Chapter 2 Section 1 redux- Art and firepower

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).

(1) Francisco Goya The Executions of the Third of May 1808. Oil on Canvas 1814

(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

Chapter1 Section 5 Spaces of Conflict within Empire

Bilal describes his reaction to a 2007 TV interview with a young soldier who operated a robotic drone from her base in Colorado(1). She trusted the information and orders that she received causing her to launch missile attacks or guide other aircraft to attacks the targets she had acquired. This in turn filled Bilal with feelings of hatred and rage, as a similar remotely guided attack had killed his brother Haji. Yet, Bilal was able to reflect that these were "mostly just kids caught up in a cycle of greed and power they don't understand"(2)

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri offer an analysis of this when the assert "the passage to  post-modernity  and Empire prohibits any such compartmentalization of the life world and immediately presents communication, production and life as one complex whole, an open site of conflict"(3) Hardt and Negri see this conflict as a creative militancy linked to biopower and as such inevitably functions within a world that knows no outside(4). Thus this attachment to the means of production means that the resistance of Bilal's 'virtual human shield' is analogous to the deployment of young cyber soldiers, as with the young drone pilot just mentioned. 

Empire is greatly predicated on production becoming the result of communication and on the absorption of  all spaces into Empire(5). In contrast to traditional Marxist analysis, Hardt and Negri assert there are no exterior spaces for capitalism to exploit; rather it must create new spaces within itself. However, the possibility of these spaces also offer a place for the "uncontainable rhizomes" through which the Multitude reappropriates fresh spaces that realise the desire of the multitude to construct concurrent freedoms(6). Hardt and Negri present the movement of workers from Mexico into the USA as an example of the contradictions of Empire, in that it requires the labour to function, but can only attempt to control it by rendering it illegal(7). At the same time they characterise the free circulation of biopower, of the proletariat, of people as a fundamental freedom desired by the multitude. Thus the networks of biopower serves both Empire and the Multitude that resists it.
 





1. Bilal p.10
2. ibid
3. Hardt, Michael &Antonio Negri.  Empire, Harvard UP, Cambridge, Mass & London, 2000. p. 404
4. ibid p. 413 
5. ibid p. 404
6. ibid p. 397
7. ibid p. 399

Chapter2 Section 1

The list of some writers who have bearing on an explanation of how Domestic Tension relates to space and virtuality has to start with Wafaa Bilal and his cowriter Kari Lyderson who together wrote his memoir of the piece, his biography and his subsequent work in the book Shoot an Iraqi: life art and resistance under the gun. In the service of thepiecew however, we can also consider the primary sources in the chat room exchanges between Bilal and those that viewed the piece via the internet. Another primary source is the video blogs that Bilal eventually posted to youtube, creating a secondary channel for discussion and contact as the piece proceeded and continued the dialogue after the primary action of the piece had ended. The allusion of the piece to video games can be followed through the lenses provided by Johan Hhuizinga, specifically in his book Homo Ludens, and subsequent writers Nick Dyer-Witheford & Greig de Peuter who discuss the relevance of Digital games to global capitalism.Their work is based on the writing of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, specifically in their book Empire and their subsequent volumes, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire and  Commonwealth. Hardt and Negri's discussion of Empire as they term the space created by globalised capitalism, can be further unpacked via Henri Lefebvre's The Production of Space. 

Chapter 1 Section 4- Spaces between Comfort and Conflict

Wafaa Bilal speaks about the contrast of  space of comfort and the space of conflict. His displacement of virtual and physical presence reflects his experience, throughout his life, of being in overlapping zones of conflict. From his early childhood, with his often violent father, to his neighbourhood that became increasingly divided by religious factionalism, through the internal violence of Iraq's repressive Ba'athist regime, to Iraq's external conflict with Iran, Kuwait and the American lead coalition. Yet as an emigre, and a university Professor, he now resides in what is ostensibly a zone of comfort. Yet he finds that zone troubling, partially because so few others recognise it as such(1). So his work seems to often involve placing the audience as an active participant within an unfamiliar setting. He deliberately chose to set up Domestic Tension as a performance that requires spectator involvement, that subverts expectations of a triple A first person shooter game and that creates a space for those who might normally ignore or simply denigrate conceptual and performance-based art. That he can cross these ideological divides suggests how in the age of Empire, typical moves to create space as a project of 21st century capitalism can be resisted, subverted or evaded. At the same time, Bilal's project is very much a product of twenty first century US culture, with it's references to digital games, paintball and internet sociality.

