our fate to be announced that someone whispered the rumor that Walid was soon to be married to a woman named Love, and that by hyphenating his name, was planning to become Dr. Love-Ra'ad. Indeed, I did not know him well, but it didn't take much to recognize that Walid was an attractive man with a smart, exotic mystique, and a very sexy voice. Walid was hot and he knew it.
When Walid's work was recently featured in an article titled "Flirtations with Evidence", I couldn't help but smile after reading the opening quotation:
"Flirts are dangerous because they have a different way of believing in the Real Thing. And by 'believing in' I mean 'behaving as if it exists'.... There is always another story, one we haven't necessarily bargained for." (Adam Phillips, On Flirtation)
Once the video was over, Walid asked us what we had just seen. I was perplexed. I had no idea what I had seen. My classmates humbled me, describing the political nuances of a controversial plane crash I had never even heard about. "Someone actually managed to capture footage of a black box falling out of an airplane?" I wondered out loud at the end of the elaborate discussion. Walid looked at me quizically, with a wry smile peeking out of the corners of his mouth, as if enjoying some kind of strange game.
I guess this experience was what I expected from my first college-level art course. You finally get in on all the secrets. You learn how to decode the obscure symbiologies presented on museum walls. And before you know it, you're invited to the artists' receptions, wearing chic glasses and shoes, sipping tasteful wine, and and laughing at very smart jokes.
Over and over again, Walid would show us work, lead us down a path, and ask us to draw conclusions from obscure evidence, all the while never giving us any direct answers, or any sense of whether we were on the right track.
His game became a seductive challenge to me. I was determined to crack the secret behind that wry smile. I made arrangements for Walid to become my academic advisor. But even in his office, where I thought he would be compelled to give an earnest student his most sincere guidance and knowledge about the world, the curtain did not fall.
At the end of the school year, another rumor started circulating about Walid. "They say that you're not coming back after the summer break," I told him during one of our meetings. "Is it true?" He paused, looked me in the eyes and said, "Now, Fiona, why would you believe that?"
The next semester, Walid did not return. And I finally began to understand what he had been trying to teach us all along.
The Atlas Group
Missing in Action by Art Forum
