Art, Archive, and Fictive Historiography in Lebanon's "Protracted Now"

Abstract:This article analyzes the function of the archival aesthetic found in the works of prominent contemporary Lebanese artists, particularly the manipulation and use of found documents as part of a new visual narrative. Unlike other interpretations of postmodern art in which found documents are a major component, Lebanese artists subordinate the archive (as both object and practice) to the speculative praxis of arriving at a fictive historiography with archival material. As the article will show, this tendency is mimetic of both a contemporary historiographical problematic particular to Lebanon as well as a product of a condition of ongoing forms of violence.