Bilal explicitly opposed didactic readings of his work(2). He did not ban people who posted vicious words, although he did restrict players who attempted to alter the physical operation of the paintball gun,  effectively turning it into a machine-gun for example. That the rules were simple- fire the paintball gun if you want, hit want you  can and write what you will in the chat-room- left space for many different responses.

1. Bilal p. 
2. Bilal p.

Chapter1 Section2- Who is Wafaa bilal?

Wafaa Bilal is assistant Arts Professor in the department of Photography and Imaging at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. His works span from paintings and drawings he did in his native Iraq through to performances such as Domestic Tension, Virtual Jihadi and his latest work ....And Counting. In his memoir Shoot An Iraqi, he recounts how his early works were often aimed against the oppression of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime and the violence that plagued Iraq both from the outside- the Iran/Iraq war, gulf wars 1 & 2- and the internecine violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims as well as violence against opponents to the regime which in turn exploited these conflicts to maintain its grip on political power. Bilal's art works, often critical of the Iraqi government eventually caused a reaction from the state that forced Bilal to flee for his life first to a Saudi refugee camp, then eventually to the United States, where he continued his studies of art.

Bilal was born in Kufa, Iraq in 1966. The third of 7 childrenCK, he attended Baghdad university, majoring in Geology although his efforts were primarily focused on painting. These paintings were often critical of the Baathist regime, and Bilal would hide them, for example, by rolling up the canvasses and storing them within hollow bedposts(1). Several of the shows he put on during that period were closed by the regimes security apparatus(2). Paintings as innocuous, in the Canadian context, as portraying people living in poverty, were seen as anti-government, with some of them being seized(3).

Bilal publicly refused to volunteer for military service with the threat of an American lead coalition looming as a result of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, in 1991( p.68) After leaving Bagdad University, lest he "disappear" as other dissident students had, Bilal fled Iraq, eventually being interned at a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia. There he attempted to continue painting, despite the declining conditions and threats of rape and abuse at the hands of the Saudi guards. He and his brother, Alaa were granted refugee status, arriving in the United States in September, 1992. He would subsequently enroll in the school of Arts at the University of New Mexico.

Bilal's artistic production after leaving Iraq dealt with such themes as violence and dehumanisation as in his Honours exhibit Sorrow of Baghdad. This gallery installation used the sounds of a baby crying from within a coffin, a be-suited pig laughing at short videos and a room with the faces of Iraqis trapped in a space, with the only exit a window looking out onto a battlefield.( ) His subsequent works include The Absinthe Drinker(200TK), which would electronically insert the gallery spectator into the digital frame, causing the central figure to become animated and react to the movement of the spectator. This general approach would be repeated in The Bar of the Follie Bergeres(200TK), and One Chair(200TK). In each case, the work makes a direct reference to an antecedent art work; those on the impressionists, in the first two cases, and to DaVinci's The last Supper, in the case of one chair. All of them allow the visitor/spectator to interact with the work, and in the case of The Bar of the Follie Bergeres have a presence with in the frame. This would become even more actualised in Domestic Tensions.


