second commandment

The exhibition "iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion and art" in the "Center for Art and Media" in Karlsruhe from May to August 2002 is about the second commandment: "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the waters below". Bruno Latour proposes the following questions:
Are we sure we have understood it correctly?
Have we not made a long and terrifying mistake about its meaning?
How can we reconcile this request for a totally an-iconic society, religion and science with the fabulous proliferation of images that characterizes our media-filled cultures?
If images are so dangerous, why do we have so many of them?
If they are innocent, why do they trigger so many and such enduring passions?

Why do images trigger so much passion?

"Freud is perfectly right in insisting on the fact that we are dealing in Egypt with the first counter-religion in the history of humanity. It is here that, for the first time, the distinction has been made (by Akhenaton) that has triggered the hate of those excluded by it. It is since this distinction that hatred exists in the world and the only way to go beyond is to go back to its origins." (Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian)
 Bruno Latour : What we propose here in this catalogue "Iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion, and art" is an archeology of hatred and fanatism.
Why ?
Because we are digging for the origin of an absolute - not a relative - distinction between truth and falsity, between a pure world, absolutely emptied of human-made intermediaries and a disgusting world composed of impure but fascinating human-made mediators.
"If only, some say, we could do without any images. How so much better, purer, faster our access to God, to Nature, to Truth, to Science could be." To which other voices answer :
"Alas, we cannot do without images, intermediaries, mediators of all shapes and forms, because this is the only way to access God, Nature, Truth and Science."

("La vérité est image mais il n'y a pas d'image de la vérité." Marie-José Mondzain)

What has happened that has made images the focus of so much passion? To the point that destroying them, erasing them, defacing them, has been taken as the ultimate touchstone to prove the validity of one's faith, of one's science, of one's critical acumen, of one's artistic creativity?

Furthermore, why is it that all those destroyers of images, those "theoclasts" those iconoclasts, those "ideoclasts" have also generated such a fabulous population of new images, fresh icons, rejuvenated mediators: greater flows of media, more powerful ideas, stronger idols?

And what has happened to explain that after every icono-crises infinite care is taken to reassemble the smashed statues, to save the fragments, to protect the debris? As if it was always necessary to apologize for the destruction of so much beauty, so much horror; as if one was suddenly uncertain about the role and cause of destruction that, before, seemed so urgent, so indispensable; as if the destroyer had suddenly realized that something else had been destroyed by mistake, something for which atonement was now overdue.

Why have images attracted so much hatred?
Why do they always return again, no matter how strongly one wants to get rid of them?
How is it possible to go beyond this cycle of fascination, repulsion, destruction, atonement, that is generated by the forbidden-image worship?

(Bruno Latour, Peter Weibel : "Iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion, and art")

books

Three books to study :

Iconoclash, beyond the image wars in science, religion, and art
Edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel
2002 ZKM, Karlsruhe

Moses the Egyptian
The memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism
Jan Assmann
1997, Harvard University Press

Idols of the Market
Modern Iconoclasm and the Fundamentalist Spectacle
Sven Lütticken
2009, Sternberg Press

Imi Knoebel, 30 stretchers, 1968 - 1969