INTRODUCTION
The project Landscapes of Absence
explores the ethical issues around the use of ISIS
propaganda within broadcast media. Beginning in 2014 a
series of brutal beheadings of Western journalists made
it too dangerous to report from areas under the control
of the self-proclaimed Islamic State. This project
examines the use of propaganda in the absence of
reliable and objective images. While objectivity in
journalism is a contested issue, the use of the term in
this project is meant to indicate a fact driven,
evidence based, and verifiable approach to reporting.
The project uses images drawn from eight beheading
incidents disseminated through ISIS media outlets. In
this project, these images are digitally erased, leaving
only the landscape and the absence of the dehumanized
image as a metaphor for the larger issue of the absence
of reliable reporting from this region. In describing
these images as "dehumanized", I intend to convey that
the images created by ISIS rob dignity from these
victims of violence explicitly for the purpose of
propaganda as a mediated spectacle. While there is an
important lineage of erasure in modern and contemporary
art, this project uses erasure for a different end. Much
of the use of erasure in visual art since Modernism has
been for iconoclastic ends, whereas this project uses
erasure as a way to reassert dignity through the
signification of the absence of the dehumanized image.
The project includes a series of eight 22.5"x30"
descriptive print works about the beheading incidents,
four 40"x60" landscape mural prints, a single-channel
video, along with a print publication with information
about the project. The project was first exhibited in
April of 2016 in the Caestecker Gallery at the C.J.
Rodman Center for the Arts on the campus of Ripon
College in Ripon, WI.
THE ISLAMIC STATE AS A LANDSCAPE OF
ABSENCE
Terrain under which the self-proclaimed
Islamic State exerts its control becomes a landscape of
absence. The Islamic State emerged from the insurgency
against the U.S. invasion of Iraq as an Al-Qaeda
affiliate. This organization is known by several names
and acronyms, such as: IS (Islamic State), ISIS (Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria or the Islamic State in Iraq and
al-Sham), ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant),
or in Arabic as al-Dawla al-Islamiyah fil Iraq wa
al-Sham, leading to the acronym Daesh or Da'ish.(1)
In February of 2014, Al-Qaeda formally cut ties with
ISIS, disagreeing with their tactics and the group's
focus on the seizure of territory.(2)
By June of 2014, after successfully expanding its
control over several Iraqi cities, ISIS proclaimed
itself to be a worldwide caliphate.(3)
The extra-legal territorial entity of the
self-proclaimed Islamic State, has little precedence,
and no desire to legitimately enter the world community.
In the past, even the most murderous and despotic
regimes, such as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or the
Taliban in Afghanistan, found it useful to maintain
standing in the United Nations or to develop
international relations through the exchange of
ambassadors. As Graeme Wood pointed out in his in-depth
article in the Atlantic titled "What ISIS Really Wants,"
to the Islamic State, accepting these kinds of
international norms is equivalent to heresy, and would
constitute the recognition of "an authority other than
God's."(4)
Several western politicians and media pundits have
described ISIS in hyperbolic language as a spreading
"cancer."(5)
While this moralistic language oversimplifies the issues
surrounding the emergence of the self-proclaimed Islamic
State, the territorial governing body they have brought
into being insists upon an existence defined by a set of
rules different than any recognized international norm.