1966 Born, Kufa , Iraq p.5
1968 Ba’ath party stages coup, taking power in Iraq p.34

1979 Age 13 Bilal makes a stand against his Father’s violent temper and increasingly violent behavior.   When his father shatters a plate over Bilal’s head, he seizes a shard a chases his father out of the house and locks him out. p.23

1979 Saddam Hussein becomes President of Iraq
September 1980 Iraq invades Iran, ostensibly as a result of an Iranian assassination attempt on foreign Minister Aziz. Iraq moves to seize oil rich areas, strategic canals and supress the spread of the shiite Islamic revolution from Iran to the Shiite majority in Iraq.p.39

August 1990 Iraq invades Kuwait

Bilal publicly refuses to volunteer for military service- leaves University and 
flees repercussions. p.68

January 1991- American forces begin bombing campaign against cities and military in Iraq

February 1991- American ground forces invade Kuwait and attack Iraqi troops. Iraqi troops withdraw from Kuwait after 100hour campaign.

Kurds and Shiites rebel against Sadaam’s rule. The baathist regime brutally supressed the rebels with helicopters, artillery and ground troops (fixed-wing aircraft were grounded by American decree)
Bilal travels to the Kuwait border to shelter in refugee camp at Safwan. He fled the regime’s pogrom against dissidents and the actual military force used against perceived rebel communities p.99-100
1991 Arrives in refugee camp.p. Experience of seeing of abuse, rape and murder by Saudi guards which leads to uprising in spring 1992.p.123 & 135
September, 1992 Leaves Saudi Arabia p.141
Arrives in America
Enrolls in UofNM p.
Honours thesis was interactive exhibit p

“Absinthe Drinker” wins award from New  Mexico museum of Art
Iraq invades Kuwait

1999 Bilal graduates from University of New Mexico with BFA.p.

US and Coalition invade Iraq

2003 Graduated with an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
 
December 2003 Sadaam is captured by US forces in Iraq.

2004 Brother, Haji killed in American airstrike. His father dies three months later, 
from grief.p.125

Bilal's artistic production after leaving Iraq dealt with such themes as violence and dehumanisation as in his Honours exhibit Sorrow of Baghdad. p.

Writing about Bilal's personal history and that of Iraq which is intertwined with it is grueling. The brutality on all levels is highly disturbing, as is the collusion with western powers in such atrocities as the Halabja massacre of 1988. I will leave the editing for tomorrow.

1. Bilal & Lyderson p. 64

2. ibid p. 64

3. ibid p. 65

tk http://www.wafaabilal.com/html/sorrowBaghdad.html

Chapter1 Section 3 How Wafaa Bilal creates spaces for discussion of the political issues his work addresses.

A significant theme that Bilal annunciates through out Domestic Tensions is his wish to "Keep the conversation going"(1). While the second Gulf War has provoked highly polarised rhetoric within the United States and between the citizens of it's allies, who have mostly opposed the invasion of Iraq, actual debate has been relatively absent, with few cases of either side expressing respect for the other's opinion. In that respect, Bilal's paint ball project has been highly successful, in that it drew people into contact that would have been unlikely to ever interact, let alone discuss the issue. It would be a gross mistake to assume these conversations were uniformly measured, thoughtful and polite. However, these chatroom conversations did place people with a position on the violence and significance of the American invasion of Iraq in touch with each other. Some would use these chatroom spaces to hurl racist epithets and jingoistic rants at Bilal and those others in the chatroom who opposed the war in Iraq. But verbal abuse is as much a part of what Bilal refers to as a zone of conflict(2) as mental and physical abuse. 

This contrast that Bilal draws, between the zone of conflict and that of comfort is central to his artistic choice. He wants to place himself, living a comfortable life as an academic and artist in a large US city, again in a zone of conflict as a means of expressing solidarity with his family who would not or could not leave Iraq(3). More over, he has written that this performance was intended to provoke a crisis for those residing in a zone of comfort "shielded from the actual horrors of" the campaign in Iraq(4). As his biography makes clear, he is no stranger to threats of violence and intimidation, through the wars, repression and bigotry he has encountered both with in and with out Iraq as well as his home town of Kufa and even his own home there.


Yet this space of conflict he had created, by providing a means of committing physical violence, via the paintball gun, a means of discussion via the internet and within the gallery space, itself, and by means of spectators viewing his Youtube blogs and the media reports generated, has allowed communication to take place that would have otherwise been unlikely to have happened.

