Game of differences. "Symbolic scenery of Miriam Isasi. Super Icons.

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Symbolic stage. This photo represents a representation of the ETA's stage of communications.

Miriam Isasi: "Symbolic scenery", 2011. Image origin:
the author.

Game of differences: “Symbolic scenery”, of Miriam Isasi (2011).

Nobody who had enough information can deceive itself. The object or group of objects that you can see in this photograph is not the ominous scenery that the basque terrorist organization ETA uses for its communications. It is a representation and only a representation of this scenery, that has been produced in the extraordinary context of art. What totally changes the things, as it is well known.

It is also necessary to say that this representation is not completely realistic, but one that is altered and incomplete.

Going into details, like in the game of differences. The flag on the left is not an ikurriña (the official flag of Euskal Herria), but another flag made of some irregular pieces of green and white cloth, glued or sewn to one side of another greater red. The first flag on the right is not what is known as the arrano beltza (black eagle), but another abstract composition made of a piece of black cloth on an intense yellow cloth. The last flag is not the Navarrese, but a flag of new conception and design in which some scribbles, mustard color, are substituting to its characteristic drawings of crown and chains. From ETA's anagram or logo only remains its background. And what is a background without its figure? Only an abstract painting, an ornamental element, a modern picture. Finally, who would be able of assigning the exact representation of the colorist shield of Euskal Herria (the classical "Zazpiak bat") to the image that hardly you can see in a black and white photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy?

Representation, therefore, of iconic nature. It is to say: inexact, partial, faulty. Of an object perfectly recognizable, at least in our political context, the scenery of ETA's communications. Which we postulate complete and without error in its absolute distance. Perfect but in its perfection of thing that is giving to itself and only to itself, and not referring to another similar one. Perfect in its integrity of object or group of objects original and unique. Or, in other words, in its aura.

Something that in this other scenery is, in certain sense, absent. Because this is the materialization of a photographic memory. The very difficult incarnation of a spectrum (of the spectrum of a spectrum, to be exact). Process in which even the faults of memory, the characteristic deviations of human registration of reality, have been reproduced. What makes me think, for a second, that the first object of this scenery as sign is the slight memory of the photographic image that the artist saw a long time ago in a newspaper. Then the photo or videograph itself. And only in the end, the authentic scene of communications of ETA, which was in the presence of the camera and that, of course, the artist does not personally know.

Only the original negative, the photo or videographic print, the analogical or digital one, wherever that document could be, object that belongs to the group of signs named indexes, could directly denote that genuine scenery, wherever it is. But not this other scenery that you, reader, can see in the top of the page. False of all falsehood, declarated simulacra, but, at least, directly accesible for senses. Three-dimensional, tangible, immediate. Better in this aspect than the photograph of which it comes.

Then, the paradox of the iconic sign we are offered here is that the object so easily I get, its signifier plane, results expressly false. While the object that I should reach trough it, completely inaccessible and secret, of which we only have got a degraded photographic knowledge, must be considered true.

Rubén Díaz de Corcuera.
Super icons.
April 10, 2011