Currently, the Islamic State's sphere of control is
imposed upon multiple existing national territorial
boundaries, and its borders are in continual conflict
and flux. As the Islamic State's boundaries shrink in
Iraq and Syria, they further expand into areas as
geographically dispersed as Libya, Nigeria, Indonesia,
and Russia.(6)
With the succession of brutal
beheadings of journalists operating in ISIS territory
that began in the autumn of 2014, objective reporting in
ISIS controlled territory effectively ceased. News
agencies stopped sending journalists into these regions
due to the dangerous situation on the ground, and some
major global news agencies stated they will not accept
work from freelance reporters working in areas
controlled by ISIS discouraging others to risk their
lives.(7)
ISIS issued its own rules for journalists operating in
their territory. The first rule requires all journalists
within their territory to swear allegiance to the
Islamic State.(8)
Given the lack of regular and reliable reporting, little
is known about daily life within what has been described
by counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman as a
"governmental amoeba" constituting the self-proclaimed
Islamic State. Fishman coined this term in a March 2007
essay titled "Fourth Generation Governance," written for
the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. His essay
described the theoretical foundations for the
justification of a modern Islamic nation-state by ISIS
in their document "Informing the People about the Birth
of the Islamic State of Iraq." With this document,
written before ISIS claimed any territory, they
envisioned an Islamic State as an amorphous state of
constantly shifting zones of control, with borders
extending "so far as men stand with guns to defend it."(9)
ISIS propaganda directed at the West focuses on war,
provocation, and intimidation, but in the areas it
controls or is attempting to take over, it paints a
picture of the caliphate it wishes to build as a
family-friendly, Islamic utopia.(10)
Reports from refugees and others who have escaped ISIS
territory reveal a different reality. As a United
Nations report outlining ISIS war crimes in Syria
states:
ISIS has perpetrated murder
and other inhumane acts, enslavement, rape,
sexual slavery and violence, forcible
displacement, enforced disappearance and
torture. These acts have been committed as
part of a widespread and systematic attack
against the civilian population […].(11)
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Without regular and reliable reporting
these horrific conditions remain out of sight, while at
the same time the 24-hour broadcast news cycle in the
United States churns out the Islamic State's own
sophisticatedly crafted propaganda images of shock and
horror, or the ISIS battle footage of black clad
militants marching defiantly and triumphantly into
cities as B-roll footage and visual shorthand for the
group. As Emily Horne, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State
Department's special envoy leading the international
coalition against ISIS under the Obama Administration
stated, "When that file footage gets out there it
actually risks bolstering their image, and can
contribute to foreign fighter recruitment and supporting
the myth of their invincibility."(12)
These images inspire fear and outrage as they cycle on
in the media, and they are meant to. The U.S. State
Department and the Pentagon have urged broadcasters to
use alternate images of the conflict, for instance
footage of U.S. troops training Iraqi security forces or
video of airstrikes against ISIS targets.(13)
These suggestions would supplant a narrative of the
conflict with an official U.S. counter-narrative, but
would unfortunately get no closer to the truth for those
living within the self-proclaimed Islamic State. In the
absence of objective counter-images uncovering the
reality of the situation, the propaganda ISIS creates is
a seductive spectacle, yet these images continue to
underscore the narrative they intend for us to see.
IMAGE ETHICS AND ISIS PROPAGANDA
ISIS crafts provocative propaganda for
maximum impact and shock in the West, yet these
atrocities are all too present in the areas under ISIS
control. The creators of these images exploit the
spectacular nature of the propaganda they create. As the
insightful cultural critic Susan Sontag noted in her
book, Regarding the Pain of Others, the nature
of the spectacle is a privileged position. As she
writes, "To speak of reality becoming a spectacle is a
breathtaking provincialism. It universalizes the viewing
habits of a small, educated population living in the
rich part of the world, where news has been converted
into entertainment."(14)
As Sontag so eloquently points out, the rhetoric of
spectacle conceals the all-too-real lived experience
beyond the facade of the images we consume. The
brutality of the Islamic State's medieval sense of
justice is put on display in the public squares of the
cities they control, but their brutality is also crafted
for Western audiences through sophisticated networks of
communication where "YouTube becomes the pike on which
the severed heads are displayed."(15)
The sensational spectacle of beheadings is meant to
serve several simultaneous purposes; as gruesome
propaganda calling attention to ISIS and their aims, as
direct provocation to Western governments and religious
authorities, as a demonstration of the Islamic State's
medieval sense of justice, as a way to lure new
recruits, to assist fundraising, and finally as an
assertion of the Islamic State's control over their own
image. The highly sophisticated propaganda videos by
ISIS seem to be created specifically to circulate
through Western broadcast and social media. The now
infamous beheading videos do not actually show the
details of the gruesome acts. As Alex Gibney, a
documentary film director and producer, commented:
It is an interesting
aesthetic choice not to show the actual
beheading, I can't be sure, but they seemed to
dial it back just enough so that it would get
passed around. In a way, it makes it all the
more chilling, that it was so carefully
stage-managed and edited to achieve the
maximum impact.(16)
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This deliberateness speaks to the
sophisticated nature of their efforts. These are not the
crude low-quality ransom videos that have been created
by other militant organizations that have proliferated
particularly since the 2002 abduction and beheading of
the American-Israeli journalist Daniel Pearl in
Pakistan.(17)
These videos are scripted and planned, shot in High
Definition video using multiple camera angles, and
employing state of the art graphics and logos. There has
been much speculation about the manipulation of images
in their videos using advanced techniques like green
screen production and rotoscoping.(18)
Beyond the advanced production techniques of the videos,
ISIS has also found ways to magnify their message
through social media channels with the use of Twitter
bots, hashtag hijacking, and by as J.M. Berger pointed
out in his 2014 Atlantic article: "to focus-group
messaging and branding concepts, much like a Western
corporation might."(19)
Years before the headlines concerning the hacking of the
2016 U.S. Presidential Elections and the use of social
media to amplify divisive messaging by Russian troll
farms, ISIS was exploiting social media platforms to
deliver their message in a manner greatly
disproportionate to their actual base of support. By
continuing to circulate these images western broadcast
media became unwitting accomplices further amplifying
ISIS provocation as it echoed around the globe.
