Aug. 12 (Bloomberg) -- I wasn't prepared to be devastated by the lurching, blindfolded figure in an orange jumpsuit, gasping for air as a hooded man in black poured water down his mouth.

``Waterboard Thrill Ride,'' Steve Powers's installation, is disturbing in a way that journalistic accounts of torture can only approximate. It left me wrecked.

True, I wasn't there by accident (unlike, say, nameless others further south in the lovely seaside resort of Guantanamo Bay). I'd actually come to see a man being tortured.

How, I wondered, was a work of protest art going to fit into the step-right-up, fun-and-frolic atmosphere of Coney Island on a white-hot August afternoon?

After all, this strip of ocean beach and boardwalk off Brooklyn is New York's Lido, a populist gathering place for swimming, sunning and strutting, where everyone is hawking their wares. Step away from the boardwalk, however, and you're quickly in a surreal zone between the beach and reality, where trash- strewn lots and abandoned cars share the streetscape with freak shows, the Wonder Wheel and gelato carts.

On West 12th Street off Surf Avenue, I found what I was looking for and climbed the short cinderblock pyramid up to a barred window. Within was a squalid room where a filthy sink and fuse box were set off by bright red block letters on the far wall reading DON'T WORRY IT'S ONLY A DREAM. I watched the two figures, motionless dummies until I inserted a dollar bill into a slot next to the bars. That's when the water flowed and the prone body lurched.

Donny Vomit

Next door, a barker beckoned passersby to pony up for the sword swallower, the snake handler, Donny Vomit the Human Blockhead and other attractions ``Guaranteed Alive!'' in the Coney Island Circus Sideshow.

The figures in the ``Waterboard Thrill Ride'' aren't alive. They're ``crummy animatronic robots,'' Powers told me in a telephone interview, and any doubt about the point of his show is dispensed with by the cartoon on the gray storefront. A sinister blue man is getting ready to pour water on SpongeBob SquarePants, who is saying ``It doesn't GITMO better!'' a reference to the practice of waterboarding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. SpongeBob is grinning like it's, you know, a day at the beach.

In other words, this is classic Coney Island fakery but of a political nature -- a chamber of horrors that sets us in uncomfortable proximity to a practice that is all too real for a population under our control.

`Democracy in America'

The ``Waterboard Thrill Ride'' is one of four works commissioned by Creative Time, a privately funded sponsor of public art, for ``Democracy in America,'' an exhibition that will take over the Park Avenue Armory in the fall.

``For 100 years, Coney Island has been a funhouse mirror that reflects and refracts America,'' Powers said. ``I wanted to get people thinking about this issue, and I did it in a way that's completely Coney Island -- it's frightening but irreverent.''

And yet I found myself responding to it as one does to a too-real dream, or in this case, nightmare. My heart was racing and I could feel the blood drain from my face.

A bit earlier, I had watched a mother, then father and then their teenage daughter climb, pink-faced, up to the window, only to scamper away before looking inside, as if afraid whatever lurked inside would bite them.

Then I watched as Doriana Bellovona, a 22-year-old tourist from Rome carrying a blue plush koala bear, actually did look inside (though she didn't spring for the dollar). Italy has its own tradition of rough satire, stretching from commedia dell'arte to the anti-establishment clowning of Nobel winner Dario Fo.

Preaching to the Choir

``No, this is much stronger than that,'' said Doriana, whose English was near-flawless. She was impressed that such a powerful anti-government work had been plunked down in the middle of this seamy arcade. There were no curators, no jargon-spouting intermediaries to explain it to the un-hip. You'd expect to see something like this in a modern museum, she said.

``Sure,'' I replied. ``Where it would preach to the choir.'' I had to explain what that meant, but then she nodded.

For Powers, there's no disjunction between ``Waterboard Thrill Ride'' and its immediate surroundings.

``Coney Island has always provided an unflinching look at the world,'' he said.

That's the horror of it.

``Waterboard Thrill Ride,'' sponsored by the public art fund Creative Time, is at West 12th Street off Surf Avenue through late August and will be reinstalled at the Park Avenue Armory from Sept. 21 to 27. Information: +1-212-206-6674; http://www.creativetime.org.

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: Jeremy Gerard in New York at jgerard2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: August 12, 2008 00:01 EDT