When trying to think of an artist with a Brechtian practice, I immediately thought of Wafaa Bilal. He visited ECU a few years back, and gave a talk about his project, "Domestic Tension," in which Bilal lived in a small gallery room for a month with a robotic paintball gun, which people online could use to shoot him. As a result of the project, he suffered mentally and physically, showing clear symptoms of PTSD and insomnia. One of the more memorable things he shared was that a group of people online chose to defend him from other shooters, by using the controls to divert the gun's shots. He discusses the project in a short video, and his website and a link to the project's daily video blog can be found by clicking here. A newer project, "... and Counting" (shown in the picture on the left) involved tattooing Iraqi cities onto his back in Arabic, along with a dot in red ink for every American soldier killed (5,000 total). Iraqi deaths were represented by dots in invisible ink. The project was meant to be a commentary on the lack of press or attention on Iraqi deaths, as well as a permanent memorial. The 24 hr tattooing process was filmed and could be seen live by viewers online. Make sure to watch the video on his site - the sound of the tattoo gun combined with the names of the victims being read is eerie and unsettling.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Wafaa Bilal
When trying to think of an artist with a Brechtian practice, I immediately thought of Wafaa Bilal. He visited ECU a few years back, and gave a talk about his project, "Domestic Tension," in which Bilal lived in a small gallery room for a month with a robotic paintball gun, which people online could use to shoot him. As a result of the project, he suffered mentally and physically, showing clear symptoms of PTSD and insomnia. One of the more memorable things he shared was that a group of people online chose to defend him from other shooters, by using the controls to divert the gun's shots. He discusses the project in a short video, and his website and a link to the project's daily video blog can be found by clicking here. A newer project, "... and Counting" (shown in the picture on the left) involved tattooing Iraqi cities onto his back in Arabic, along with a dot in red ink for every American soldier killed (5,000 total). Iraqi deaths were represented by dots in invisible ink. The project was meant to be a commentary on the lack of press or attention on Iraqi deaths, as well as a permanent memorial. The 24 hr tattooing process was filmed and could be seen live by viewers online. Make sure to watch the video on his site - the sound of the tattoo gun combined with the names of the victims being read is eerie and unsettling.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment