The archive as construction site: collective memory and trauma in contemporary art from Angola

World Art ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-123
Author(s):  
Nadine Siegert
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Construction Site ◽  
Memory And Trauma

scholarly journals Dislocations and Ecologies. the Disruption of the Experience of London in Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair and Gilbert & George

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatiana Pogossian
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Urban Experience ◽  
Process Of Change ◽  
Peter Ackroyd ◽  
Ending Process ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Close Investigation

 London exerts attraction and repulsion upon travellers, writers and artists alike. Its past is overshadowed by the never-ending process of change, yet a close investigation helps unveiling hidden parts of a collective memory. Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair and Gilbert & George have explored the memory of London through the prism of cultural studies, psychogeography or contemporary art. London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd, Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital by Iain Sinclair and the 20 London E 1 Pictures by Gilbert & George may serve as a basis for retrieving fragile realms of memory. We may wonder whether these realms cannot be likened to « ecology of knowledge ». If ecology designates an environment regulated by specific rules and mechanisms, what do “ecologies of knowledge” refer to in the urban context?  Besides, the nature of the relationship between the experience of London and the ecology of knowledge prompts questions. Does the experience of London dislocate the artistic universes created by Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair and Gilbert & George? Or do the artistic works partake in the dislocation of urban experience? 
My contention in this paper is to unveil the ways in which the polymorphism of the city is translated into writerly and iconographic codes. As the understanding of the urban ecology keeps receding, similarly the works adopt process and metamorphosis as structuring principles. 
First, the destabilising exploration of London shall be assessed by its impact upon the physical experience, and the renegotiation of concepts such as body, empiricism, and the spirit of the place. Then, the frustrating exploration of London may be analysed through literary and artistic devices that echo the dislocation in the works. Eventually, these works will lead us to consider the dis-membering of the city body as the only  means to the re-membering of London.     Londres ejerce atracción y repulsión entre  los viajeros, artistas y escritores. Su pasado, aunque ocultado por el proceso de cambio que caracteriza la ciudad, se deja  domesticar, desvelando una memoria  colectiva descuidada. Peter Ackroyd, Iain Siclair y Gilbert & George han registrado la memoria de Londres a través del prisma de estudios culturales de la psicogeografía o de las artes plásticas contemporáneas.  London : The Biography de Peter Ackroyd, Lights Out For the Territory, London Orbital de Iain Sinclair y los 20 London E 1 Pictures de Gilbert & George  sirven de punto de partida para la exploración de trozos  de memoria que van desvaneciéndose. ¿Si la ecología designa un entorno regulado por mecanismos específicos, que mecanismo regula esta ecologia urbana ? En este artículo, analizaremos la dislocación de la ciudad y su codificación  textual e iconográfica. Dado que la comprensión de la ecología urbana se revela  problemática, las obras adoptan  a su vez el proceso y la metamorfosis como principios estructurantes. ¿Como la ecologia urbana y los universos artisticos  ecologia artistica interactuan : ¿la experiencia de Londres disloca los universos artísticos de Peter Ackroyd , Iain Sinclair et Gilbert & George? ¿O sus obras participan en la dislocación de la experiencia urbana? En primer lugar, la experiencia desestabilizante de Londres se valorará a partir de su impacto sobre la experiencia física, ajustando  conceptos como el cuerpo, el empirismo o el alma del lugar. Luego, la exploración de Londres se analizará con procedimientos que imitan la dislocación. Por fin, el análisis del corpus nos llevará a contemplar el desmembramiento  del cuerpo de la ciudad como único medio para encontrarse con la memoria  evanescente de Londres..     

The Holy Defense Museum in Tehran, or How to Aestheticize War

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-77
Author(s):  
Anna Vanzan
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Islamic Republic ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Enormous Amount ◽  
Islamic Republic Of Iran ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
The Sacrifice

Abstract In September 2013 the Iranian authorities inaugurated the Holy Defense Museum (Muzeh-i Dafa’-i Moqaddas) in the capital Tehran that also hosts a Martyrs’ Museum (Muzeh-i Shuhada) built in the early 1980s and later renovated. The new museum is part of a grandiose project to commemorate the sacrifice of Iranians during the war provoked by the Iraqi regime (1980–1988). The museum encompasses various aspects of the arts (visual, cinematic, photographic, literary, etc.) shaped to remember and celebrate the martyrs of that war. The 1979 Iranian Revolution and the following Iran-Iraq War produced an enormous amount of visual material; works produced during this crucial period that disrupted the balance of power, both regionally and internationally, constitute an important part of Iran’s recent history. Visual materials produced in that period not only constitute a collective graphic memory of those traumatic years, they also revolutionized Iranian aesthetics. The Islamic Republic of Iran (hereafter IRI) establishment has a long experience in molding contemporary art for political purposes and the Holy Defense Museum represents the zenith of this imposing project. In this paper, I present an analytic and descriptive reading of the museum in light of my direct experience visiting the museum, and I explore its role in maintaining the collective memory of the Iran-Iraq conflict, in celebrating the revolution and in aestheticizing war.

scholarly journals Filmic Therapeutic Encounters and Resistance: Silence, Forgetting, and Guilt in the Face of Historical Violence

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110100
Author(s):  
Aylin Basaran
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Grey Matter ◽  
Central Element ◽  
Collective Trauma ◽  
Memory And Trauma ◽  
The Face ◽  
Therapeutic Encounters