ICONOCLASM, ERASURE, AND UNDOING
THE DEHUMANIZED IMAGE
Beyond the dehumanization of the
victims in the beheading videos, ISIS has also been
waging a war against world heritage by destroying
culturally important archeological sites within their
sphere of control. These acts of destruction were
broadcast for a worldwide audience as another act of
ruthless provocation. In response to these acts of
destruction there have been several absurdist articles
making the connection between the iconoclasm of ISIS and
the provocative statements made by the Futurists a
century ago, making the claim that this kind of cultural
erasure is a barbaric fulfillment of the iconoclastic
language found in early Modernist literature. The
foremost example being the call to "destroy the museums,
libraries, academies of every kind" found in the 1909
'Founding Manifesto of Futurism.'(20)
As an example, the April 1, 2015 article published by
the editors of Hyperallergic titled "ISIS to Exhibit
Floating Pavilion of Art Destruction at Venice
Biennale." This article describes an unauthorized
Islamic State pavilion on a boat in which Biennale
participants bring artworks to destroy, create viral
videos, and leave with limited edition ISIS tote bags in
hand.(21)
While being an April Fool's Day prank, the article cites
the clear iconoclastic lineage these early Modernist
provocateurs gave rise to. They cite works such as
Robert Rauschenberg's 1953 drawing Erased de
Kooning, the Jean Tinguely's 1960
self-destructive sculpture performance Homage to
New York, Ai Weiwei's 1995 photo-documented Dropping
a Han Dynasty Urn, as well as the "Art Amnesty
Project," a 2015 exhibition at MoMA's PS1 by Bob and
Roberta Smith, in which the public was invited to throw
their art into dumpsters. These citations are familiar
justifications for continued acts of contemporary
artistic iconoclasm, and this thread of art history
continues to inform and celebrate a wide range of acts
of cultural negation. This connection between Modernist
provocation and the actual destruction of world heritage
sites calls into question an art historical lineage
founded upon the ideas of self-proclaimed fascists who
also stated in the same manifesto "We will glorify
war—the world's only hygiene."(22)
Despite all of the gallows humor about the art
historical precedents for the destruction of these
archeological treasures, the ruination of these sites
represents an immense cultural loss for the world. As
Irina Bokova the head of The United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) stated:
You deprive [people] of their
culture, you deprive them of their history,
their heritage, and that is why it goes hand
in hand with genocide. Along with the physical
persecution they want to eliminate – to delete
– the memory of these different cultures.(23)
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This statement echoes the German
Romantic-era writer and critic Heinrich Heine's
observation in his 1821 play, Almansor: "That was only a
prelude, there where they burn books, they burn in the
end people."(24)
This quote is memorialized on a bronze plaque as a part
of the Book Burning Memorial at Bebelplatz, the site of
the infamous 1933 book burnings by the Nazi Party in
Berlin, Germany. Heine's quote was a reference to an
earlier act of destruction and dehumanization, the
burnings of the Quran and persecution of Muslims during
the Spanish Inquisition.(25)
ISIS has shown the world once again the destruction of
culture goes hand in hand with mass murder.
In approaching this project, I wanted
to address the gravity of dehumanization for propaganda
purposes, and I felt erasure was an important element to
consider. With that in mind, I also wanted to
distinguish how erasure was used in this project from
the iconoclastic strategies employed since Modernism.
Erasing the image of these victims kneeling with their
executioner standing over them is not an act of
iconoclasm or negation. It is an act to restore humanity
and dignity. In many ways this project began with a set
of questions: How should I, as an artist, respond
visually when the only image we have of the areas under
ISIS control is through the lens of their propaganda and
provocation, when human beings are deprived of their
dignity and their gruesome murders are circulated around
the globe as a purposely-crafted, horrific spectacle?