Comments like:
"Make that chair spin"
FIRE!!!!
fuckin' Iraqis

contrasted with:
Peace to you and your people, Wafaa
This guy has heart
Don't shoot him, he's fucking human being!!

The expansion of the discussion space arose when the popular internet reference site, DIGG.com picked up on the performance via an article in the Chicago Tribune. This reference in DIGG lead to a geometrical increase in visitors to the Domestic Tension website, as the more people drawn to the site via DIGG in turn "digged" the story, pushing it up to the top of the lists, leading more people to encounter and explore the story(5). This social networking operated in concert with Bilal's attempt to create a community, although I sense that this was serendipitous as he more straightforwardly publicised his performance in atypical websites(for a high art project) of paintballnation.com. The net result was over 80 million hits, from 136 countries during the course of the performance(6). Ascribing the quality of space to a chatroom, the quality community to people who may be shooting at you, and the quality of discussion to among other things a low velocity projectile fired at one's body may seem to be stretching the definitions of these terms. But the relationship of these terms to Bilal's performance may be better understood if we look at both Bilal, and his companion-for that is how he came to describe the paintball gun(7)- as boundary objects.

A boundary object is

"both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites...They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation"(8)

This concept was developed by Susan L. Star and James R. Griesemer as way of considering how different social groups, and their members might interact using an object that carries different significances how either group. Thus the paintball gun might be perceived simultaneously as a weapon, an art object, a threat a toy depending on the social milieu of the person activating it. At the same time, Bilal himself, appearing rather like a non-player character(an NPC, essentially a "robot" simulating a person, animal, monster or some other agent in a digital game) functions as a boundary object: at once an artist, a target, a human being and so on. This multitude of meanings allowed different participants to be drawn into the performance without immediately confronting a didactic message that might have caused those opposed to Bilal's anti-war stance or those unfamiliar with contemporary art practices to remain disengaged from the discussion of the Iraq war and the common lack of engagement with the broad and profound implications of a military conflict. He recounts how he was an anti-war symbol, a target for hateful bigots, entertainment and company for the bored, lonely or flirtatious, or topic for academic and philosophical discussion, among other roles(9).

A common response was for participants to fire a paintball round at Bilal, then often feel guilt and then engage in conversation. Obviously, some participants simply enjoyed the anonymous physical and mental abuse that they could express. The degree to which this was prevalent rather shocked Bilal(10). Yet the variety of peoples comments and responses suggests how successfully he engaged large numbers of people in what Henri Lefebvre would call a "representational space, embodying complex symbolisms...linked to the clandestine...side of social life, as also to art"(11). Lefebvre's conception of space includes art works, as well as architectural structures, that hide power relations. How Bilal's project negotiates these spaces I will discuss in depth in Chapter 4 of this thesis.


1. Bilal explicitly states this during the video blogs of days'

2. Bilal & Lyderson p.4.

3. ibid p.11

4. ibid p.1

5. ibid p. 79

6. ibid p.xvi

7. Bilal, Wafaa (mewafaa)The paint ball project day 10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz6zAwrkolc accessed 2010-08-27 11:55:53 Bilal also mentions this on page 93, during the day 16 section of Shoot An Iraqi.
 
8. Star, Susan Leigh  and James R. Griesemer. "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39" in Social Studies of Science, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Aug., 1989), pp. 387-420

9. Bilal & Lyderson p. 110


10. ibid p.78


11. Lefebvre, Henri The Social Production of Space. Blackwell, 1991 p.33

Reflections on the First Draft of Chapter 3- The Spectacle and the Mundane

I have just finished going over the video blog that Wafaa Bilal used to document but also to communicate his performance. One issue that I will now grapple with is how do we consider the video blog. Is it peripheral to the performance, or is it intrinsic? How do we consider the role of documentation, especially when we can simultaneously record and transmit events?

the amusement that other felt as they watched a brief clip from the last day, belies the level of endurance required for this piece. My sense of Bilal is that he must be a natural humorous and optimistic man. this perhaps masks the duress that he was under for the thirty one days he lived and performed domestic tension. That is another question, and has broader implications for aesthetics in a virtualised world.

