Publications

HAĽÁK, Miroslav: Abu Ghraib a kontext politickej „ikony“ 21. storočia. Niekoľko bodov k otázkam obrazových modifikácií z hľadiska ich znakovej povahy. In: Profil – súčasného výtvarného umenia – contemporary art magazine, S. 8-31., 2014, č. 2, XXI, ISSN 1335 – 9770./

http://www.profilart.sk/profil/profil-c-2-2014/

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The visual material unmasking the inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners of war perpetrated by army officers in the Abu Ghraib prison is used in this study to suggest several important scopes related to the nature and consequences of such visual stimuli, as well as to the very mediatisation strategies that had caused them. Although using the iconic nature of sign the semiotics tries to answer the question what effect the image has on the viewers and what is their ability to interpret the similarities represented in it, various other factors that participate in creating the social effect and cause similar visual stimuli are to be considered as well. The extraordinary character of these pictures dwells in the interplay between temporal and spatial factors related to the escalated situation of the allied military intervention in Iraq. Also through compromising photographs, the doubts about the rightness of this operation increasingly shift from the acceptance of a military action to remove the non-democratic regime towards the image of a strained clash of cultures (Persian-Arabic and Euro-American) and religions (Islam and Christianity). It is paradoxical; however, that these extremely sensitive selfish or selfless actions have been reduced to several selected “icons” of political failure in the 21st century. The possibility to publish these compromising pictures almost without any limitations also allows for numerous re-interpretations complementing the connotation levels of the term “Abu Ghraib”, including the fear of the representational ability of image, fear of promoting the image and its message, as well as the image itself, signifying the unwanted object or unwanted facts. An intensive piece of news modified through the channels of mass media can at its end convey surprising information and to obscure or to clarify only a certain part of the content range of an extensive political-strategic issue. In this case, semiotics makes possible to effectively point to the formal mechanisms occurring against the backdrop of production, dissemination, interpretation and modification of individual photographs, but also suggest the seriousness of the possible abuse of image and its power. The title uses the term “icon”, i.e. a broader understanding of visual medium with its added value in the form of certain specified levels of meaning (cult of image, its popularity, its function as the carrier of conventionalized contents etc.) This term is analyzed in the in the text from the perspective of the method of visual semiotics, therefore the designation of the phenomenon in question in the visual material corresponds to one of the triad of sign models related to the object according to S. Ch. Peirce, i.e. the iconic, thus the term “icon”.

(c) Ingo Blank: Lucifer company – Leuchte „Abu Ghraib"