This project and the approach of creating landscapes
beyond the image of the executioner and victim began
with a brief moment of realization one evening as I was
watching the news. As the execution of James Foley began
breaking in the news cycle, and the images began
circulating, all at once in a brief but powerful moment
I became stunned by the bright blue sky behind the
menacing image. It hit me the same way it did on
September 11th, 2001, when another act of terrorism cut
into the bright blue sky of a beautiful September
morning. All at once as I watched, the blue sky consumed
me and I saw the landscape beyond the image of horror
they wanted us to see. As this realization grew I became
acutely aware of the many signifiers ISIS was
consciously constructing for us. With this project, I
wanted viewers to think deeply about the kinds of images
circulated as spectacle, and how broadcast and social
media becomes an unwitting accomplice in the continual
dissemination of these images.
When beginning the project, I
considered several ways to approach these images and the
ideas I wanted to communicate. Initially I considered
some physical rather than digital approaches. For
example, I considered printing and scrubbing the images
out with solvents and chemicals, or crudely painting
over the images with a cover-up like one sees over
graffiti on the street, I considered creating large
landscape paintings omitting the images of the
executioner and victims and rendering the artifacts of
enlarged digital imagery as abstract passages in paint.
I also considered digital approaches in the early stages
of the project. For example, I considered creating
digital images with crude black redaction blocks
covering the dehumanized images. As I began the project
I started by making a series of tests in Photoshop. I
made crude digital redactions, I experimented with
abstract overlays, as well as a variety of approaches to
erasure. Finally, I began to use the clone stamp tool to
erase the figures as a way to create a reference image
to begin a painting from. It was with the clone stamp
tool and this technique of digital erasure that I began
to consider more thoroughly the nature of the tools I
was using. I realized that these tools of digital
manipulation were essentially the same tools employed by
ISIS in the creation of their propaganda. With that
realization, I felt I needed to critique their use of
these tools and methods in their manipulation of digital
imagery with the same tools and methods. From that
point, I was satisfied with continuing in this direction
of clone-stamp erasure to create the landscape images,
but felt this body of work would also require a
reference point from which to understand these bare
landscape images. I decided to create not only the large
landscape mural prints, but to also create a
complimentary set of descriptive prints to serve as the
reference point to the large mural prints. These
descriptive works would be a key to the whole body of
work. The descriptive prints were created using a one
pixel wide outline of the figures as a referent to the
original images, and would describe in plain language
the beheading incidents, the people involved, and the
stated reason for the executions using only factual
information that could be verified by multiple reliable
sources. Because these images by ISIS were circulated
primarily through propaganda videos I decided that the
body of work also needed to have a video element. These
three elements, the large landscape prints, the smaller
descriptive prints, and the video, became the final body
of work for this project. Each of these elements
employed erasure in slightly different but intentionally
complimentary ways through the series.
The approach to creating the large
landscape mural prints was inspired by two art
historical precedents. On one hand, I felt that these
works continued a conversation in the history of
photography that begins with Roger Fenton's photograph
titled "Valley of the Shadow of Death". Fenton's work
was taken in 1855 as part of his documentation of the
Crimean War, and has been described as the "first iconic
war photograph".(26)
This photograph while being the first iconic image of
war, was also interestingly an image that was staged.
The fact that this image was manipulated and staged,
with cannon balls scattered along the road for dramatic
effect, along with the noticeable absence of the human
figure in a landscape of conflict became an important
art historical and conceptual underpinning to what I was
creating in this series. The other influence on the
final shape of this work was Thomas Ruff's JPEG series,
a body of large scale works that "uses the pixel
structure of the found pictures, which is inherent in
the data source (and results from the algorithm of data
compression), as a visual and substantive compositional
component."(27)
Ruff's series foregrounds the digital nature of the
images he presents by making explicit the pixel
artifacts in the enlarging of found images from the
internet he used for his project. This series was an
important inspiration in that it makes explicit the
digital nature of the images, as well as alluding to
their circulation as digital ephemera. The descriptive
prints in the series contained smaller versions of the
large landscape mural prints with the added elements of
a one pixel width outline of the figures from the
original images, and an overlay of the transparency
raster grid pattern to reinforce the digital and
manipulated nature of the images from which this work
was drawn from. The descriptive prints also contain the
language describing the beheading incidents, and when
displayed in an exhibition context also provide a
timeline when hung in succession.
