June 2024 Walid Raad / The National Museum of Mortal Guilt

Read: Jalal Toufic’s essay: False Thresholds and Imaginary Lines

Walid Raad is, in part, an artist and a Professor of Art at The Cooper Union and Distinguished Visiting Professor of Photography at Bard College (2023–2024). The list of exhibitions (good, bad, and mediocre ones); awards and grants (merited, not merited, grateful for, rejected, and/or returned); education (some of it thought-provoking, some of it less so); publications (I am fond of some of my books, but more so of the books of Jalal Toufic. You can find his here: jalaltoufic.com) can be found somewhere online.

Jalal Toufic is a thinker and a mortal to death. He was born in 1962 in Beirut or Baghdad and died before dying in 1989 in Evanston, Illinois. He is the author of more than ten books, among which are What Was I Thinking? (e-flux journal-Sternberg Press, 2017), The Dancer’s Two Bodies (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2015), and Forthcoming (2nd ed., e-flux journal-Sternberg Press, 2014). Many, if not all, of his books, some of which were published by Forthcoming Books, continue to be forthcoming even after their publication. He has made over ten films, which include essay films and conceptual films; short films, feature length films, and “inhumanely” long films (72 hours, 50 hours); films that he shot and films in which all the images are from movies by other directors (Hitchcock, Sokurov, Bergman, etc.). His films and artworks have been shown at the 6th, 10th, and 11th Sharjah Biennials; the 9th Shanghai Biennale; the 5th Guangzhou Triennial; MoMA PS1; Centre Pompidou; MACBA; ZKM; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; FKA Witte de With; Times Art Center Berlin; Darat al Funun; MAXXI; Whitechapel Gallery; ICA (London); Beirut Art Center, etc. He is currently Professor at the American University in Cairo. jalaltoufic.com