Lecture: Wafaa Bilal

Wed, Mar 10, 2010 starting at 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM
 
 
Wafaa Bilal
 
Wednesday, 10 March 2010 at 7:30pm
Lecture Hall
Free and open to the public
 
Born in Iraq, Wafaa Bilal devises interactive Internet encounters in part to inform audiences around the world about conditions in his native land. In his installation Domestic Tension, he placed himself in front of a paintball gun wired to an interactive Internet platform through which people could shoot at him. His video-game piece Virtual Jihadi was shut down by Renssellaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, less than a day after it opened—contributing to his being named one of 2008’s 15 Most Politically Fascinating People by GamePolitics.com. Exhibition venues include the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Milwaukee Art Museum in Milwaukee (Wisconsin, USA). Artist residencies include the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga (California) and CATWALK in Catskill (New York). Shoot an Iraqi: Art, Life, and Resistance under the Gun (2008) contains a first-person account of his life. Bilal teaches at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. http://www.wafaabilal.com/
 
For full details about visiting artists and scholars, please click here: Spring 2010 Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series.
 
Follow SFAI events and programs on Twitter:
 
 
SFAI’s exhibitions and public programs—a component of which is the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series—are supported in part by the Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund. Wafaa Bilal’s lecture is presented with support from the UC Berkeley Center for New Media.