While he claims to be seeking world peace, Waafa Bilal (creator of the Bush assassination video game that's generated controversy) strikes me as a seeker of pseudo-martyrdom for profit.

In this interview, he claims that the Americans killed his brother and his father died from the grief, and that he's letting himself be shot with thousands of paintballs:

WB: The idea here is to move (*bang*) my living room into the gallery space and to set up a system where you have a paintball gun pointed at me 24 hours, seven days a week, for an entire month. The entire mechanism (*bang*) is hooked up by the Internet, where people can log in from anywhere and shoot.

This is the 13th day, and so far, 6,500 shots were taken at me.

Could you tell me about yourself?

WB: I was born and raised in Iraq, and I worked against Saddam Hussein's regime in a passive resistance movement through artwork. I was arrested by his regime a few times. In 1990, I refused to go to war in his army to invade Kuwait. As a consequence, I was blacklisted and I had to flee Iraq, so in 1991, after the uprising, I had a chance to escape and ended up in (*bang*) Saudi Arabia for two years (*bang*) until I had the chance to come to the United States and study for my BFA as the University of Delphi, New Mexico, I got my MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, and now I teach there. (*bang*)

What inspired this particular project?

WB: I think it's a combination of things. (*bang*) One, it is understanding the culture and how people interact with each other in this digital age. But, the trigger of this project was that I was watching (*bang*) the news - in fact, ABC news, when they had an interview with an American soldier sitting in a base in Colorado, and she was firing missiles into Iraq (*bang*) after being given information by American soldiers on the ground (*bang*) in Iraq, and when asked if she had any regard of human life, she said "No, these people are bad, and I'm getting very good intelligence from people on the ground."

Also, I just wanted to bring this closer to myself. I left Iraq in 1991, and I wasn't able to see my family, and we had some losses in 2005. I lost my brother and he was killed by American soldiers in Najaf, and I lost my father two months after that. Now my family is confined to their own homes, and they cannot even leave, and I ask them sometimes "What do you do?"

They said: "We are at home, and the only time we leave is when one of us risks his or her life going to the market to get food and come back."

I wanted to put myself in the same physical way they are so that I could feel closer to them and to support them.

Can you tell me more about the technical aspects of the project?

WB: The technology is extremely simple and available to anyone. I worked with a very good crew though - Ben Chang, Dan Miller, and Dimitris Michalaros, my colleagues at the Art Institute of Chicago.

There are a couple of components to it. The hardware is a small-motor connected to a card. That's the pan mechanism behind the movement of the gun and the camera. The trigger on the camera is connected to a solenoid. Everything is driven by software and connected on a web page (*bang*) and so when you go to the Web page, you (*bang*) press left or right, the gun will move five degrees each time, and when you shoot the gun, the signal goes from your browser to the card, then to the solenoid, which pulls the trigger, and simply fires.

How many times have you been hit?

I lost count how many times I've been hit, but, as I said, today the count is up to 6,500 shots. I think day 13 - today - I entered kind of a survival mode, trying to protect myself by barricading myself and navigating through the room so that I'm not in the direct line of fire. But that does not mean I don't forget that I am facing the gun 24 hours a day, and it happens so many times I forget for a second, and get hit.

Yesterday I got two of them really close to my head, and I do not wear any head protection except goggles, just because I wanted to feel that danger from the gun that's pointed at me.

These paintballs hurt and I think it's obvious that paintballs hurt. There were 6,500 pulls of the trigger - I don't think that's all one guy doing it, so what have you learned about the human condition?

(*bang, bang*) I mean, I'm trying to (*bang*) see where these shooters are coming from, and what's behind it, and there's really not one thing that you can say about them. The project attracted so many different people with different points of view. It varies from guys in their office having fun, to someone bored somewhere and shooting all day and all night, to some other people trying to engage in a political dialogue.

That's at least part of the intention of this project - to attract people who may never want to engage in a political dialogue about the war, or violence, or civilians, or lack of privacy, and it's working in that sense.

