Defunktion©

My Sweet Lord

The title says it all. Artist Cosimo Cavallaro has recently managed the simple task of pissing off the Catholic Church. Simple because it’s really not too difficult to create offensive art, the real skill is in creating something that actually has some semblance of aesthetic appeal past the initial frisson of excitement one feels when viewing something that’s going to rile religious (or other) authorities.

It’s the medium in particular of Cavallaro’s piece that has drawn our attention - chocolate. This is nothing new in terms of artistic practice and Cavallaro himself has indeed experimented with food-stuffs as medium before: his cheese series featured works such as a Cheese Boot, Cheese Chair and a room covered in cheese, entitled rather cunningly, Cheese Room. Cavallaro tends to take things to extremes though, with his cheese series he ended up creating Cheese House.

Opening soon at LAB in New York, My Sweet Lord is a 1.8 metre suspended sculpture of Jesus in his traditional cross-pose. This, of course, is usual Church-based fare - you can find a depiction of a spread-armed Jesus at just about any Cathedral or Church around the world - except for the fact that Cavallaro’s is made entirely of chocolate. So, naturally, the Catholics are angry, speaking to the BBC, a spokesperson for the Catholic League said that the sculpture is, “… one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever.”

And consider the fact that Cavallaro is of Italian parentage! It just makes the whole notion of giant choco-effigys of JC so much more delicious for us and potentially harder to swallow for the Catholic Church.

So, is the Catholic League being a tad over-sensitive? Could this really be one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever. A Chocolate Christ at a small (but no less influential) gallery in New York? I don’t remember Tom Waits having so much trouble with his song of immaculate confection. It seems that as soon as Cavallaro gave visual form to this notion, it seriously affected the sensibilities of certain religious groups. I suppose one man’s food of the Gods is another’s blasphemy.

Perhaps this could be an emerging theme? If so, we can’t wait for Cavallaro’s Bacon Chief Rabbi.

Wafaa Bilal

Two years ago, now defunct Live-Shot.com - a Texas-based hunting company - began offering paying visitors the opportunity to shoot (and kill) real deer online. Live-Shot eventually closed its doors, but not before diversifying the business model - the original company’s legacy now remains in the form of Live-Paintball.com: pay some money and shoot live people with a paintball gun controlled via the Internet.

The opportunity to experience this form of remote violence, either via direct interaction or just observing others, is enticing. We have an opportunity not only to gratify and indulge through control and affect, but to examine and explore ourselves. The problem, aside from the shooting and killing of actual animals, is that Live-Shot commoditised the experience, removing the opportunity for a certain kind of introspection - a cultural analysis free from the notion of something so utterly distasteful as killing and maiming.

Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal, now based in Chicago, certainly won’t be free from criticism either, despite creating an installation that explores the concepts of control and interaction, via remote shooting, in a completely different context. Bilal has set himself up as the centre of an installation in which he lives in a single room under the gaze of a user-controlled webcam and paintball rifle. The work, entitled Domestic Tension, has Bilal living 24-hours-a-day for a month in one space, constantly connected to his audience, who can observe, chat or just shoot at him through the installation’s website.

Some 40,000 rounds were fired in the first two-and-a-half weeks of the work, and the project has already drawn the attention of a group of hackers who managed to fire the gun 20,000 times in 24 hours. Unsurprisingly, almost everything in Bilal’s living quarters is now covered in the yellow paint of the gun.

The level of audience interaction means that the online participants are as much the subject of the work as the reactions of the artist. His fate relies on these observers, be they understanding, unsympathetic or simply idiotic. In addition to the ever-present threat of the paintballs, Bilal only eats food donated by strangers, which has produced an audience reaction at the opposing end of the scale: people have donated food, items, and have even taken turns at firing the gun away from him so as to deprive those who wish to target the artist himself.

Bilal probably did not predict his own reactions to the varied forms of audience participation, and is clearly shaken and touched by his experiences. He shares his thoughts on a daily Youtube video blog, which will continue until the end of the installation on June 4. Although you may have your own idea of how you’ll approach interaction with Bilal, the interesting part occurs when you’re at the controls - faced with this man and this gun. Visit now as there are only a few days left to find out how you’ll behave on Domestic Tension.

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