The video created for the series titled
Cut: [The Sea Is All That Remains] also relies
on erasure, but does so specifically in the language of
video editing. The piece is as the title suggests, cut
and edited. The visual imagery from the original source
is edited down to only reveal the establishing shots of
the landscape. The video uses as its source material the
ISIS propaganda video A Message Signed with Blood
to the Nation of the Cross. The video was
released in February of 2015, and depicts the beheading
of 21 people in Libya along the Mediterranean Coast. The
dehumanized images and sounds from the video are removed
leaving only the shots of the sea. The propaganda images
by ISIS are replaced with basic descriptions of the
edited construction of the video, and the transitions
are replicated between the descriptive shots. The
original soundtrack which relied on the sound of the
crashing waves for dramatic effect was replaced with a
new soundtrack consisting only of the sounds of crashing
waves of the Mediterranean Sea. When experiencing the
exhibition, this sound permeates the exhibition space
adding the auditory element to the viewing experience of
the exhibition as a whole.
Erasure was important as a method to
achieve the conceptual sense of absence I wanted from
this project. I desired to create images that allowed
for a contemplative memorialization of these victims. In
that, this work shares a similar sensibility in the act
of creating a space of absence with the work of the
sculptor Micha Ullman, and his Empty Library
Memorial in Bebelplatz as a part of the Book Burning
Memorial in Berlin. The Empty Library consists
of a plate glass window embedded in the cobblestones of
the plaza where the Nazi book burnings took place.
Peering in the window one sees an empty space lined with
bookshelves, enough to hold the reported 20,000 volumes
the Nazi's incinerated. As Ullman has said of the work,
"You can see the emptiness and the silence. Those are
the two important materials the monument is made of."(28)
I, too, felt that a moment of contemplative memorial
silence, not just for the victims of these beheadings,
but for all the unseen crimes carried out in the
territory ISIS controls, is an appropriate response to
their clamor of propaganda and provocation. I find this
response especially important for myself as an artist
living in the West, and not directly affected by the
violence of daily life within the self-proclaimed
Islamic State.
There are many brave artists and
activists working within these conflict zones who are
asserting their own voices and the right to their own
image. A prime example is Abounaddara, the Syrian
'emergency film' collective. In their videos and
exhibitions they attempt to reclaim their images from
what they describe as hyper-mediatized images of victims
in situations of war. As they state in their concept
paper titled, "A Right To The Image For All":
The images of the human
debris of human madness are too frequently
about mutilated and starved bodies, not about
persons; they are too frequently images of the
dystopian landscapes of wretched camps and the
ruins of devastated neighborhoods and not
images of the network of social relations and
forms of collective cultural and political
life that sustains individuals in their
struggle for life in dignity and peace.(29)
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In this paper, Abounaddara, claims the
right to the image is a human right "from a holistic
reading of the existing corpus of international human
rights law."(30)
Their work asserts a complex human portrait of those
affected by their daily life within areas of conflict.
Hito Steyerl, the German artist and
writer, viewing the Syrian conflict from the Turkish
border asked a profound question for artists of
conscience working in the current moment: in her piece
"Kobanê Is Not Falling," published in e-flux in 2014,
she asks: "What is the task of art in times of
emergency?"(31)For
the Abounaddara film collective, it is to reclaim a
humane image from the hyper-mediatized images of
victimhood. For me, I feel this project has helped to
chart new territories in the conversation about images
and their ethical interpretation. This has been one of
my most successful projects to date in the kinds of
conversations it has sparked and the interest it has
generated. Since the work was first exhibited it has
been exhibited in whole or in part in several venues and
has been featured and published through a variety of
publications. One of the most interesting
interpretations of the project was by the curator for
the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival at Ithaca
College, Dr. Dale Hudson. Of the project, he stated: "By
erasing contemporary human presence – both executioners
and victims – from the Deash videos, the resulting
images somewhat ironically re-render landscapes into
scenic views whose alleged absence of human intrusions
so captivated the Orientalists centuries ago."(32)
While irony was not my intent, his interpretation does
raise ideas related to the cultural legacy of
colonialism that must be grappled with, and an ethical
lens of interpretation can help in that regard.
