Wanna shoot me?!

Accidental experiment shows that many people would shoot an innocent person (with paintballs) if kept anonymous.

In my daily scan of the internet, I was stopped cold in my tracks when I came across an article that detailed an Iraqi artist’s attempt to portray the cruelty of war in a quirky, unconventional way. This was from a man who knew the Iraq War up close and personal. He lived it from his arrest as a dissident under Suddam Hussein’s regime, to spending two years in a Saudi refugee camp, to his brother being killed by shrapnel in Najaf. He lived the war experience and wanted others to understand the fear and stress that result from it.

As an artist, he wanted to visually and physically convey the abstract and remote feelings of the aspect of a modern war, so he set up an exhibit called “Domestic Tension” which he hoped would help others understand the stress and fear that Iraqis live through every day. What happened as a result will make you sick and certainly make you question the dark side of humanity.

In an article from alternet.org, it describes an Iraqi artist, Wafaa Bilal, who sequestered himself in a Chicago art gallery for 42 days with a paintball gun that people could aim and fire remotely over the internet at him. He felt this particular interactive exhibit would allow people to experience and understand the detached, remote way that the American public and soldiers experience modern warfare. Balil elaborated by saying:

To the Western media it’s a virtual war going on in Iraq — we’re removed in the comfort zone. We’re allowed to disengage from the consequences of war. We don’t see mutilated bodies, we don’t see the toll on human beings.

His final days getting shot.

You have to remember, this was a live webcam in which Bilal stood in front of a white wall with a paintball gun aimed at him. Bilal thought that this would get his point across and that he would only have to endure a few shots each day. However, he was not prepared for the onslaught of shots that came from all over the world, 128 countries to be exact, and more than 62,000 people who shot more than 40,000 times, and this was only by day 20. It was reported that after two and a half weeks of confinement in a simulated bedroom/office in Flat File Galleries, Bilal was suffering ear and chest pain, sleep deprivation and overall stress from the constant blasts from the gas-powered paintball gun.

It appears that the number of shots skyrocketed after someone on Digg.com posted an article about him. The article states that the comments on Digg were both hostile and aggressive and some had to be edited and removed by the readership. Some people complained when Bilal would leave the space for a few minutes or when the server went down. One commenter was quoted as saying “Dude get a decent server so we can play some Waffa Ball!” And another comment was, “Too bad we can’t waterboard him.” Some shooters were obsessed with shooting out his only light as a symbol of hope and others were determined to destroy a plant he brought in. There were people who spoke out in sympathy for Bilal but were attacked and called “jihadist sympathizers”. He was called nigger, sand nigger and gay. [Where is all the hate coming from?]

Bilal considers himself a political artist who was quoted as saying “Someone once said art was a hammer”. Balil continued by saying that he uses his art to reach people, to bring together and pull them in and later you engage them. He felt that as long as his exhibit gave birth to conversation, that it was a success. I feel like it certainly created conversation, but it also exposed a very ugly, dark side of human nature. Can we learn from this? I don’t know. Can people who hate rise above their own sadistic tendencies? Balil certainly has many reasons to hate but his life is devoted to helping people understand. Maybe there is hope.