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?

iconoclasm II

The idea for a ban on images, how and why is it born?

In the ten commandments, inscripted on two stone tablets which God wrote with his finger and delivered by Moses, it is on a very important second place :

I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
1 : Do not have any other gods before me.
2 : You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
3 : You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. 

Because images can be powerful and therefore dangerous?
People are simple and scared and therefore they like to worship an image, of a golden calf for example. Is it that bad? God is a jealous god and that is very human quality. He or she or it has no form, god is fire, or light, sound, clouds, thunder and lightning.
Why is that jealous god so afraid of image making?
Abstract or figurative images are they equal from power?
The most powerful images are pornographic images?

"The more power pictures have, the less we seem to know about how they operate"
(Peter Weibel in Iconoclash).
To combat the figurative image, you must first acknowledge, admire and confess the figurative image?
Idolatry and iconoclasm are finally dealing with the pornographic image?
Powerful images in the vast flood of images today are images of what? Of sex, of violence, of war, of death? 


Images don't cry...