Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi-born American video artist, was invited by RPI to be an artist-in-residence, and to exhibit one of his works. The work he chose to present was "Virtual Jihadi." It was a hacked version of Al Qaeda's hacked version of Petrilla Entertainment's Quest for Saddam, a low-budget exploitative FPS in which you, you know try to get Saddam. The Al Qaeda version was called "The Night of Bush Capturing," which basically just replaced the Iraqi soldiers in the first game with American soldiers, and swapped Bush for Saddam.
Bilal's version is called The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi, and according to his personal statement:
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"This artwork is meant to bring attention to the vulnerability of Iraqi civilians, to the travesties of the current war, and to expose racist generalizations and profiling. Similar games such as "Quest for Saddam" or "America’s Army" promote stereotypical, singular perspectives. My artwork inverts these assumptions, and ultimately demonstrates the vulnerability to recruitment by violent groups like Al Qaeda because of the U.S. occupation of Iraq."
Local students and others in Troy, NY, where RPI is located, protested the exhibition, claiming that Bilal's game "promotes terrorism". Let's parse that: The original game was crude exploitation, the intermediate version a noxious but predictable response by the usual scumbags, and Bilal's version an attempt to open up questions about both the morality of terrorism as well as the morality of America's somewhat crude efforts to suppress it. (Caveat: I have not played Bilal's version, and it does not seem to be available online, and without doing so, I cannot reasonably make strong claims as to its reasonableness. I'd urge Bilal to make it available publicly. Indeed, I'll host it, if he permits.)
As a result of these protests, the school's administration shut down the exhibition, and it was moved to Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy. Shortly thereafter, the city of Troy shut down the Sanctuary, on the grounds of building code violations.
As a result, there have been fervent counter-demonstrations by RPI students both on campus as well as at the Troy city hall.
I don't think there's any question whatsoever that this is prima facie censorship of an artist's work and, of course, condemnable as such.
What's interesting to me, however, is the depth of emotion raised over the work in question. I mean, plenty of art causes a ruckus at times -- crosses in pots of piss and such -- but even though there's an uproar, it's extraordinarily rare for either university administrations or municipal governments to be complicit in censorship. Does the fact that Bilal's work is a game make it more offensive, somehow? Or does the fact that it's a game make it a legitimate target for censorship in a way that a painting, say, would not be?
I'll be at RPI later this month, incidentally, at the RPI Game Symposium, talking on an entirely unrelated matter.
Note: This video gives an excellent overview of the situation, including statements from the artist.
to be honest
I really dislike "art" that is offensive just to be offensive.
Might as well start calling Nickelback art because of all the ears they offend, ha ha zinger!
But seriously, these "conceptual 'artists'" have gotten a little bit loose with their definitions
Well, regarding your
Well, regarding your reflection on games being especially offensive when they try to make such a statement, there is currently a controversy in the so-called "game studies" (an offspring of cultural studies ) between ludologists and narrativists. The first-named tend to appraise games in terms of it´s rules, while the others intend to reduce them to a narrative or discourse. Bilal would obviously sympathize with the narrativists, of course. The same, I guess, could be said about the author of Super Columbine Massacre.
Personally, I agree that many computer games bear many possibilities for narrative, but the specificity of games is elsewhere. I´d trade you a hundred "art" games for one X-Com or Civilization.
Cheers.
Transcend
The whole Narrativist/Ludologist thing was resolved a few years ago man. Passage, for example, doesn't have the systemic depth of Civ, but it does use gameplay to communicate an emergent narrative. Case closed, let's move on.
I suspect a mod of an FPS can only weakly make a systemic argument about the nature of terrorism, but it's better than the See No Evil bullshit that the industry puts out in it's ceaseless, inadvertent militarization.
The only think people will react to more vehemently than a threat on their family, homeland ect. is the threat to make them think.
N v. L
Oh, pooh. The narrativist vs. ludologist debate will in fact never be resolved, because the tension between gameplay and story is inherent to any game that tries to tell a story. Not that the debate doesn't get old, and we're entitled to say "oh, we're so beyond that," but it's not resolvable, basically.