Postcolonialism as an academic discipline often concerns
itself with ethics and the interpretation of history. As
Okwui Enwezor stated in his essay for Documenta 11,
"What is an Avant-Garde Today? The Postcolonial
Aftermath of Globalization and the Terrible Nearness of
Distant Places", an exhibition that responded to the new
formations of terrorism and conflict at the dawn of the
21st century:
While postmodernism was
preoccupied with relativizing historical
transformations and contesting the lapses and
prejudices of epistemological grand
narratives, postcoloniality does the obverse,
seeking instead to sublate and replace all
grand narratives through new ethical demands
on modes of historical interpretation.(33)
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This wrestling with the ethical
contestation of images and their interpretation is the
heart of this project. With the Landscapes of
Absence project, I offer that artists, living in
what Susan Sontag described as "the rich part of the
world," have a special ethical responsibility to examine
our privileged provincialism and to think deeply about
the images we consume and the images we create. We need
to counter this targeted spectacle not with absurdity,
reactionary iconoclasm, or with hyper-mediatized images
of victimhood; we need to counter these images with an
assertion of humanity and dignity.
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James
Wright Foley
James Wright
Foley, an American journalist and freelance
war correspondent was abducted November 22,
2012, while working as a reporter during the
Syrian Civil War. He was beheaded on
August 19, 2014, in response to American
airstrikes in Iraq, thus becoming the first
American citizen killed by the self-described
Islamic State.
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Steven Joel
Sotloff
On August 4, 2013, Steven
Joel Sotloff, an American-Israeli journalist
was abducted while working as a reporter
during the Syrian Civil War. On August 19,
2014, ISIS released a video titled "A Message
to America", showing the beheading of fellow
journalist James Foley. At the end of the
video, ISIS threatens the President of the
United States, Barack Obama, telling him that
"his next move" will decide the fate of
Sotloff. On September 2, 2014 a video,
entitled "A Second Message to America", was
discovered purportedly ahead of its intended
release showing Sotloff's beheading in
response to American airstrikes on the Mosul
Dam in Iraq.
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David
Cawthorne Haines
In March of
2013, David Cawthorne Haines, a British
humanitarian worker, was abducted while
working to help the internally displaced in
Syria. He was shown at the end of the Steven
Sotloff beheading video as the intended next
victim if airstrikes against ISIS did not
cease. The UK Foreign Secretary, Philip
Hammond revealed that David Cawthorne Haines
was one of the intended targets of a failed
American rescue mission on July 4, 2014. His
beheading was depicted in a video entitled "A
Message to the Allies of America", released by
ISIS on September 13, 2014.
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Alan
Henning
Alan Henning was
a British taxicab driver, turned volunteer
humanitarian aid worker. He was part of a team
of volunteers delivering goods in December
2013 to people affected by Syria's civil war.
Masked gunmen abducted Alan Henning on
December 26, 2013. A video released by ISIS on
October 3, 2014, depicted his beheading. The
executioner blamed the UK for joining the U.S.
led bombing campaign against ISIS. At the end
of the video, the American aid worker Peter
Kassig is shown as the next intended victim.
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Peter
Kassig (Abdul-Rahman Kassig)
Peter Kassig
worked in Syria and Lebanon as a humanitarian
worker for a non-governmental organization he
founded in the Fall of 2012 to provide
refugees in Syria and Lebanon with medical
assistance, supplies, clothing, and food. He
was abducted on October 1, 2013, in eastern
Syria delivering food and medical supplies to
refugees. While in captivity, Peter Kassig
converted to Islam and changed his name to
Abdul-Rahman Kassig. His parents released a
video in which they stressed that his
conversion to Islam was not forced, and that
his path to conversion began before he was
taken captive. On November 16, 2014, ISIS
posted a video showing his executioner
standing over a severed human head. The
beheading itself was not shown in the video.
The White House later confirmed the person
killed was Peter Kassig. A Daily
Telegraph security expert speculated
that Kassig may have defied his captors, and
refused to provide a beheading video
statement.
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Haruna
Yukawa and Kenji Goto
Haruna Yukawa
was a private military contractor providing
protection to Japanese companies in areas of
conflict. In April 2014 while in Syria, he was
abducted by the Free Syrian Army. Japanese
journalist Kenji Goto was brought in to
interpret, and secured Yukawa's release. Both
went back to Japan, but Yukawa soon returned
to Syria and was again abducted. In October
2014, Goto returned to Syria to try to secure
Yukawa's release once again when he was
abducted. The two appeared in a video in
January 2015 in which ISIS gave the Japanese
government a deadline of 72 hours to pay a
ransom for their release. When the deadline
passed, a video of Yukawa's beheading was
released. By the end of the month, the group
released another video of the beheading of
Goto, in which the executioner proclaimed to
Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe "Let the
nightmare for Japan begin."
