Where's Jill Greenberg When You Need Her?

This just in from Art Forum as critiqued by Andrew Hultkrans
David Dames being waterboarded at a performance in conjunction with Steve Powers's Waterboard Thrill Ride.

Inside the room ... two paramedics stood by a gurney behind the crowd of thirty or so spectators (many of them journalists). Powers introduced himself and the event by saying that he didn’t intend the Thrill Ride to be political art, but “more like life drawing,” a representational act that “couldn’t be pushed to the right or the left.” He praised Coney Island, where he has lived and worked for years, as a “good place to confront horror.” He noted that today was the Feast of the Assumption (when Mary ascends into heaven) and that Catholics worldwide celebrate it with water rites.

Defending the provocative artwork ... Powers has said, “What’s more obscene, the official position that waterboarding is not torture or our official position that it’s a thrill ride?”

Now, let’s be clear, anyone who maintains that repeated, ritualized suffocation isn’t torture is a) not being serious, b) is an authoritarian sadist, or c) is covering his ass for war-crime liability. Powers has generated a lot of gawking press with his rather unsubtle piece, but at least he’s willing to eat from the pot he’s stirring, which is more than one can say for Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales.

Yeah, another piece that can't be pushed right or left. I kinda remember that the Feast of the Assumption is also observed with fruits and herbs. Probably some of that going on here too. Herbiness and fruitiness. Why is it not a surprise that many of the voyeurs, er, art loving spectators present were journalists? Or that our critic could fit in a side-eye to Dick Cheney? Or that when the boarding was over and the fluids towelled up all in the audience were invited to the Freak Bar next door, for "beer and bonhomie?" Down the hatch, bro.