MONDAY ARTIST// WAFAA BILAL

Wafaa Bilal
(from the wiki)

"Bilal's family is from Najaf, Iraq. He dreamed of becoming an artist but was prohibited from studying art in a university in Iraq, because of the alleged disloyalty of a member of his family; he studied geography instead. He continued to work on art and was arrested as a dissident for his art critical of Saddam Hussein. He refused to volunteer to participate in the invasion of Kuwait, and began organizing opposition groups. He fled Iraq in 1991 and lived in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia for two years, teaching art to children.
In 1992 he came to the United States to study art at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, from which he graduated with a BFA in 1999. He later moved to Chicago, where he earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003, and became an adjunct assistant professor the following year. In addition to his art he has given lectures about Saddam Hussein's regime and was interviewed by the History Channel."

(I post this because i feel the entry was too detailed and interesting in it detail to paraphrase)

The above video was put together by the hudson mohawk independent media center.

Better known perhaps for his piece titled "Domestic Tension" from may 2007 in which he invited the public through and online interface to "shoot an Iraqi". The idea came after the death of his brother by shrapnel, at the time he had read of a soldier stationed in colorado that was using a computer interface to shoot missiles in iraq.

I find that project to be of special interest as it offers a fragmented experience to both the artist and public participants. the public takes part in the mediated experience of shooting a genuine iraqi through an interface similar to that of a first person shooter video game. the artist was able to experience the fragmented experienced of being shot at and constantly being under the threat of attack.

Perhaps this project offers a case study of what i've been referring to as a fragmented experience. Everyday realities are reconstructed and introduced through a controlled and fabricated situation. the artist was shot not with a real gun but with a paintball gun, not real bullets but paintballs. On the flip side the public participates through a set interaction of "shooting" an iraqi. Once again not truly taking a gun and shooting the artist but shooting the artist with a paintball gun through the mediated experience of the internet interface. On both sides the participants take part in only a fraction of the represented real life situation. through these actions the brutal reality of the real experience of warfare, as well as the underlying reality of the rhetoric of war is exposed. the documentation of that experience moves the temporary nature of the constructed situation to the permanent record of human suffering and has the potential to expose the connection of the simulated experience to the reality by way of the revealed suffering.

video of Wafaa Bilal discussing the project



the day by day video account of the project can be found here

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8E2DB23DB7246D69&search_query=paintball+project