Panel 2. Memory Trauma and its Aestheticization
Memory is always associated with traumas. Moreover, the very structure of memory is based on trauma. At the same time, paradoxically, trauma is not compatible with memory, or to quote Lacan, trauma refuses to withdraw from memory. This impossible symbolization is just the challenge for art to address. The role of art can hardly be overestimated in archival research and in the aestheticization of trauma, its covering with aesthetic bandages. Concealment of emptiness is an opening of a trauma releasing ghosts. Art techniques, art as a set of techniques, does not drive away the ghosts but rather opens its hospitable embrace to them. The problem of memory, trauma, and ghosts is articulated anew in the new digital universe. All these questions require a comprehensive transversal consideration. Therefore we need to unite the efforts of artists, philosophers, critics, media theorists, and psychoanalysts to discuss these vital themes.
VICTOR MAZIN (RUSSIA) Theoretician of visual culture, art curator, psychoanalyst. Ph.D in Philosophy. Honorable Professor at the International Institute of Depth Psychology (Kiev), head of the section for theoretical psychoanalysis at the Eastern-European Institute of Psychoanalysis (St Petersburg). Founder of the Freud Museum of Dreams (1999); Honorary member of the council at The Museum of Jurassic Technology (Los-Angeles); Editor-in-chief of the journal Cabinet and co-editor of the Journal for Lacanian Studies (London), Journal of European Psychoanalysis (Rome), Transmission (Sheffield), Psychoanalytic Discourse (Tehran). Curated exhibitions in Russia, Austria, Finland, Germany, and USA. He has many published books and articles to his name. His papers were published in The Art Magazine (Moscow), Critical Mass (Moscow), DI (Moscow), Cultural Studies, Cabinet (N.Y.), The New Formation (London) Journal for Lacanian Studies (London), Journal of European Psychoanalysis (Rome), Transmission (Sheffield). His books and article were translated into German, English, French, Japanese, Slovenian, Dutch, and other languages.
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