In the last two decades we have seen a new type of heritage destruction on the rise: the icon of iconoclasm or the meticulously recording of the destruction of heritage. Since the destruction of the Twin Towers in Manhattan and the Buddha statues in Bamiyan in 2001, up until the iconoclastic rampage in Iraq and Syria performed by the so-called Islamic State, the destruction of heritage has been accompanied by its recording and documentation to leave a trace either on paper or in the digital realm. The recording certainly provides an extra value not only to the destruction but also to the targeted object or site. Iconoclasm studies have already attested to this value present in the images and artworks we cherish but also that we hate. However, the recording for the sake of recording is a new form of message and communication that we must consider. What is more important? The destruction or its recording? How should we contextualize this shift? Shall we call out to the rise of social media and the selfies, or the anxiety always present in all the screens. Or maybe is the organic result that all destructive actions deserve as attention-seeking devices?
The recording of destructive acts obeys to an anxiety already present when Herostratus burned the temple of Artemis to become famous. But the novelty and innovation that Boris Groys linked to the iconoclasm as a regeneration tool to erase the old to start anew, is not present in the attack towards ruins. Many of the targeted attacks that were digitally recorded in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State, for example, were directed towards ruins. Attacking a ruin, however, is not the same as deliberately targeting an image or cultural heritage. Ruins have their own aesthetic, cultural and historical value. How then we should situate the deliberately destruction of ruins and their recording? The destruction of ruins, as opposed to images, monuments or heritage, entails the double status of the ruin as a stand-in for the past and a reflection of the future. Deliberately attacking a ruin shows not only the power of the iconoclast over the materiality of the ruin, but it also shows the power of the ruin over the mind of the iconoclast. There is nothing worst that attacking something that it is already destroyed.
But are not these targeted ruins the same ruins we see in open landscapes, Indigenous sites desecrated by mining companies, or objects and artefacts exhibited in museums? Have not these ruins brought with themselves an already loaded meaning that is exacerbated by the recording? How to make sense of this surplus of value? Maybe the answer lies in the critical assessment of ruins and their place in our contemporary world, where every form of the past has been heritagized. In this paper, I will contextualize this specific category of ruins.
Antonio Gonzalez
Reader in Heritage Studies
Newcastle University, UK
Education
2014 PhD (Art History, Archaeology, Heritage Studies), The University of Melbourne, Australia.
Thesis: Rethinking heritage. Landscape iconoclasm in the Burrup Peninsula (Western Australia)
Examined by Claire Smith (Flinders University) and John Carman (University of Birmingham)
2008 MA, Cinema Management, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
2005 BA (Honours), Communication Sciences, University of the Americas-Puebla, Mexico.
Publications
Books
2020. Murujuga—Rock Art, Heritage and Landscape Iconoclasm. University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia, 344 pages, ISBN 9780812251562.
-This monograph is an ethnographic account of an iconoclasm that has been occurring since the 1860s in Murujuga (Western Australia), the largest archaeological site in the world, analysing the causes and the consequences of this unfortunate event.
Nominated for the Joan Gero Book Award (World Archaeological Congress)
Reviews:
1) https://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/Book-Reviews-vol-32-no-1.pdf (Historic Environment)
2012. Breve historia del cine experimental (A brief history of experimental cinema). Spanish Academic Editorial, Saarbrücken, 190 pages, ISBN 9783659043314.
-This monograph details the history of experimental cinema, focusing on the aesthetics that this particular cinema possesses and compares it with underground and independent film and other types of experimental cinema.
Edited book
(with E. Cunliffe and M. Saldin). 2023. The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Destruction. Routledge: New York and London, 476 Pages, ISBN 9780367627287.
-This is the first handbook ever produced on the topic of heritage destruction. It aims to understand the risk of, and the realizations of, art and heritage destruction, where the destruction of art is a facet of a broader phenomenon, but with its own unique expressions.
Book chapters
(with E. Cunliffe and M. Saldin). 2023. “A path well worn? Approaches for the old problem of heritage destruction” in The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Destruction. Eds. J.A. Gonzalez Zarandona, E. Cunliffe and M. Saldin, Routledge, pp. 1-33, ISBN: 9780367627287.
-This chapter is an original introduction to the study, analysis and interpretation of heritage destruction that advances scholarship on the topic by providing an overview of the main problems that scholars and activists face when confronted with this phenomenon.