At what point can we say Bilal was living and at what pints was he performing? can we suggest the long term effecxts on him- depression, PTSD and physical symptoms- become a way of defining a performance slipping into the mundane? The mundane, as I use it here, is to differentiate from the spectacle. Rather than a pejorative implying boredom, I use "mundane" to denote the activities of life that are not conducted simply as a means of conscious self expression. Thus when Bilal scratches his beard, it is not necessarily performative as when he addresses the camera.This is not a strict binary, but rather I see it as a plenum, with "spectacle" being the extreme of expression, where the action only exists as a concious act of self expression meant for others to see and react to and the mundane, that which is lived without regard(perhaps, making a cup of tea while home alone).

My definition of spectacle is perhaps the hardest one to make because it ruptures if we consider that spectacle is part of life, especially for socially constructed classes of professional performers. At what point does the performance artist, the politician or the prostitute go outside their lives?These performances on a social level at least partly define the person doing them.

Youtube Video- The Paint Ball Project The Last Day...and the Gun is Silent

The final day of the project, and the video begins with the steady rhythm of the gun firing like a clock. Bilal is typing at his computer, and we can see the gun in the mid ground and a photographer in the fore ground. This video is unusual because Bilal is not holding the camera. He says "17 seconds" then leaves the computer and crouches under the guns arc of fire and makes his way to the back of the gun. Others count down with him. The gun fires a few more round, then Bilal pulls the plug, and declares "the gun is silent!".

Bilal stands up right to receive applause, and thanks those there and others. he asks if anyone is outside. He says the project was a tribute to all the Iraqi citizens and all the American soldiers who lost their lives. "We have silenced one gun today, and in the future we hope to silence all the guns" The camera pans across a small crowd of supporters and journalists who applaud him

The video cuts to bilal with his usual greeting of "Hey everybody is Wafaa". in the background their are sounds of  a party. Behind him is the yellow wall with he paint covered plywood panels. "He says' The confinement is over" and thanks his audience for "keeping the hope alive" and talking and interacting with him. He walks outside. He passes through party goers"hey it's a great crowd "wow, I promise you I wont cry as he steps outside the gallery after thirty one days inside. "It's great to be alive. It's fantastic to think and reflect."

"Please keep the conversation going" saying the piece was an open narrative. He thanks the virtual human shield, all the participants and standing in the gallery parking lot, signs off the last video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDZM4AooEv0

Youtube Video- The Paint Ball Project Day 30

Day 30



Day thirty of the paintball project begins with aclose up of the gun cycling through firing several pain bnalls. The video then cuts to Bilal, he notes the server is very busy, perhaps because it is the last day of the project. however he announces he will extend the project one more day.

He says this extra day is dedicated to those who said he could not complete the project. He then thanks his supporters. He says the project has had both "highs and low" and hads both united and divided people.

He goes on to say that art is supposed to "inform, agitate and be part of life". He says he has no resentment towards the people who shot. "It is an encounter, and open narrative- it is not a didactic piece." said Bilal.

He says he is in great spirits although the project has had an impact on his physical and mental health. He says good bye, saying" it has been a great journey". The camera cuts from him to the little figure of him, and the words " K TNX bye" type across the screen.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtvvVbeaSHk&feature=related

Youtube Video- The Paint Ball Project Day 29

Day 29 is a silent 4minutes and seven second photo montage from the previous 28 days of the performance. Ii shows Bilal cleaning and maintaining the gun. and the objects within the space. In some respects, this video is more revealing as it reveals the material experience more than Bilal's words which belie the talking head image of most of the documentary video's.


The immediate sense is how virtually everything is covered with wet paint. This doesn't come through in most of the videos, but it is obvious the yellow room must be virtually impossible to clean. The effect of living in that environment was very wearing. Also striking is the care Bilal had to lavish on the gun which is emphasised in the photographs which show him stripping and cleaning it, leaving it gleaming, while the environment around it is filthy.

The final image is a smiling caricature of Bilal waving.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0NR_pITj0c