Wafaa Bilal- Domestic Tension

Wafaa Bilal's 2007 interactive installation Domestic Tension has been described as “one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time”[1[ and if Camus’ criteria for a successful political creation is anything to go by, I would tend to agree. For one month Bilal lived in the Chicago gallery space, surviving on donations and communicated only to visitors to the gallery and those who engaged through the internet via live webcam footage of the gallery space and chatroom access. These virtual participants also had the option of shooting Bilal with a paintball gun. This element transforms their virtual experience into a frighteningly physical one, and plays on ideas of virtually and stereotyping which exist in first person shooter gaming. The original idea for the work however stems from experiences significantly more raw and real than virtual gaming. Inspired by the death of his brother from shrapnel in Najaf and learning of U.S Soldiers remotely firing missiles on Iraq from a base in Colorado, Bilal installation explores the very real situation for many Iraqi’s. He uses the work to raise awareness of the home confinement they face due to the both the violent and the virtual war they face on a daily basis, while also speaking to the desensitisation of violence in American culture through virtualizing conflict. This sensational approach to the war attempted to draw people into a political dialogue that may not be willing to engage through conventional means. In this sense Bilal subverts the mass medium of cyber-interaction and gaming, reinforcing the very real consequences of virtual actions.

Online participants in the piece grew into the thousands, resulting in periods of rapid bombardment, and the intervention of hackers programming the gun to fire on its own. The work also inspired acts of solidarity, with some visitors to the gallery acting as human shields, protecting the artist from the deluge. The overwhelming success of this new media piece, as opposed to other new media works can perhaps be best explained by Lovink:

“In today's society of the spectacle there is no place for halfway art, no matter how many policy documents praise new media arts for its experimental attitude and Will to innovate.”[2]

Bilal’s work is certainly anything but half-way, in sacrificing himself for his creation, he can truly be called a creative rebel

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[1] Artner, Alan G. 2008. Wafaa Bilal. Chicago Tribune. June 29 http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/arts/chi-5-things-0629jun29,0,1324591.story. [accessed on 10/06/2009].

[2] Lovink, Geert. 2005. New Media, Art and Science: Explorations beyond the Official Discourse. In Empires, Ruins + Networks, ed. Scott McQuire/ Nikos Papastergiadis, Melbourne, University of Melbourne Press.