Internauta pode atirar em artista com bala de tinta – Iraquiano ficará todo mês de maio levando tiro de bala de tinta

Um artista iraquiano está trancado em uma sala onde internautas podem atirar nele com uma arma de paintball através de uma interface web. Wafaa Bilal ficará durante todo o mês de maio na peça, que fica em uma galeria de Chicago, nos Estados Unidos, recebendo balaços de tinta disparados via Internet.

É possí­vel assistir ao artista 24 horas por dia, podendo opcionalmente atirar nele. A instalação, chamada de “Tensão Doméstica”, chama atenção para a vida confinada e sempre com medo do povo iraquiano.

Bilal é famoso por suas instalações interativas e polêmicas. Seu objetivo é chamar pessoas normalmente não engajadas polí­ticamente para um diálogo através da mí­dia de massa.

Para participar da instalação e atirar em Bilal com balas de tinta, visite o site http://75.57.160.175/ ou http://www.wafaabilal.com/. O site pode estar lento ou fora do ar em virtude do grande número de acessos que está recebendo.

Wafaa Bilal, Ajrass, 2002.

Wafaa Bilal�s unabashedly political art seeks to provoke. His images of suffering, repression, distortion, and excess draw on symbolism and surprise to make their point, but even as they press the allegorical towards the surreal, their intent to raise issues and spark dialogue remains consistently clear. The pictures range formally from the very painterly to the exactingly photographic and occasionally include the artist as subject.

Bilal was born in Iraq in 1966 and came to the United States in 1992. He studied geography and geology at the University of Baghdad before completing a BFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (1999) and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2003). Recent solo exhibitions of his work include In the Shadow of the Surreal, Flatfile Galleries, Chicago; Intamachine, Art Interactive Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Perseverance Implied, Arts Media & Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe. In addition to his activity as a performance artist, video artist, and curator, Bilal is also a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. – Kendra Greene
http://www.crudeoils.us/

Iraqi-born man gets shot for art
May 10, 2007

CHICAGO, IL, USA — An Iraqi-born Chicago artist has set up a project allowing Internet users to shoot him with a paintball gun.

Wafaa Bilal said he originally wanted to call the art project “Shoot an Iraqi,” but the director of the art gallery where the shooting takes place vetoed the idea, The Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.

Bilal said that, as of lunchtime Wednesday, about 1,850 rounds had been fired into the room by visitors to the gallery’s Web site, which allows users to point and fire the paintball gun.

The artist said the project, titled “Domestic Tension,” is a statement on how people in the United States view the war in Iraq.

“I want it to be far removed,” he said. “I want it to be videogame-like. That’s how we see this war, as a videogame. We don’t see the mutilated bodies or the toll on the ground.”

The project can be viewed – and interacted with – at flatfilegalleries.com.


Wafaa Bilal, Domestic Tension , installation, 2007