In this thesis I shall defend the position that Wafaa Bilal's use of space in his performance art work, Domestic Tension, both resists and reifies the notion of "Empire" as presented by Hart and Negri and discussed by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter in the book Games of Empire. Wafaa Bilal is an Iraqi-born artist and academic whose work frequently addresses issues of politics, power and virtuality in relation to his native Iraq. Bilal recreated his living room in the Flatfile gallery in Chicago and lived within that space for thirty one days while visitors to a related website shot at him with a robotic paintball gun and/or communicated with him by internet chat. This performance is a response by Bilal to the death of his brother in an US air strike in their home town of Kufaa, and attempted to reach out, primarily via internet, to people who would not normally visit art galleries or engage with critical artistic discourses about the war in Iraq or about political conflict in general. The simulacra of a First Person Shooter(FPS) game that is simulated in Bilal's performance provides a means to reflecting on the similarities and differences between commercially available FPS and the dialogue between the two streams of visual/digital culture.
My first chapter introduces the general thrust of my argument, introducing the biography and work of Wafaa Bilal, his position as an artist of Iraqi origin and the stakes he raises by means of his artistic production. I pay particularly close attention to how he creates spaces for discussion of the political issues his work addresses. I briefly exposit how he uses youtube video blogs and a subsequent book to document his performance. I also introduce discussion of the 30 000 pages of internet chat that he recorded. This chapter concludes by outlining the relationship of the spaces Bilal creates to the notion of empire and it's antithesis, multitude, as discussed by Hart and Negri and Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter in their respective writings.
The second chapter of this thesis looks at the previous literature that discuss three themes that intertwine within this thesis. The first of these themes deals with performance art and conflict. By drawing on writing about extreme performance I suggest a direct line between Chris Burden's performance "Shoot!", and the short film that documented it through to Domestic Tension. The second theme touches on discussions about virtuality and space and especially the body of writing centered on Henri Lefevre's the Social Production of Space. The third theme deals with literature exploring the growing cultural ubiquity, and possible cultural dominance, of digital games and their relationship to 'Empire' and 'Multitude'.
The third chapter is a close reading of Bilal's video blogs of his performance and two primary written sources dealing with it; his book, written with journalist K Lyderson, Shoot an Iraqi:Life Art and Resistance Under the Gun and the record of internet chat that comprised a significant element of the performance, both as an expression of the multitude and an embrasure of Empire.
The forth Chapter explores the central arguments for 'Empire' and how these apply to art and digital games. Some of the discussion here turns back on artistic practices such as those of Marcel Duchamp, who understood that the resistances offered by his work would eventually be turned and subsumed into modernist, capitalist discourses and power structures. Much of this chapter serves to contextualise the concluding chapter of this thesis by demonstrating previous relationships between art, games and empire.
The final, concluding chapter will discuss the formal aspects of both Domestic Tension and FPS digital games and show how the space they create form lines of resistance between Empire and Multitude. This system can be presented on a semiotic square, with Empire and Multitude opposing on one axis, with resistance and embrasure opposing each other on the diametrical axis.
Showing posts with label thesis proposal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thesis proposal. Show all posts
Friday, July 16, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
My proposed thesis
Domestic Tensions: The Politics of Sense in Gamic Space.
A thesis proposal by Adam van Sertima, July 2010
In The Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Rancière has argued that we need to rethink aesthetics as “the invention of new forms of life”. The notion of life is necessarily informed by an embodied and hence a spatial element. However, spatiality, the experience of embodiment in space occurs at a subjective level. One’s sense of space has now been expanded to include digital spaces. Contemporary artist Wafaa Bilal’s performance work, Domestic Tension(2007), and his subsequent digital work Virtual Jihadi(2008) explore the mediated space by referencing digital games and recontextualising the experience in reference to the banality of violence that wracked his native Iraq through three wars and ongoing internecine conflict.
