Following is video of a talk I attended given by Swedish artist Lars Vilks a week or so ago. The talk was sponsored by the International Free Press Society and local Rabbi Jonathan Hausman, who perhaps will relate the tale of the security hurdles he had to jump over to bring Vilks to town.

Vilks, you may remember, is the Swedish artist who participated in a local art exposition by submitting a sketch of the Prophet Muhammad as a "roundabout dog." The roundabout dog phenomenon was a local folk-art fad that had Swedes running out to traffic roundabouts (we call them "rotaries" around here) and placing sculptures of dogs in the center.

Vilks' sketch resulted in the now to be expected round of death threats, but also arson, assault, and round the clock security not to be believed.

He began by discussing Kant, and his feeling that the role of the artist is to push and test and find the limits...to be a professional pain in the ass, in other words. Unlike the usual annoying artist however, who lashes out at easy targets -- Christians, conservatives, George Bush, Israel... Vilks actually tested the limits with global Islam, and guess what? He found a limit.

And by doing so, he exposed as cowards and hypocrites all those so-called brave souls in the art community who left him to hang by himself.

During the talk, Vilks refers to events shown in the video in this post.

Video quality is spotty. Vilks was giving a presentation in front of a projector screen, so he is dark much of the time, and his accent may be difficult to understand, especially in the echoing room, but here it is. Here are all six parts in one playlist:

In the extended entry are all six individual parts (the video embeds slightly larger).

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6: