The Black Quadrilateral: Protective Edge (2014)

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 this image (or rather, this file) The Black Quadrilateral: Protective Edge during Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict during which ~2,250 Palestians were killed, of which 65% were civilians according to the UN. 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. The original photo is 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 Palestinians whose lands they illegally occupy.

Despite this, western countries including the US and most of Europe not only continue to turn a blind eye to these, but instead give unconditional political, financial and military support and protection to the State of Israel.

Furthermore, mainstream media coverage of the events – particularly in the US (and of course within Israel) – is incredibly biased, and tightly controlled, hiding many of the facts, and presenting a highly distorted, inaccurate reality, providing another ‘protective’ layer to Israel through censorship and misinformation.

This is further exacerbated 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 and tightly controlled media of both sides.

Finally, the State of Israel is further protected behind a veil of taboo and censorship, as any forms of criticism of the State is shot down as ‘anti-Semitism’ – even to those who only try to ask questions about the State’s questionable 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.