The Black Quadrilateral: Protective Edge (2014)
4050 x 2810 px GIF, monotone with 3 colour palette.
A simple black rectangle in GIF file format, inspired by the very first Black Square painting by suprematist Kazimir Malevich.
Malevich’s painting from 1915 is considered one of his earliest suprematist paintings. Made at the start of World War I, recent X-ray analysis has revealed that Malevich painted the black square over a previous sketch called ‘War’, of a horse with the words ‘Berlin’, ‘War’ and ‘Peace’.
I made the GIF “The Black Quadrilateral: Protective Edge” during “Operation Protective Edge”, the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict during which 2,200 people died. Hidden in the bytes of the image is encoded a photograph from the conflict, an IDF Artillery Corps tank, 155mm M-109 howitzer – the modern day incarnation of a war-horse – firing its gun. This image is only accessible via a binary hack to the file, modifying the indexed colour table. Original photo licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Since its’ establishment in 1948, Israel has violated countless United Nations resolutions, Geneva Conventions and international laws including unlawful occupation of Palestinian territories, violations of human rights and discriminatory segregation and apartheid-style legislation by denying equal social and political rights to Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.
Despite this, western countries including most of Europe and the US not only continue to turn a blind eye to these, but politically and financially support and protect Israel.
Furthermore, mainstream media coverage of the events – particularly in the US (and of course within Israel) – is incredibly biased, hiding many of the facts and presenting a highly distorted, inaccurate reality, providing a protective layer through censorship.
Similarly, as both sides take to the digital domain – the internet, social media, youtube, twitter – the truth of what is happening is obscured behind the incredibly biased media of both sides.
Finally, the state of Israel is further protected behind a veil of taboo and self-censorship, as criticism is linked to accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ to those who try to expose truths or even ask questions about the state’s policies and actions.
Before I explicitly stated that there was an image encoded and hidden in the black quadrilateral, I hinted at the 3 colour palette (while only 2 colours – black and white) are visible, and it was discovered by artist Kyle McDonald in this twitter conversation. An excerpt of the conversation is archived as an image.
