Domestic Tension (2007) is a powerful work. In this work, Bilal transformed his studio into a live installation where he lived for an extended period, connected to an online interface that allowed viewers to shoot him with a paintball gun remotely.
When I have gone through discussions carried out by Wafaa Bilal himself, I knew more his background. His intension of the work is from the death of his brother and father in the Iraq war. The idea of it comes from a talk with a solider who in charge of directing drone planes and dropping missiles on Iraq. The solider didn’t have regrets on this act as she think that the people she was dealing with were terrorists.
The conversation cause the artist a sense of disconnecting from the conflict zone as they are living in the comfort zone, which makes me believe that it is the origin of the work. The act of being shot at—albeit with paintballs—symbolizes the broader violence faced by civilians in conflict zones. However, the shooters are from the globe and they control the gun via network. It shows the reason why he emphasis real time rather than real life is to demonstrate the power of network. The act of shooting pinballs is a kind of visualizing virtual damage into physical damage, emphasizing the harm of the conflict caused by network opinion. But at the same time, people can communicate via chatroom with the artist, which makes me think that the artist’s intension is not only accusing the harm from the virtual world, but also show the believe that what people lacking is a platform of communication.
Wafaa Bilal- Domestic Tension (2007)
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