Wafaa Bilal

Caught a talk this week by Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal, and was fascinated by his incredibly committed and at the very least literally uncomfortable performances (SHOOT AN IRAQI and ...AND COUNTING) and other video-gaming inspired pieces (VIRTUAL JIHADI, presented with great difficulty and eventual/inevitable censorship in Troy, NY, and scourge of the RPI College Republicans organization, per their blog). Bilal's evening of discussion was presented as part of the ongoing series "You Should Have Been Here an Hour Ago" organized by Arturo Vidich of Culture Push which also did a fantastic evening of workshops as part of The Whitney Biennial two Fridays ago where I observed how to properly suture a pig's trotter, how to cut a single bagel into a linked chain, and how to make ravioli from scratch.