I always said that I wanted to play with the idea of aesthetic pleasure versus aesthetic pain, to the point that it becomes an encounter, instead of a didactic art. When you encounter it, you are drawn to it because of aesthetics on the surface and the appealing quality, but then, that encounter leads you to something else entirely.

Do you think the pseudo-anonymity of the internet and the distance has a lot to do with how this project is turning out?

No doubt about it. I mean, (*bang*) it is an internet base, and it is using the latest way of communication, but by design (*bang*), I wanted to remove the viewer from any physical impact. You log on the set, and you don't even have sound (*bang,bang*) I mean, you're hearing it right now, because we're on the phone, but when you're on the site, you never hear it. That's speaks of the virtual war that's being conducted against Iraq and other nations as well.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

At this point, I look forward to when this gun is silent and when all the guns are silent.

Despite his claims, I suspect Bilal enjoyed the project, or at least receives some sort of gratification by placing himself in an imaginary "martyr" role.

Here's the video:

Repeatedly he "protests" that "I don't know why this much hate in them!" "this is non stop!" and "this is very disturbing!" but "I cannot give up right now!"

"Very disturbing, very disturbing!"

What's with the keffiyeh, anyway?

From the text above:

Wafaa is visibly shaken, and things have quickly become "insane." If Wafaa's intention was to create a microcosm of conditions in Iraq - a model, in effect, of what it is like to live in the combat zone, then what have I, and Network Performance Daily, become in this model? Certainly, Wafaa wanted attention for the project - and I don't doubt that's ultimately what he believes will do the most good - but through this exposure, I have to ask myself whether or not I'm acting in a manner consistent with journalistic ethics (Yes, this is a company blog, but we don't hide that, and I do take ethics very seriously). Ultimately, I must report the truth while seeking to minimize harm. Instead, through our promotion of the project, Wafaa Bilal was hurt physically and harmed emotionally - possibly endangering his mental health as well.

Oh, yes.

And in Wafaa's model of a war-torn country inside four walls, I've become part of the war. I've become the media hawks who overtly or tacitly call for the war, by promoting the site and giving people access to that virtual battlefield.

So yes, even I fit into this model that Wafaa has cooked up... and ultimately, the experiment is not occurring inside those four walls. Like Douglas Adams' penned fictional character "Wonko the Sane," Wafaa has locked himself "outside" of the real world where the insane people who cause people lasting pain for a few brief moments of pleasure. The experiment is truly not in the Chicago Art Institute, but everywhere but there. After all, it is not Wafaa who pulls the trigger on that gun. It is us, outside of the "asylum."

Not being content to attract attention by having himself shot with paintballs or promoting assassination games, Bilal also decided to drag (or pretend to drag) a hapless dog into his antics:

Wafaa still has one project going on. Online! Run to Dog or Iraqi and cast your vote to decide which one -- a dog named "Buddy," or an Iraqi, himself -- will be waterboarded at an "undisclosed location" in upstate New York. Waterboarding is a form of torture which dates back to the Spanish Inquisition. The person is immobilized on their back with the head inclined downward,, and water is poured over the face and into the breathing passages. Through forced suffocation and inhalation of water, the subject experiences the process of drowning and is made to believe that death is imminent. The person would (usually) be "resuscitated" at the last moment.

A doctor and a vet will be on hand to minimize the risk of death to the dog or the human being. At the time i spoke with Wafaa, the dog was the clear winner of the contest!

But even assume that he was willing to waterboard the dog, the logical flaw with the "Dog or Iraqi project," is that a dog can't consent to be waterboarded, but Bilal can. Moreover, the purpose and theory behind waterboarding is its use in interrogation. Even in theory, a dog cannot be interrogated, and cannot comprehend what is being done or why.

That did not stop the artist from promoting an "event" with pictures of himself and the dog (a pug named "Buddy"):

"This is a high-stakes democratic election between dog and man in which the winner will be publicly waterboarded. On the evening of April 21st, 2008 the creature with the most votes will be subjected to the popular interrogation technique in front of a live audience at an undisclosed New York location.Tune in here to find out where, and don't forget to vote!"

I think the man is a dishonest and cowardly enemy propagandist who is taking advantage of the First Amendment. Like Fred Phelps, he's also an agent provocateur.