Mental disorder and therapeutic encounters are central aspects of three films that were groundbreaking in addressing collective trauma in the aftermath of slavery, colonialism, or genocide: Peele’s GET OUT (USA), Ruhorahoza’s GREY MATTER (Rwanda) and Mhando and Mulvihill’s MAANGAMIZI—THE ANCIENT ONE (Tanzania/USA). Recurring to theories of collective memory and trauma, the article assumes that asymmetric historical violence causes a crisis of reason among the victims, and that the affective dream-like technique of film has the potential to make unutterable mental conditions explicit and relatable without trivializing their complexities. Oppression is usually perpetuated by an alliance of domination with forgetting, silencing, and a sense of guilt, inflicted on the victims who are thereupon labeled as overly sensitive, moronic, or insane. The films depict mental conditions caused by collective trauma which are expressed by haunting memories, ancestral visions, or victims being possessed by their oppressors. A central element is the depiction of problematic therapeutic encounters which may be abusive, manipulative or turn the patient–therapist relation upside down. By challenging notions of therapy and critically addressing its potential embeddedness in power relations, it is argued, the films themselves serve as a form of postcolonial therapy and empowerment.

The Persistence of the Image, the Lacunae of History: The Archive and Contemporary Art in Algeria (1992–2012)

Algeria ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Gillet ◽  
Patrick Crowley
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ideological Manipulation ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
Contemporary Artists

In Algeria , the War of Independence (1954-62) and civil war of the 1990s are the two events which have marked the history of the country due not only to the extent of the violence but also the ideological manipulation of both events. The anamnesis effect identified by academic analysis with respect to these conflicts is observed in the production of a generation of contemporary artists for whom memory, in its broadest sense, is no longer about an untouchable past but instead has become a means to construct, and be active in, the present in a way that is not overdetermined by a single notion of identity. In drawing upon the archive — such as film, documentary or photograph — contemporary Algerian artists such as Ammar Bouras, Mustapha Sedjal, Sofiane Zouggar, or Dalila Dalléas Bouzar bear witness to a ‘need for history’ which has to be situated both at a national and transnational level. If, for artists, the use of the archive is as much a mark of authenticity as a reminder of the collective memory, its reappropriation questions the role of the image in the construction of collective imaginary of the post-independent Algerian society. Based on interviews with the artists this chapter problematizes the process of a return to the archive.

scholarly journals History as an April Fool’s Joke. Defamiliarising Collective Memory in Rabih Mroué’s So Little Time

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz Półtorak
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
Modern History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Critique ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Scene

Summary In the article, Rabih Mroué’s performance-lecture So Little Time (2017) is discussed as an example of counterfactual mobilization for the purposes of political critique in contemporary art and theatre. I scrutinize Mroué’s references to the modern history of Lebanon and—drawing upon a cultural analysis of this performance—discuss the artist’s rendering of the instrumentalization of Lebanese collective memory by competing factions in the country’s political scene. Drawing upon existing readings of Rabih Mroué’s oeuvre offered by Charles Esche and Shela Sheikh, I posit that the artist reveals the arbitrary quality of the representations of the past through defamiliarization (ostranenie), and that his method bears an affinity to Jacques Derrida’s notions of deconstruction and decolonization.

scholarly journals The case for graphic counter-memorials in the comics of Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brooke Winterstein
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Art Spiegelman ◽  
The Past ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Trauma Memory ◽  
Memory And Trauma ◽  
Political Intervention

My dissertation considers a group of contemporary comics about war by Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, and Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli, as examples of a larger genre I call the graphic counter-memorial. Graphic counter-memorial comics address history, memory, and trauma as they depict the political, violent, and collective aspects of war and social conflict. I argue that the particular comics I study in this dissertation, which mingle fiction and non-fiction and autobiography as well as journalism, follow the tradition of the counter-monuments described by James E. Young. Studying commemorative practices and counter-monuments in the 1980s, Young notes a generation of German artists who resist traditional forms of memorialization by upending the traditional monument structure in monument form. Young looks at the methods, aims, and aesthetics these artists use to investigate and problematize practices that establish singular historical narratives. Like these works of public art, the graphic counter-memorial asks the reader to question ‘official history,’ authenticity, and the objectivity typically associated with non-fiction and reporting. I argue that what these comics offer is an opportunity to re-examine comics that incorporate real and familiar social and historical events and wars. Comics allow creators to visually and textually overlap perspectives and time. Graphic counter-memorials harness the comic medium’s potential to refuse fixed narratives of history by emphasizing a sense of incompleteness in their representation of trauma, memory, and war. This makes possible a more complex and rich way to engage with Western society’s relationship to the past, and in particular, a more complex way of engaging with collective memory and war. Their modes of mediating history produce political intervention through both form and content.

THE ʽSINGING FREEDOMʼ EXHIBITION: PAINFUL HISTORIES, COLLECTIVE MEMORIES AND PERCEPTIONS OF FREEDOM

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Paul Tichmann ◽  
Shanaaz Galant
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Memory And Trauma ◽  
Research Interviews ◽  
Freedom Songs

This article discusses the research conducted in order to prepare the ‘Singing Freedom:  Music  and  the  struggle  against  apartheid’,  which  was  launched at the Iziko Slave Lodge Museum in Cape Town in March 2014. As part of this research, interviews were conducted with various musicians and other stakeholders involved with 'struggle songs' specifically and freedom songs more generally. The interview questions were informed by the current discourses and scholarship around collective memory and trauma.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document