Art is in the third eye of visual artist

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York University arts professor might not have eyes on the back of his head, but he’s coming pretty close.

Wafaa Bilal, a visual artist widely recognized for his interactive and performance pieces, had a small digital camera implanted in the back of his head — all in the name of art.

Bilal said last week that he underwent the procedure for an art project that was commissioned by a new museum in Doha, Qatar, in the Persian Gulf.

Titled “The 3rd I,” it is one of 23 contemporary works commissioned for the opening of the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art on Dec. 30.

The exhibition is titled “Told/Untold/Retold.”

“I am going about my daily life as I did before the procedure,” the Iraqi-born artist said in a statement.

Bilal, who is teaching three courses this semester at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, will wear the camera for one year. It is 2 inches in diameter and less than an inch thick.

The project will raise “important social, aesthetic, political, technological and artistic questions,” he said.

He declined to say when the camera was implanted or other details of the art installation, saying it “will be revealed to the public as part of the museum preview on Dec. 15” and on a website to be launched on the same day, http://www.3rdi.me.

He said he chose to have it put in the back of the head as an allegorical statement about the things we don’t see and leave behind.

How it all fits together is still a bit of a mystery.

The camera will capture his everyday activities at one-minute intervals 24 hours a day and then be transmitted to monitors at the museum, said curators Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath of Art Reoriented, who commissioned Bilal on behalf of the museum.

“He doesn’t have to alter his lifestyle or what he does. In principle, he’s moving on with his life,” Bardaouil told the Associated Press from Doha. “It will be a three-dimensional, real space-and-time experience. Once the piece is revealed, you’ll realize that the camera is only one aspect of the work and there are aspects as important that will be experienced.”

The project has raised challenging questions for NYU, the nation’s largest private school with about 44,000 students.

“As a school of the arts, a school whose mission is to educate artists, we place a high value on his right to free expression in his creative work as an artist,” NYU said in a statement.

“We also take seriously the privacy issues his project raises, its impact on our students, and the importance of preserving trust in the pedagogical relationship between a faculty member and students.”

NYU said it has had numerous “constructive and productive” conversations with the artist and was continuing “to discuss with him the right mechanism to ensure that his camera will not take pictures in NYU buildings.”

But a number of students said they were not overly concerned about their privacy being violated.

“I don’t really know what you would be protecting them (students) from, what would be happening in the classroom that couldn’t be shared,” said Erin Wahed, 22, who graduated in May with a degree in photography but did not take any of Bilal’s classes.

Seth Mrocska, who was friends with some of Bilal’s students but did not have him as a professor before graduating in May, agreed, saying, “It’s not that there’s much to hide in the classroom.”

However, he said he wasn’t OK with the images being transmitted to another country and “shared across a media platform to be stored for all to view.”

Bilal said “The 3rd I” builds on his other body of work that combines performance art, digital and body art and photography “into a unique conceptual piece.”

Many of his previous works have invited debate and controversy.

In a 2007 online installation, “Domestic Tension” in 2007, virtual users could shoot a paintball gun at Bilal 24 hours a day. The Chicago Tribune deemed it “one of the sharpest works of political art to be seen in a long time” and named him Artist of the Year that year.

A 2008 video game piece, “Virtual Jihadi,” was censored by the city of Troy, N.Y., where it was shown. In it, Bilal inserted an avatar of himself as a suicide bomber hunting then-President George W. Bush. The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a claim against the City of Troy for closing the arts center showing the work.

The artist has said the work was meant to shed light on groups that traffic in hateful stereotypes of Arab culture with video games like Quest for Saddam.

In a recent live performance piece titled “... and Counting,” Bilal had his back tattooed with a borderless map of Iraq covered with one dot for each Iraqi and American casualty. Bilal, whose brother was killed by a missile at an Iraqi checkpoint in 2004, used the piece to highlight how the deaths of Iraqis are largely invisible to the American public. The dots for the Iraqis were represented by green UV ink visible only under black light, while Americans were represented by permanent ink.

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NYU Photography Professor Embedding Camera In His Head

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Sir, There's a Camera in Your Head

By ERICA ORDEN

Students long have complained about teachers with eyes on the backs of their heads.

A New York University photography professor is going one further by implanting a camera in the back of his head.

The project is being commissioned by a new museum in Qatar. But the work, which would broadcast a live stream of images from the camera to museum visitors, is sparking a debate on campus over the competing values of creative expression and student privacy.

Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi assistant professor in the photography and imaging department of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, intends to undergo surgery in coming weeks to install the camera, according to several people familiar with the project.

For one year, Mr. Bilal's camera will take still pictures at one-minute intervals, then feed the photos to monitors at the museum. The thumbnail-sized camera will be affixed to his head through a piercing-like attachment, his NYU colleagues say. Mr. Bilal declined to comment for this story.

The artwork, titled "The 3rd I," is intended as "a comment on the inaccessibility of time, and the inability to capture memory and experience," according to press materials from the museum, known as Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art. Mr. Bilal's work would be among the inaugural exhibits of Mathaf, scheduled to open next month.

Because Mr. Bilal is an active professor, teaching three courses this semester and scheduled to teach this spring, his special camera could capture not just his personal activity, but also his interactions with students.

That possibility, of exposing private encounters without participants' consent, has raised concerns among NYU administrators and faculty.

"Obviously you don't want students to be under the burden of constant surveillance; it's not a good teaching environment," said Fred Ritchin, associate chairman of the department.

After Mr. Bilal received the commission, he informed the department chairwoman, Deborah Willis, of his project in January. "I said, what if students are upset?" Ms. Willis recalled. "What if you're documenting what they don't want you to see?"

Ms. Willis and Mr. Bilal brought the issue to the attention of the deans, Ms. Willis said, and Mr. Bilal presented the concept for his project at a faculty meeting several months ago, according to a university spokesman, John Beckman.

"It's fair to say that a good deal of discussion ensued," Mr. Beckman said. The school is still determining what rules it will set for Mr. Bilal and his camera on campus.

During the course of the discussions, Mr. Bilal has informed all of his students of his plans and has agreed to cover the camera with a black lens cap while on university property, according to Mr. Ritchin. Another proposal would require him to turn off the camera while in NYU buildings, Mr. Beckman said.

Mr. Bilal's personal activity is a separate matter, of course. "I guess anybody accepting a dinner invitation will have to realize that certain things will be going on," Mr. Ritchin said.

While Mr. Bilal's project represents a novel challenge for NYU, it is hardly the first time his work has caused a stir.

For a 2008 project, "Virtual Jihadi," Mr. Bilal hacked a video game to insert an avatar of himself as a suicide-bomber hunting President George W. Bush. The work incited a wave of protests, both for and against it, and eventually the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Mr. Bilal's defense after the exhibition was shut down.

In his 2007 work, "Domestic Tension," Mr. Bilal confined himself to a gallery in Chicago for a month, inviting the public to visit a website where they could "shoot" the artist by remotely firing a paintball gun at him.

And in June, Mr. Bilal tattooed on to his back a map of Iraqi cities for a work called "...and Counting." The names of the cities were spelled out in Arabic script, with dots added to mark the location of American and Iraqi casualties.

The new museum where Mr. Bilal's camera-based work is to be shown is overseen by the Qatar Musuems Authority, whose other projects include the National Museum of Qatar and the Museum of Islamic Art, which opened in 2008.

A curator of the exhibition that includes Mr. Bilal's work says the artist defies categorization. "He's not really a photographer, he's not really a video artist, he's not really a performance artist," curator Till Fellrath said.

"Whatever artwork he creates, he doesn't want people to just look at it, he wants them to participate in it."

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A23

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