2023. “Between heritage and the readymade—the imminent aesthetic of Ai Weiwei” in The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Destruction. Eds. J.A. Gonzalez Zarandona, E. Cunliffe and M. Saldin, Routledge, pp. 174-184, ISBN: 9780367627287.
-This chapter analyses the artwork made by Chinese artist Ai Weiwei influenced by iconoclasm and heritage destruction to track the opening that Ai Weiwei has created for artworks addressing heritage destruction to enter the discourse of contemporary art.
(with F. Rufián Fernández, and I. Sabrine). 2021. “The role of civil society in the application of international law for heritage protection in countries in conflict in the MENA region” in Transcultural Diplomacy and International Law in Heritage Conservation. A Dialogue between Ethics, Law, and Culture. Eds. O. Niglio and E. Yong Joong Lee, Springer, pp. 409-426. ISBN: 9789811603099.
-This article argues that the work that the civil society performs in the Middle East and North Africa region is paramount to preserve cultural heritage in the region, while analyzing the work that particular NGOs have achieved in the last decade.
(with B. Isakhan and T. Jamal). 2019. “Cultural Cleansing and Iconoclasm under the ‘Islamic State’: Human/Heritage Attacks on Yezidis and Christians Humans/Heritage” in Sites of Pluralism: Community Politics in the Middle East. Ed. F. Oruc, Hurst/Oxford University Press, pp. 181-194. ISBN: 9781787380226.
-This chapter argues that the cultural genocide perpetrated by the Islamic State towards Yezidi and Christian minorities in Iraq and Syria is another form of heritage destruction that targets the living heritage of these communities because of the Islamic State’s iconoclastic program.
2018. “La iconoclasia como motor histórico” (Iconoclasm as a historical engine) in ISTOR, Volume 19, Issue 74, pp. 1-6, ed. A. Gonzalez Zarandona. ISSN: 16651715.
-This chapter is an essay that discusses the main definitions that the term iconoclasm has sustained in the last decades according to academic scholarship for the volume of Istor devoted to the topic of iconoclasm as a historical agent.
2015. “Heritage as a cultural measure in a postcolonial setting” in Making Culture Count: the politics of cultural measurement. Eds. M. Badham, L. MacDowall, E. Blomkamp and K. Dunphy, Palgrave McMillan, pp. 173-190. ISBN: 9781137464576.
-This chapter critically analyses the scope of the concept of heritage in Australia as a cultural measure, particularly regarding Indigenous heritage, arguing that the concept of heritage in contemporary Australia is a modern response to produce meaning regarding Australian Indigenous art.
2015. “Una introducción a la prehistoria” (An introduction to prehistory) in ISTOR, Volume 15, Issue 60, pp 1-6, ed. A. Gonzalez Zarandona. ISSN: 16651715.
-This chapter is an introductory essay for the volume of Istor devoted to Prehistory, analysing the current trends in Prehistory research.
Peer-reviewed articles
(with A. Mozaffari) 2022. “Screening Heritage: Critical Heritage and Film Through the Example of “Taq Kasra: Wonder of Architecture” Documentary”. Heritage & Society. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/2159032X.2022.2031586
-This article uses Taq Kasra, the documental, to argue that the documentary is actually a tool to critically analyse heritage while also producing a new form of heritage by questioning the heritage management processes in Iran and Iraq.
2021. “Between destruction and protection: the case of the Australian rock art sites”. ZARCH. Issue 16 on Rehaciendo el patrimonio arquitectónico controvertido, repensando el espacio público, pp. 148-153. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_zarch/zarch.2021165087
-This article reviews the most important factors that have determined the destruction or protection of Australian indigenous rock art sites, in order to provide an overview of the problem that Indigenous heritage, as a concept, faces in a postcolonial setting like Australia.
(with C. Garduño). 2021. “Digital specters: The Notre-Dame effect”. International Journal of Heritage Studies. Volume 27, Issue 12, pp. 1264-1277. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2021.1950029
-This article considers questions raised by the digital specters generated by search queries on Google in response to the destruction of cultural heritage in Notre-Dame and Palmyra.
(with T. I. Arellano). 2020. “Violación al patrimonio cultural en Teotihuacán y Cuernavaca, México”. [Violation to the cultural heritage in Teotihuacán and Cuernavaca, Mexico]. Revista Apuntes. Revista de Estudios sobre Patrimonio Cultural [Journal of Cultural Heritage Studies], Vol. 33. DOI: https://doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.apu33.vpct
-This article analyses the destruction of two heritage sites in Mexico (Teotihuacán and Casino de la Selva) through a legal perspective, concluding that the interests of two supermarket chains operating in Mexico destroyed valuable heritage sites only to be prosecuted overseas, but not in Mexico.