Naturally, I find myself wondering about the accuracy of his claims.

I'm not alone in wondering.

Question - Who was Wafaa Bilal's brother affiliated with in Iraq before his death? Is there any information regarding whether his brother was fighting against American and/or coalition forces? Was he possibly a member of Saddam's Bathist party? Was he assisting the insurgency? Bilal needs to answer these questions and give an account of his brother before I'll have any sympathy regarding his brother's death.

...Because a member of his family had been accused of disloyalty to his country, Wafaa was denied the opportunity to pursue his dream of being an artist. Instead, he was to attend college to major in geography. While in college, he continued to pursue his art and was arrested and tortured for his political art work against Sadaam Hussein. Shortly after the Gulf War, Wafaa was inspired by President Bush's message to the Iraqi citizens that if they attempted to overthrow Sadaam, the US would stand behind them. He became involved in organizing opposition to the government and was scheduled for arrest and execution when he escaped into Kuwait. There he was accused of being a spy and was close to being shot when his student ID convinced them he told the truth. Wafaa was sent to a refugee camp on the Kuwaiti border.

In the camp, people laughed when rather than accept life in a tent he began forming brick that he dried in the sun and fashioned into a home. The adobe served a practical purpose, for it provided relative safety from abduction by Kuwaiti soldiers who sneaked into tents in the middle of the night to kidnap young people for sale to Iraqi soldiers who tortured, raped and executed them or the Turkish soldiers themselves would rape and kill them. For two years, Wafaa lived in limbo not knowing if each day would be his last. Still Wafaa worked to improve his art, cleaning toilets in the camp to earn the money for art supplies, buying supplies for children for art therapy to help them to work through the horrors witnessed. His experiences developed within him an abhorrence of violence and oppression and strengthened his inner resolve.

In 1992, Wafaa came to the United States and took classes to learn English. Then, he began art studies at the University of New Mexico where he excelled. His art is of a political nature that speaks to oppression of the human spirit, including that of women who are bound by the rules of culture. He has won many awards for his art as well as a scholarship to the Chicago Institute of Art for post graduate study. He is now teaching at that institution.

And who ran the camp where young men were sold, anway? Elsewhere, he claims repeatedly that it was Saudi. Recall this:

I was born and raised in Iraq, and I worked against Saddam Hussein's regime in a passive resistance movement through artwork. I was arrested by his regime a few times. In 1990, I refused to go to war in his army to invade Kuwait. As a consequence, I was blacklisted and I had to flee Iraq, so in 1991, after the uprising, I had a chance to escape and ended up in (*bang*) Saudi Arabia for two years (*bang*) until I had the chance to come to the United States and study for my BFA as the University of Delphi, New Mexico, I got my MFA from the Art Institute of Chicago, and now I teach there.

Bilal fled Iraq in 1991 and spent two years in a Saudi refugee camp. There, he scrapped together supplies to paint and teach children art in a studio he built out of adobe with a plastic-sheeting window.

"We realized we weren't going to leave any time soon," he says. "We were given tents to live in, and the desert has no mercy when storms come."

In late 1992, Bilal came to the United States and studied art at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where he lived until moving to Chicago. In 2005, his 21-year-old brother, whom Bilal describes as "apolitical," was killed by shrapnel as he stepped outside the family's home in Najaf. Soon after, Bilal's father died. It was then the idea for "Domestic Tension," which he originally considered calling "Shoot an Iraqi," began to brew.

In another account, the brother was described as having been "killed by shrapnel of occupying forces." If they were the Americans, why not say so? This account does call it "American shrapnel," but does anyone know? Has anyone verified this death?

At the time in Najaf, there was fighting between Moqtada al Sadr's militia and the militia of Iraq's ruling party SCIRI, so I don't doubt that there would have been shrapnel. But how could anyone know whether it was American?

Or is the whole point that they might just as well have been American, because it was as American as anonymous Internet users, and therefore Bush should be shot?

The things that pass for art!

Is it too much to hope that a few art critics might engage in "critical thinking"?

UPDATE: My thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link! A warm welcome to all.

Comments appreciated, agree or disagree.