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Kidnapping
and Beheading of 21 in Libya
Twenty Egyptian
Christians were kidnapped along with a man
from Ghana in the Libyan coastal city of Sirte
in two separate incidents in December 2014 and
January of 2015. On February 15, 2015 a
five-minute video titled "A Message Signed
With Blood to the Nation of the Cross" was
published showing the beheading of the
captives on a beach along the Mediterranean
coast. The lead executioner speaks in fluent
English with an American accent, and
emphasizes that the fighters are a part of the
broader Islamic State group. He implies that
the executions are revenge for the killing of
Osama bin Laden by American commandos and his
burial at sea. After the executions the
ISISleader states, "We will conquer Rome, by
Allah's permission". The video bears the logo
of Al Hayat, the self-proclaimed Islamic
State's media arm. Unlike the cellphone videos
typically made by Libyan militants, the video
is as polished as previous Islamic State
videos, with slow motion, aerial footage and
the quick cuts of a music video. The only
sound in much of the background is the lapping
of waves. Following the release of the video,
several experts argued that it had been
digitally manipulated and that the actual
murders were likely filmed in front of a green
screen and then superimposed onto the footage
of the beach. On February 21, 2015 the Coptic
Pope Tarwadros II announced that the victims
will be considered martyrs of the Coptic
Orthodox Church and that their deaths will be
commemorated every February 15th.
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Execution
of 30 Ethiopian Christians in Libya
On April 19th
2015, a video was released by the media arm of
the self-proclaimed Islamic State depicting
the execution of two groups of Ethiopian
Christians captured in Libya. The 29-minute
video titled "Until There Came To Them Clear
Evidence" depicts two groups of men, one in
orange jumpsuits and the other in black, being
killed in separate locations in Libya,
according to the video's narrator. One group
is beheaded on a beach along the Mediterranean
Sea, while the other group is shot in a
Southern Libyan desert location hundreds of
miles away. A masked fighter brandishing a
pistol delivers a long statement, saying
Christians need to convert to Islam or pay a
special tax prescribed by the Qur'an. After
the statement is read, the video switches
between footage of the two executions. With
the confirmation of the deaths of their
nationals, the Ethiopian Parliament declared a
three-day national mourning period to honor
the victims.
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NOTES
(1) ^
Faisal Irshaid, "Isis, Isil, IS or Daesh? One group,
many names" BBC News, December 2, 2015.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27994277
(2) ^ Liz
Sly, "Al-Qaeda disavows any ties with radical Islamist
ISIS group in Syria, Iraq" The Washington Post, February
3, 2014.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/al-qaeda-disavows-any-ties-with-radical-islamist-isis-group-in-syria-iraq/2014/02/03/2c9afc3a-8cef-11e3-98ab-fe5228217bd1_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.38bc76c72dfc
(3) ^
Sylvia Westall, "After Iraq gains, Qaeda offshoot claims
Islamic "caliphate" Reuters, June 29, 2014.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-iraq-idUSKBN0F40SL20140630
(4) ^
Graeme Wood, "What ISIS Really Wants" The Atlantic,
March 2015.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980
(5) ^
Michael J. Boyle, "The Problem With 'Evil': The
Moral Hazard of Calling ISIS a 'Cancer'" New York Times,
August 22, 2014.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/opinion/the-moral-hazard-of-calling-isis-a-cancer.html
(6) ^
Caitlin Forrest, "ISIS's Regional Campaign: May
2016" Institute for the Study of War, June 3, 2016
(7) ^
Michele Leridon "Covering the 'Islamic State'", Agence
France-Presse – Correspondent, September 17, 2014.
https://correspondent.afp.com/covering-islamic-state
(8) ^
Lizzie Dearden "Isis issues rules for journalists
forcing them to 'swear allegiance as subjects of the
Islamic State'", The Independent, October 7, 2014.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-issues-rules-for-journalists-forcing-them-to-swear-allegiance-as-subjects-of-the-islamic-state-9780071.html
(9) ^
Brian Fishman "Fourth Generation Governance: Sheikh
Tamimi defends the Islamic State of Iraq",
Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, March 23,
2007.