(with N. Munawar). 2020. “The unfallen statues of Hafez Al-Assad”. City. Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action. Special Issue Urban Fallism, edited by F. Sybille and M. Ristic. Volume 24, Issue 3-4, pp. 642-655. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1784594
-This article analyses and interprets the destruction and toppling of statues representing former president of Syria, Hafez Al-Assad, in relation to the concepts of fallism and unfallism, to explain the destruction and reconstruction of statues during the Syrian Uprising.
(with R. Lee). 2020. “Heritage destruction in Myanmar’s Rakhine State; legal and illegal iconoclasm”. International Journal of Heritage Studies. Volume 26, Issue 5, pp. 519-538. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2019.1666294
-This article provides an analysis and interpretation of the destruction of Rohingya heritage in Myanmar by applying iconoclasm as a theoretical framework.
(with A. Chapman and D. Jayemanne). 2018. “Heritage destruction and videogames: Ethical challenges of the representation of cultural heritage”. Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association. Special issue, selected articles from the 2017 International DiGRA conference. Volume 4, Issue 2, pp. 173-203. DOI: https://doi.org/10.26503/todigra.v4i2.93
-This article analyses the depiction of the burned library of Sarajevo in a videogame to argue that the depiction of destroyed heritage has ethical implications, which have not yet analysed in videogames and heritage scholarship before.
(with C. Albarrán and B. Isakhan). 2018. “Digitally mediated iconoclasm: the Islamic State and the war on heritage”. International Journal of Heritage Studies. Volume 24, Issue 6, pp. 649-671. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2017.1413675
-This article analyses the destruction of heritage by the Islamic State, by proposing a new term to define the destruction of heritage via social media.
(with B. Isakhan). 2017. “Layers of Religious and Political Iconoclasm under the ‘Islamic State’: Symbolic Sectarianism and Pre-Monotheistic Iconoclasm”. International Journal of Heritage Studies. Volume 24, Issue 1, pp. 1-16. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2017.1325769
-This article posits the argument that the destruction carried out by the Islamic State can be iconoclastic in its motivation, based on an analysis of the propaganda that the IS has created for this purpose.
2016. “Making heritage at the Cannes Film Festival”. International Journal of Heritage Studies. Volume 22, Issue 10, pp. 781-798. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2016.1212388
-This article is a discussion of how and why film should be considered heritage and the ways that the Cannes Film Festival is making heritage, through the conservation and promotion of film as heritage.
2015. “Towards a theory of landscape iconoclasm”. Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Volume 25, Issue 2, pp. 461-475. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0959774314001024
-This article develops the theory of landscape iconoclasm, which applies Indigenous mythology, and the anthropological theory of the image as devised by art historian Hans Belting, to explain the destruction of Indigenous landscapes (i. a. rock art sites) by mining companies. This article proposes a groundbreaking theory that catalogues the destruction of landscapes, and the first article to propose it.
2012. “La Destrucción de Patrimonio: Arte Rupestre en la Península Burrup”. Revista Internacional de Humanidades. Volume 1, Issue 2, pp. 83-100.
-This article expands on the destruction of Indigenous sites in Australia, by analysing the legal framework of heritage available to Indigenous communities to protect their heritage.
2012. “How Many Times Can the Same Image Change? The History of the Image in Murujuga”. The International Journal of the Image. Volume 2, Issue 4, pp. 95-109.
-This article analyses the continuities and departures of rock art in a postcolonial Indigenous archaeological site, regarding the framework of heritage.
2012. “The Destruction of Heritage: Rock Art in the Burrup Peninsula”. Reprinted by the Journal of Urban Culture Research. Volume 4, pp. 60-77.
2011. “The Destruction of Heritage: Rock Art in the Burrup Peninsula”. The International Journal of the Humanities. Volume 9, Issue 1, pp. 325-342.
-This article analyses the responses that are present through different levels of heritage (international, national, Indigenous and local) in the largest archaeological site in the world, the Burrup Peninsula.
2011. “iPod or the construction of new signs”. Razón y Palabra. Issue 76, May-July.
-This article is an investigation of the aesthetic and emotional responses that new media, like iPods, can convey in museum environments.
Conference proceedings
2021. “Destruction of images; images of destruction: critical stances of contemporary heritage” in Motion: Transformation 35th CIHA Congress Proceedings. V. 1-2. Eds. M. Faietti and G. Wolf, Bononia University Press, Bologna, pp. 391-396, ISBN: 9788869236501.
