Saturday, June 04, 2005
THEOLOGICAL ICON CREATED
The latest terrible news out of Guantanamo Bay:
American jailers at Guantanamo splashed a Koran with urine, kicked and stepped on the Islamic holy book and soaked it with water, the US military said today.
A Koran was splashed with urine? That isn’t mistreatment; it’s art! Opponents of Piss Koran “need to understand the value of artistic freedom”, as Jill Singer might argue.
Are critics of this government-financed artwork incapable of recognising the complex internal duality Piss Koran presents? It seems clear that the artist is invoking the idea of piss as desecration to challenge it with another possibility: that bodily fluids are holy.
In fact, it is my contention that the Guantanamo guard’s exploration of the relation between the abject and the sacred makes Piss Koran not only good art, but good religious art, bordering on the iconic. I am thinking of the theological meaning of icon in which the icon is less a representation than a window onto a deeper reality. Piss Koran is also a parable in which our expectations are turned outside down in order that the sacred may manifest, because as Hegel expressed: “the familiar is not understood precisely because it is familiar.”
Exactly. This all concerns freedom of speech, so let’s give the final word to the artist himself: “The best place for Piss Koran is in a mosque.”