https://ctc.usma.edu/fourth-generation-governance-sheikh-tamimi-defends-the-islamic-state-of-iraq/
(10) ^ Jamie
Tarabay, Gilad Shiloach, Et al, "To its Citizens, ISIS
Also Shows a Softer Side" Vocativ, March 20, 2015.
https://www.vocativ.com/world/isis-2/to-its-citizens-isis-also-shows-a-softer-side/index.html
(11) ^
Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the
Syrian Arab Republic "Rule of Terror: Living under
ISIS in Syria", United Nations Report, November 14,
2014.
https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/rule-terror-living-under-isis-syria
(12) ^
Michael Crowley "Stop using ISIL footage, Obama
administration asks networks", Politico, May 13,2015.
https://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/isil-islamic-state-obama-administration-television-networks-footage-117911
(13) ^
Ibid.
(14) ^
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others,
(New York: Picador, 1993), 110.
(15) ^
David Carr "With Videos of Killings, ISIS Sends Medieval
Message by Modern Method", New York Times, September 7,
2014.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/08/business/media/with-videos-of-killings-isis-hones-social-media-as-a-weapon.html
(16) ^
Ibid.
(17) ^
Adam Taylor, "From Daniel Pearl to James Foley: The
modern tactic of Islamist beheadings", Washington Post,
August 20, 2014.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/08/20/from-daniel-pearl-to-james-foley-the-modern-tactic-of-islamist-beheadings/?utm_term=.b7f40bbfa715\
(18) ^
Barbara Herman, "Is ISIS Beheading Video Of 21 Egyptian
Christians Fake? Film Experts Argue 'Yes'",
International Business Times, February 22, 2015.
https://www.ibtimes.com/isis-beheading-video-21-egyptian-christians-fake-film-experts-argue-yes-1824034
(19) ^
J.M. Berger, "How ISIS Games Twitter", The Atlantic,
June 16, 2014.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-iraq-twitter-social-media-strategy/372856/
(20) ^
Apollonio, Umbro, ed. Documents of 20th Century
Art: Futurist Manifestos. Brain, Robert, R.W.
Flint, J.C. Higgitt, and Caroline Tisdall, trans. (New
York: Viking Press, 1973), 22.
(21) ^
The Editors "ISIS to Exhibit Floating Pavilion of Art
Destruction at Venice Biennale", Hyperallergic, April 1,
2015.
https://hyperallergic.com/195279/isis-to-exhibit-floating-pavilion-of-art-destruction-at-venice-biennale/
(22) ^
Apollonio, Umbro, Documents of 20th Century Art:
Futurist Manifestos, (New York: Viking Press,
1973), 22.
(23) ^
Madeline Grant "Head of UNESCO Accuses ISIS of Trying to
'Delete' Civilizations", Newsweek,November, 14, 2014.
https://www.newsweek.com/head-unesco-compares-isis-methods-nazis-brands-destruction-archealogical-sites-284456
(24) ^
Na'ama Rokem, Prosaic Conditions: Heinrich Heine
and the Spaces of Zionist Literature. (Illinois:
Northwestern University Press, 2013), xi.
(25) ^
Ibid.
(26) ^
James Estrin, Roger Fenton: The First
Great War Photographer, New York Times, Lens:
Photography, Video and Visual Journalism , January, 18,
2018.
(27) ^
Markus Kramer, Thomas Ruff - Modernism.
(Kehrer, 2011), 65.
(28) ^
Ofer Aderet "Israeli Sculptor Gives Rare Tour of His
Book-burning Memorial in Berlin", Haaretz, September 7,
2014.
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/a-rare-look-inside-berlin-s-book-burning-memorial-1.5263329
(29) ^
Abounaddara Collective "A Right to the Image for all",
Vera List Center for Art and Politics, October 22, 2015.
http://www.veralistcenter.org/engage/event/1957/a-right-to-the-image/
(30) ^
Ibid.
(31) ^
Hito Steyerl "Kobanê Is Not Falling", e-flux, October
10, 2014.
https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/30525/koban-is-not-falling/
(32) ^
Dale Hudson, "FLEFF 2016 | Interface/Landscape", 28.
http://www.academia.edu/6137801/FLEFF_2016_Interface_Landscape
(33) ^
Okwui Enwezor, What is an Avant-Garde Today? The
Postcolonial Aftermath of Globalization and the
Terrible Nearness of Distant Places, Documenta
11_Platform 5: Exhibition Catalogue, (Hatje Cantz,
2002). 45.
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