-This chapter reviews the work of Forensic Architecture on heritage destruction in light of critical heritage theory to analyse the work of contemporary artists who are influenced by heritage discourses to represent and create art based on heritage destruction.
2021. “Between death and taboo: heritage destruction in the digital turn”. In Heritage in Conflict: Proceedings of two meetings: ‘Heritage in Conflict: A Review of the Situation in Syria and Iraq’ Workshop held at the 63rd Rencontres Assyriologiques Internationales, Marburg, Germany, 24–25 July 2017 and ‘Syria: Ancient History – Modern Conflict’ Symposium held at the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia, 11–13 August 2017. Eds. H. Jackson, A. Jamieson, A. Robinson and S. Russell, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Supplement 57, Peeters Press, Louvain, pp. 149-159, ISBN: 9789042943179.
-This article considers the mediation in social media of the destruction of cultural heritage by the Islamic State as a new phenomenon that nevertheless shares commonalities with past examples that captured death and destruction in different mediums.
(with F. Rufián Fernández, M. Fernández Díaz, I. Sabrine, J. Ibáñez, B. Claramunt-López, and A. Escobar). 2020. “The documentation and protection of cultural heritage during emergencies” in International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences. Volume XLIV-M-1-2020, pp. 287–293, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIV-M-1-2020-287-2020.
-This paper highlights the importance of fast and safe documentation of the damage to cultural heritage after a natural or anthropic catastrophe, with greater relevance of civil society.
2019. “From rock to digital: Art Historical Scholarship in Prehistoric Art” in Terms, 34th CIHA Congress Proceedings. V. 1-3. Eds. S. Dazhen, F. Di’an and LaoZhu, Commercial Press, Beijing, pp. 541-545. ISBN: 9787100177207.
-This article reviews the most important advances in the understanding of rock art from a neo-aesthetic framework to the more recent efforts to digitize entire caves and prehistoric sites.
2016. “Landscape destruction and heritage mismanagement in Murujuga (Western Australia)” in Quality Management of Cultural Heritage. Problems and best practices. Proceedings of the XVII UISPP World Congress (1–7 September, Burgos, Spain). Volume 8/Session A13. Eds. M. Quagliuolo and D. Delfino, British Archaeological Reports, pp. 3-12, ISBN: 9781784912956.
-This chapter reviews the methods so far implemented in Murujuga (Western Australia) to envisage a solution to the heritage mismanagement conflict.
2013. “Why do humans create art?” in What caused the creation of art? A Round Table at the 25th Valcamonica Symposium. Ed. E. Anati, Atelier, Capo di Ponte (Italia), pp. 42-43. ISBN: 9788898284030.
-This chapter describes the cognitive and emotional revolution that took place 40,000 years ago in the human brain, so Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens could create art for the first time in the history of humanity.
2013. “Iconoclash and Prehistoric Art” in Art as a source of history. 25th Valcamonica Symposium 2013. Ed. E. Anati, Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, Capo di Ponte (Italia), pp. 269-273. ISBN: 9788886621397.
-In this chapter I applied the concept of iconoclash to analyse the rediscovery of prehistoric art as a fine example of iconoclash, emphasizing the role this iconoclash plays in a broader history of art.
2013. “Destruction of heritage or secular iconoclasm? The case of Dampier Archipelago rock art” in The Challenge of the Object / Die Herausforderung des Objekts, 33th CIHA Congress Proceedings, V. 1-4. Ed. U. Großmann and P. Krutisch, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, pp. 449-453. ISBN: 9783936688665.
-This chapter outlines the conditions to start considering the destruction of Indigenous heritage sites in Australia as iconoclasm (the destruction of religious images), rather than simple acts of vandalism or defacement.
In the last two decades we have seen a new type of heritage destruction on the rise: the icon of iconoclasm or the meticulously recording of the destruction of heritage. Since the destruction of the Twin Towers in Manhattan and the Buddha statues in Bamiyan in 2001, up until the iconoclastic rampage in Iraq and Syria performed by the so-called Islamic State, the destruction of heritage has been accompanied by its recording and documentation to leave a trace either on paper or in the digital realm. The recording certainly provides an extra value not only to the destruction but also to the targeted object or site. Iconoclasm studies have already attested to this value present in the images and artworks we cherish but also that we hate. However, the recording for the sake of recording is a new form of message and communication that we must consider.