Content Form:APRJA 13 Marie Dias

Marie Naja Lauritzen Dias

Logics of War

Abstract

As manifested in Jean Baudrillard’s notoriously provoking claim that “the Gulf War did not take place,” mediatization of war has long been associated with illusion. Today, war images that circulate online are increasingly judged by their proximity to ‘truth,’ eliciting a skepticism towards their ‘evidentiary’ value. By juxtaposing Baudrillard’s reading of the mediatization of the Gulf War with the contemporary image theories of e.g. Cecilia Sjöholm and Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman, the article explores how this skepticism is expressed in a contemporary context. Through visual analysis of a YouTube video of a press conference held at the bombed Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza, it examines the relationship between the form through which the war is perceived (the images) and their content (the ‘realities’ of war). Through a lens offered by Georges Didi-Huberman, the article concludes by suggesting that by expanding what I term the snapshot logic of war images to embrace a scenography of war, the press conference video gives form to the condition of desperation and suffering in Gaza.

Introduction

There is a video—or rather a pixelated, slightly blurry excerpt—circulating on social media. The video was originally a live-streamed press conference held by the Ministry of Health in Gaza in response to the airstrike that hit Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on October 17, 2023, leaving hundreds dead and many more trapped under the rubble. The video and the screenshots that quickly circulated show members of the hospital’s medical staff gathered around a podium amidst the white-sheet-covered corpses of the explosion’s victims. Three to four men squat in front of the podium, holding the bodies of an uncovered baby and a partially covered young girl. Judging by the constrained distress on the men’s faces, they seem in disbelief over what they are holding. The shock of the situation is palpable, the men alternating between stiffly looking away and bowing their heads to face the dead children in their arms and on the ground before them.

Screenshot of the press conference-video

Caption for example PNG image

Biography

Marie Naja Lauritzen Dias is a Ph.D. Candidate at Aarhus University, School of Communication and Culture affiliated with the department for Art history, Aesthetics and Culture and Museology. Her research centers around war and digital images, the militarization of the everyday life as well as contemporary art and other aesthetic image practices.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-0217-1167