Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.31664/zu.2022.110.05
Edmund Burke and the Pandemic Iconology in Media Images and Contemporary Art
Ivana Podnar
; Studij dizajna, Arhitektonski fakultet Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of media, artistic and verbal images of the COVID-19 pandemic in creating feelings of fear and terror that have a paralysing effect on individuals, by connecting them with Edmund Burke’s concept of the sublime. Acknowledging William J. T. Mitchell's interpretation of Burke's distinction between the artistic and the political sublime, the paper analyses the revolutionary potential of images, or rather its absence. Media images contain a clear iconographic pattern that incorporates Burke's fundamental characteristics of the sublime: they are dark and obscure, and embody the most powerful of all fears — the fear of death. Photographs in the mass media conceptualize the effect of the virus on the individual, the society and space. The motifs relate to the visualization of the COVID-19 molecule, which has become a symbol of the global pandemic, to photos of individuals affected by the disease (from patients to medical staff, as well as healthy individuals standing in lines for the vaccine), images that show the effect of the virus on the system and indicatethe powerlessness of institutions in the fight against the disease (under-capacity of hospital staff and equipment), and to photographs of spaces that have been changed by the effects of the pandemic (empty city squares and streets, terraces of hospitality establishments). The iconography of media images, in all four described categories, includes the production of fear, while media messages such as “stay at home” imply passivity as the most desirable form of socially responsible activity, which leads to the fragmentation of society into a series of isolated individuals whose communication with the world takes place through a screen. Verbal and visual images function synergistically, amplifying the paralysing effect. The analysis of artistic images was conducted on the example of an online project of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, FB for your thoughts / FB misao na dan. The motifs in the images are compared to Burke's notions of privation, infinity, uniformity, and silence as important aspects of the sublime. Artistic images primarily communicate a closing off (theme of bunkers, confinement in one's own apartment, view through the window of a TV screen) and acceptance of a situation in which the fragmentation of society into isolated individuals leads to sensory deprivation — loss of contact with others. The emptiness of space, similar to the isolation of man, contains meaning in what it does not show (the virus), which is a prerequisite for creating such images. Besides these media and artistic images, the paper also includes an analysis of the metaphorical language of verbal images, which in turn create mental images of the virus as a subject that attacks, spreads, threatens… The visualization of statistical data is an ubiquitous media image that supports the metaphorical image of the coronavirus disease as a subject with a life of its own — it grows, dominates, kills, destroys, sleeps … The synergistic effects of the verbal, media and artistic images affect the individuals and the society, activating the strongest possible sensations within the scope of human experience, which Burke calls the sublime. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the paper considers the global and all-pervading effect of sublime images, which have produced a paralysing effect that is truly unprecedented in modern history. The aim of this research was to emphasise the relevance of Burke's theory in the contemporary communication situation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keywords
Edmund Burke; the sublime; COVID-19 pandemic; media images; artistic images; pandemic iconography; pandemic iconology
Hrčak ID:
294934
URI
Publication date:
1.7.2022.
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