In his artworks, Raad explores how wars and decades of socio-political instability, such as those experienced in the Middle East, cause lasting physical and psychological violence that is reflected in bodies, psyches, spaces, traditions and memories.

In the 1970s, an extraordinary cinematic impulse formed at the intersection of countercultural mysticism, poststructuralist doubt, and emerging media technologies: to film what eludes the eye, to make the world visible through a sensory ritual that becomes a channel for communication in discovering the unseen.

In the history of art, bodies have often had connotations going beyond their physical presence – they were symbols of power, ideals, discipline, and also tools of ideological address. Bereitschaft is a contemporary intervention in this long tradition, intertwining the history of totalitarian aesthetics and the present-day visual culture of social media.

The exhibition Archival Chain Reactions emerges from a collaborative project dedicated to connecting and activating important yet precarious archives of feminist art.