Walid Raad
Two Drops per Heartbeat (walkthrough-performance)
October 6, 2021 –
January 22, 2022
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Walid Raad, Two Drops Per Heartbeat, 2021
Photo: Moritz Bernoully
Photo: Moritz Bernoully
Past
Programming
MNTB Madrid
EN / ES
The result of a three-year creative journey, the exhibition “Cotton Under My Feet” will culminate in a series of performances revealing the twisted historiographical hypotheses driving this new work. The artist Walid Raad will lead a walkthrough titled “Two Drops per Heartbeat” taking visitors on a dazzling tour through the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Deep in the museum’s bowels, Raad has unearthed fragments of stories, fictional documents, and puzzling artifacts. Some of these reached him from this historical world, while others from a place called fiction, and yet others from the realm of undeath. Some messages heed warnings, some contain seditious rituals and conservation routines, and others take visitors to the labyrinthine spaces and times some of the artworks inhabit. Brought to life in a slippery narrative marathon about seventy-five minutes long, Raad entices visitors to follow him into the rabbit hole of conjuncture he has constructed. He offers them a vertiginous reflection on the potential legacy of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collections and their relation to the history of Western and non-Western art.
There will be two presentations per day, at 1 pm and 5:30 pm. The estimated duration is 75 minutes. Walkthroughs will be offered in two languages, in English by Walid Raad with simultaneous translation into Spanish.
The result of a three-year creative journey, the exhibition “Cotton Under My Feet” will culminate in a series of performances revealing the twisted historiographical hypotheses driving this new work. The artist Walid Raad will lead a walkthrough titled “Two Drops per Heartbeat” taking visitors on a dazzling tour through the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. Deep in the museum’s bowels, Raad has unearthed fragments of stories, fictional documents, and puzzling artifacts. Some of these reached him from this historical world, while others from a place called fiction, and yet others from the realm of undeath. Some messages heed warnings, some contain seditious rituals and conservation routines, and others take visitors to the labyrinthine spaces and times some of the artworks inhabit. Brought to life in a slippery narrative marathon about seventy-five minutes long, Raad entices visitors to follow him into the rabbit hole of conjuncture he has constructed. He offers them a vertiginous reflection on the potential legacy of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collections and their relation to the history of Western and non-Western art.
There will be two presentations per day, at 1 pm and 5:30 pm. The estimated duration is 75 minutes. Walkthroughs will be offered in two languages, in English by Walid Raad with simultaneous translation into Spanish.