Wafaa Bilal's memoir Shoot an Iraqi features the subtitle Life, Art and Resistance Under the Gun. This gives a clue to his explicit goals and also the historical place his work fits into. The portrayal of violence in visual culture dates back to the earliest extant paintings we know of such as images of hunting found in the cave paintings of Lascaux and Altamira. Images of archers in Classical Greek pottery are some of many found through out antiquity. But the particular significance of these images lies in their political or religious elements of the time. The celebration of the hunt, as portrayed in the images found in rock paintings dating back some 40 000 years, or the celebration of military victories, as often portrayed in Hellenic pottery are two examples of early missile weapons and the significance granted them. This significance is changed when we consider paintings such as Francisco Goya's(1746-1836)' The Executions of the Third of May 1808(1). which portrayed the massacre of Spaniards by occupying French troops during the Peninsular War. This portrayal of the unarmed citizenry against the troopers of a then powerful French empire seems to echo in the mechanism of Domestic Tensions, with its unarmed protagonist facing an armed audience. A century later, Picasso's Guernica would make a similar protest against an attempted imperial power, as the Luftwaffe was deployed against the civilian population in the town of Guernica as part of the fascist terror campaign against the Republican forces during the Spanish civil war. The editorial element, if I may describe the subjective elemnt of these art works, contrast with the formal elements found in the endurance based performance work of Vito Acconci and more specifically, the Work of Chris Burden. Burden's infamous performance Shoot of 1971 shows the artist being shot with .22 calibre rifle at close range, and the performance was recorded on film. Many of his subsequent performances dealt with similar tests of his physical limits, such as Transfixed(1974) where he was nailed, crucifixion-style to the hood of a Volkswagon Beetle or Doomed(1975) where he lay beneath a sheet of glass until a random observer interfered with the piece (a security guard moved a pitcher of water to with in Burden's reach, causing him to end the piece after 45 hours).
Shoot was performed infront of a small group of invited friends(2) at F Space gallery in Santa Ana, California(3).
(2) Tumlir, Jan. "Chris Burden - First Break" in Art Forum, Dec 2001 downloaded from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_4_40/ai_80856183/ 19 November 2010
(3)Horvitz, Robert. "Chris Burden" in Artforum magazine, Volume XIV No. 9 (May 1976).pages 24-31. downloaded 19 November 2010