Wafaa Bilal was born in Kufa, Iraq in 1966. He pursued his artistic career from his youth in Iraq, often critiquing the Baathist regime of Saddaam Hussein in his paintings. After enduring the home front effects of the Iran/Iraq war, and the two Gulf wars, he fled Iraq and eventually settled in the United States. He continued both his studies and artistic practice there, eventually teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently an assistant professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Domestic Tension was a thirty one day performance installed at FlatFile Galleries in Chicago in 2007. During the course of the exhibition, Bilal essentially confined himself to the gallery space. During the performance, people had 24-hour virtual access to Bilal via the Internet. They had the ability to watch Bilal and interact with him through a live web-cam and chat room. Viewers also had the option to shoot at Bilal with a remote controlled paintball gun. Thus in many ways this performance is similar to First Person Shooter (FPS)digital games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward 2009) where the audience wields a gun visible on the other side of a screen and can interact with each other by VOIP and chat technologies. This game, like Domestic Tension, also features the experience of shooting at an unarmed non-combatant, in its controversial opening game play sequence. A similar dissonance was visible in Bilal’s relationship to his performance piece, sometimes considering it as a “fun game”(Bilal & Lyderson 2008. p21) and other times as a work of art with the goal of making a point(ibid p.75).
Bilal personally documented his work, especially Domestic Tension, by video blogging daily from the performance space. He also expanded on his personal history and artistic biography with the publication of his memoir Shoot An Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun(2009). As a digital art work, existing both in “meat space” and cyber space, Domestic Tension provided an unusual perspective on its audience, as it offered the chance to interact directly with the artist via chat room, as the performance unfolded. Moreover, it reached a much broader audience than contemporary performance art might. By publicising the performance on websites such as Paint Ball Nation(www.pbnation.com) Bilal attracted an audience otherwise disconnected from contemporary art practices. Moreover, he compiled a large array of responses that ranged from “I hope you die in the next 9/11” to “...I can learn a bit from you and maybe we made you think a bit, too”(ibid p.128-130). In this respect, Domestic Tension was extremely successful in achieving one of Bilal’s stated goals of reaching and engaging with an audience “beyond the normal art world... who would never step into a gallery or go to an anti-war protest”(ibid p.11)
In Games of Empire Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter argue that digital games serve as one method of controlling what Michel Foucault describes as biopower(Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter 2009.p.). Briefly, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter make the case that as a project of late capitalism, digital games function as training and harnessing systems.
I see this thesis as addressing three overarching questions, each suggesting a chapter with a concluding chapter examining how Domestic Tension exhibits a resistance to the social force of “Empire”.
The three questions are:
1. What is the relationship of art work to video game as mediated by Domestic Tension?
2. How do spaciality and linear perspective relate to domestic tension? How do linear perspective and spaciality contribute to an Imperial visuality and spaciality?
3. How do the formal aspects of virtual games negotiate deployment by and resistance to the concept Empire that is discussed by Dyer-Witheford and de Peuyter?
One element of the subjective experience of mediated or digital life is what has been called immersion. As in a paper I will be presenting in August, I will attempt to show a connection between attic theatre, as conceived of by Friedrich Nietszche, and the experience of playing digital music games such as RockBand(Harmonix 2007). Then I will attempt to argue for a similar connections between Domestic Tension and digital games such as Modern Warfare2.
Does art constitute a space of play- and how does this answer relate to Domestic Tension? How successfully does Domestic Tension and Bilal's subsequent work, Virtual Jihadi resist or reify empire?
Bibliography:
Bilal, Wafaa and Kari Lydersen. Shoot An Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun. San Francisco. City Lights. 2008.
Dyer- Witheford, Nick and Greig de Peuter Games Of Empire: Global Capitalism And Video Games. Minneapolis, London. University of Minnesota Press. 2009
A thesis proposal by Adam van Sertima, July 2010
In The Politics of Aesthetics, Jacques Rancière has argued that we need to rethink aesthetics as “the invention of new forms of life”. The notion of life is necessarily informed by an embodied and hence a spatial element. However, spatiality, the experience of embodiment in space occurs at a subjective level. One’s sense of space has now been expanded to include digital spaces. Contemporary artist Wafaa Bilal’s performance work, Domestic Tension(2007), and his subsequent digital work Virtual Jihadi(2008) explore the mediated space by referencing digital games and recontextualising the experience in reference to the banality of violence that wracked his native Iraq through three wars and ongoing internecine conflict.
