Chad Elias and Kader Attia
Published by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, 2018, 12 pages
Reason’s Oxymorons, by internationally acclaimed artist Kader Attia, is a recent museum acquisition. The research-driven video installation, which will occupy the entire space at Hood Downtown in winter 2018, consists of a range of interviews by Attia with philosophers, psychiatrists, anthropologists, traditional healers, historians, musicologists, patients, and immigrants. The conversations are organized around several themes centered on the ways in which non-Western and Western cultures approach psychiatric conditions and emotional breakdowns. Composed of eighteen computer monitors, each set on a workman-like table in a secluded office cubicle with a chair, earphones, and loudspeakers, this ambitious installation evokes an ascetic modern office environment.