Abstract
ABSTRACTTaking the Atlas Group (1989–2004) as a case study, this paper examines the aesthetic, political and technological possibilities of the digital archive. The Atlas Group is a fabricated digital archive founded by the Lebanese-American media artist Walid Raad, and it deals with the illusive history of the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1991). The digital takes an important role in Raad’s fictional archive, as it creates a tangible indexical fantasy that I would call the para-index. The para-index (an indexical sign without a referent) works to bring back Lebanon’s forgotten past by simulating / prefiguring its sensible form. Critic Rosalind Krauss calls this prefiguration of an aesthetic form within medium’s inherent technical property ‘the reinvention of the medium’ in this post-medium era. This paper aims to articulate how the Atlas Group reinvents the archive in this age of digital reproduction, and how this reinvention illuminate Lebanon’s unknown history.
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