None of which has much of anything to do with the apparent fact that someone pushing the boundaries of what's acceptable in games, and working in a chancy area fraught with political conflict, has apparently been censored both by the RPI university administration -and- by the local government, in what is ostensibly a free nation.
And ostensibly, we're supposed to be one voice arguing for the artistic validity of 'the game', and for game developers' right (and perhaps obligation) to push the boundaries and address risky subjects.
Why is it that, as far as I can tell, within the game media, only Gamepolitics.com has picked up on this?
Army of Two
And actually Yahtzee's review of Army of Two seems entirely germane in this context.
Irresponsible
I support every artist's right to create and distribute any art that they find within their creative sphere of influence.
However, I believe that by not making his game available to the public, Mr. Bilal is acting irresponsibly. He's certainly getting plenty of media exposure, and many gamers (and non-gamers) are more than happy to rush to his defense. It's become our natural inclination in this sort of situation, and on a personal level I absolutely support Mr. Bilal's right to make and distribute art. I am as infuriated as the next gamer by the treatment to which he's been subjected.
But I find it quite difficult to engage in any meaningful discourse on the subject without knowing anything significant about the content of his game. It's quite easy to disdain the local college and government for judging the game without playing it, but who can say that they have?
While his game may certainly be art, that does not mean that it belongs in our colleges. If you broaden the definition of art enough, even child pornography can fall into its boundaries.
I am not comparing his work to child pornography, and such a comparison might very well be unfounded and wrong. But I don't know that, and neither do you if you haven't played the game.
I simply think that the gamer community needs to experience the game firsthand before we throw our full support behind it. I truly do think that it's irresponsible for Mr. Bilal to allow such debate and media attention to be given without allowing everyone involved - both his supporters and his detractors - the chance to judge his work first-hand.
(These comments were in no way directed at Mr. Costik, just to be clear. They are directed toward the general knee-jerk reaction that the gamer community shows in these situations and which was displayed in part by the embedded video.)
Availability
I agree, at least to a degree. I'd like to be able to play the game and come to a more reasoned conclusion as to its merits -- as a work of art, and as a game. (My a priori assumption is that it's not much of a game, and that its merits, if any, lie in other spheres.) My offer to host the game is a modest prompt in that direction -- and in fact I've written to Mr. Bilal with that offer.
I will point out, though, that there are copyright issues; his work is, pretty clearly, "derivative" under the meaning of the copyright laws, of the original game, Quest for Saddam. Offering it in an installation environment, such as a university or gallery setting is one thing; making it freely available as a download is another.
It's also clear, from other contexts, that Mr. Perilla (the creator of the original game) is fairly right-wing, and my assumption, at least, is that he'd sue if someone offered a "derivative work" as free, without his permission.
I made the offer to host the game anyway, on the grounds that I'm pretty sure I could find people to defend me in the event of a lawsuit, and that I could, in fact, prevail, on free speech grounds; but I think it's entirely reasonable for Mr. Bilal to hesitate about making it publicly available, because of the copyright issues involved.
So, you know, it's not that cut-and-dried.
Understandable
Avoidance of a lawsuit is certainly a valid reason for Mr. Bilal to carefully assess the risk of hosting the game on his own site, but it's become increasingly clear that it's impossible to suppress information on the internet - whether that information be coded to hold music, movies, or games.
It wouldn't be hard for him to release the game through alternative sources, and with the controversy surrounding the game it would probably do passably well via bit torrent at least until the media attention dies down. Once it's out there, it's impossible to make it disappear.
I don't pretend to understand the situation as well as Mr. Bilal does. It's very possible that there are forces at play that I'm not aware of, but from my perspective he owes it to his supporters and to his own artistic vision to do everything within his power to make the game available.
You sound a bit like the
You sound a bit like the Borg from Star Trek, AndrooGee. Release all information! You can't resist information being free! Not that it isn't true, but it is how that sounds.