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Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Wafaa Bilal, at The Sanctuary for Independent Media... SHUT DOWN

Wafaa Bilal, re-opened at The Sanctuary for Independent Media, has now ALSO been shut down. This is the place that was going to show the Wafaa Bilal piece after it was canceled by RPI. Wow.

Sanctuary for Independent Media
The City of Troy has closed Wafaa Bilal's installation.

That was the sign on the front door when I visited today to see the Wafaa Bilal piece. Two guys were out front fixing the porch light... they said I could go in and look around, but that the piece would not be screened.

BREAKDOWN to catch you up:

Wednesday 3/5 pm - piece is shown at RPI
Thursday 3/6 am - show is closed at RPI
Monday 3/10 pm - piece is shown at The Sanctuary for Independent Media. A protest outside is led by Robert Mirch, majority leader of the County Legislature.
Tuesday 3/11 am - The Sanctuary is notified that due to code violations it cannot hold public gatherings. City inspectors had visited The Sanctuary on Monday afternoon, before the screening, ostensibly drawn by media attention after The Sanctuary had announced it would show the Balil piece.

UPDATE: Robert Mirch, leader of the Monday protest in front of The Sanctuary for Independent Media, is the City of Troy Public Works Commissioner, responsible for enforcing code violation. What an embarassment...

Sanctuary for Independent Media
An empty room.

Sanctuary for Independent Media
Sanctuary Archives.

Sanctuary for Independent Media
Sanctuary for Independent Media, Troy, NY.

RELATED: Read the 3/12/08 Troy Record newspaper article.... and Game Politics (many comments), Paddy Johnson, NEWSgrist, We Make Money Not Art.

3 comments:

Bruce Wilhelm said...

Where does the exhibition go next?

Martin said...

i don't know what is happening.

i feel bad for the rpi arts department, because it's excellent (they are the ones that brought it in the first place). maybe they are fighting to get it back...

and the sanctuary is trying to get up to code, so maybe they can still host it.

Anonymous said...

hello all,
although i am not american (i live in montreal) i just went online and donated to the sanctuary, which i feel like is a good way of trying to get this show up and running as fast as possible....if they can get the building up to code, then they can do the show, or it makes it much more difficult for the city of troy to use that tactic....

i suggest to anyone who can do the same to do so! thanks for the information posted on this blog, it was really informative...