Wafaa Bilal was born in Kufa, Iraq in 1966. He pursued his artistic career from his youth in Iraq, often critiquing the Baathist regime of Saddaam Hussein in his paintings. After enduring the home front effects of the Iran/Iraq war, and the two Gulf wars, he fled Iraq and eventually settled in the United States. He continued both his studies and artistic practice there, eventually teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently an assistant professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
Domestic Tension was a thirty one day performance installed at FlatFile Galleries in Chicago in 2007. During the course of the exhibition, Bilal essentially confined himself to the gallery space. During the performance, people had 24-hour virtual access to Bilal via the Internet. They had the ability to watch Bilal and interact with him through a live web-cam and chat room. Viewers also had the option to shoot at Bilal with a remote controlled paintball gun. Thus in many ways this performance is similar to First Person Shooter (FPS)digital games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Infinity Ward 2009) where the audience wields a gun visible on the other side of a screen and can interact with each other by VOIP and chat technologies. This game, like Domestic Tension, also features the experience of shooting at an unarmed non-combatant, in its controversial opening game play sequence. A similar dissonance was visible in Bilal’s relationship to his performance piece, sometimes considering it as a “fun game”(Bilal & Lyderson 2008. p21) and other times as a work of art with the goal of making a point(ibid p.75).
Bilal personally documented his work, especially Domestic Tension, by video blogging daily from the performance space. He also expanded on his personal history and artistic biography with the publication of his memoir Shoot An Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun(2009). As a digital art work, existing both in “meat space” and cyber space, Domestic Tension provided an unusual perspective on its audience, as it offered the chance to interact directly with the artist via chat room, as the performance unfolded. Moreover, it reached a much broader audience than contemporary performance art might. By publicising the performance on websites such as Paint Ball Nation(www.pbnation.com) Bilal attracted an audience otherwise disconnected from contemporary art practices. Moreover, he compiled a large array of responses that ranged from “I hope you die in the next 9/11” to “...I can learn a bit from you and maybe we made you think a bit, too”(ibid p.128-130). In this respect, Domestic Tension was extremely successful in achieving one of Bilal’s stated goals of reaching and engaging with an audience “beyond the normal art world... who would never step into a gallery or go to an anti-war protest”(ibid p.11)
In Games of Empire Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter argue that digital games serve as one method of controlling what Michel Foucault describes as biopower(Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter 2009.p.). Briefly, Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter make the case that as a project of late capitalism, digital games function as training and harnessing systems.
I see this thesis as addressing three overarching questions, each suggesting a chapter with a concluding chapter examining how Domestic Tension exhibits a resistance to the social force of “Empire”.
The three questions are:
1. What is the relationship of art work to video game as mediated by Domestic Tension?
2. How do spaciality and linear perspective relate to domestic tension? How do linear perspective and spaciality contribute to an Imperial visuality and spaciality?
3. How do the formal aspects of virtual games negotiate deployment by and resistance to the concept Empire that is discussed by Dyer-Witheford and de Peuyter?
One element of the subjective experience of mediated or digital life is what has been called immersion. As in a paper I will be presenting in August, I will attempt to show a connection between attic theatre, as conceived of by Friedrich Nietszche, and the experience of playing digital music games such as RockBand(Harmonix 2007). Then I will attempt to argue for a similar connections between Domestic Tension and digital games such as Modern Warfare2.
Does art constitute a space of play- and how does this answer relate to Domestic Tension? How successfully does Domestic Tension and Bilal's subsequent work, Virtual Jihadi resist or reify empire?
Bibliography:
Bilal, Wafaa and Kari Lydersen. Shoot An Iraqi: Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun. San Francisco. City Lights. 2008.
Dyer- Witheford, Nick and Greig de Peuter Games Of Empire: Global Capitalism And Video Games. Minneapolis, London. University of Minnesota Press. 2009
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