Memory studies and commemoration in documentary and videoart: Searching for new forms of archive
Author: Yanka Smetanina, University of Art Berlin
Abstract:
This essay explores how documenting memory and commemoration is changing in contemporary video art. The main research questions are: What events and people are addressed by contemporary video artists – and how? What beliefs and knowledge influence the selection of commemorative events, and how are latent biases and stereotypes mitigated in the process of retrieval of traumatic events from memory. The paper empirically describes and tests different concepts and methods of commemorative practices from a whole range of video artists. The brief review is based on selected films from the exhibition "Affecting memory” (2022, Berlin) and a number of other anthropological and artistic films. Literature and observational studies were used to present the findings.
The data collected in the context of the original question show the problem of social power and political preference in the process of preserving memory, the deconstruction of which becomes the most important goal for both art and democratic society in general.
Keywords:
Document representation, memory, commemoration, implicated subject and distanced object, representation, author's point of view
The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance in their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction. It may be that in this respect precisely the present time deserves a special interest.
Sigmund Freud1
Subjective experience and objective concepts were no longer considered incompatible, but complemented each other. The importance of personal testimonies is now generally recognised in historiography because they are not only supplementary sources of study of the passed events, but also provides the perspective of the victims themselves.
Aleida Assman2
The contemporary postcolonial global culture of remembrance, which has replaced the anti-fascist anti-war culture, is dissatisfied with the established traditions of remembrance, which are mostly based on mourning and carry a colonial representation (according to A. Assman, C. Mayer3). Disappointed with the monuments and memorials that seem to support militaristic culture and appear rather useless in the context of current events and that sometimes have the effect that is opposite to what was intended, contemporary artists are looking for alternative forms of remembering historic events and reinterpreting them in a new contexts, trying to expose problem areas of memory and its representation. Irony and critical reflection play a constructive role by revealing emotional problem areas of memory. The medium of video, which originally has the ability to convey an emotional event and capture reality in the most vivid way, also acquires a new postcolonial perspective and undergoes changes that exclude interpretations that are socially unacceptable in the contemporary context. The genre of ethnographic testimonies undergoes similar changes, and although it is very different from autobiographical studies, it complements them in the representation of recorded events.
Changing the gaze. Position of the viewer in video evidence
The changing of the optics in ethnographic video documentation can be illustrated by the film Bathing babies in three cultures (1951) by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, which is now considered a colonial film. The anthropological film from the series The character formation in different cultures, which initially claimed to be a dry "field" document and received appropriately good reviews precisely for this quality, eventually reveals its didactic and instructive character. The possibility of looking closely indicates a social involvement and a colonial point of view, with the claim to draw big conclusions. “Their work in Bali and New Guinea was motivated by the question of how individual personality might be shaped by culture, reflecting the culture and personality movement that dominated anthropology in the United States for much of the twentieth century. The theory took on Freudian influences in the study of national character, of which Mead was a particular champion during and after the Second World War... In 1949, Mead described the study of national character as an attempt to “combine the basic Freudian theories and the methods of cultural anthropology,” which sought to explain the means by which culture was learned by individuals in childhood. This theoretical framework shaped the Character Formation series, with camera documents used as evidence of culture formation in the modern world.”4 A scientific investigation conveys the implicit disapproval or approval of the researcher. The camera in Bathing Babies in Three Cultures targets the subject and is itself becoming subjective through the comparison of cultures, but the gaze shaped and sanctioned by the visual culture of the time becomes unacceptable in contemporary ethnographic projects with decolonial representation.
Ethnography, being a privileged field that produces cultural knowledge and sells “otherness”, depends crucially on the ethnographer's view of culture. Thus Jacques Lenhardt wrote of the "painful geometry" of the colonial order: "the right to look without being looked at"5. In its search for balance, post-war filmmaking comes up with an affirmed consent, co-authorship, or maximum distance. Jean Rouch, for example, used participatory practice and developed the technique of "feedback" by showing drafts to the people he filmed.6
In Zum Vergleich (In Comparison, 2009) Harun Farocki uses the principle of maximum alienation. In Comparison has the same structure as Mead and Bateson's film, but is paradoxically perceived differently. While Mead's film pretends to be a document that reveals the author's personal tone, (in her choice of location and perspective, in her small comments on the action there is a comparative preference, interpretation of the image according to the principle of comprehensibility and closeness to American culture), Farocki’s film is precisely a document that encourages critical thinking. The camera is focused on the work and the subject matter (bricks and house construction in different countries), from a detached distance, maintaining the cold-blooded gaze of the uninvolved video witness. The film's critical focus is reinforced by its title, "Compare!" – that Farocki explicitly suggests, recalling how Mead urged to "perceive" and "observe very closely," to create a viewer specifically demarcated from culture. In 2004, Hito Steyerl proclaimed the end of the "myth of the leftist hero" in his essay Ein Ding wie du und ich (A thing like you and me) and declared: "The hero is dead. Long live the thing." Farocki illustrates this approach by actually filming the thing from the thing's perspective. People, oblivious to the camera and going about their business, are seen in the image as part of a larger mechanism. The text only records the scene, the camera only captures the process. But it is precisely this distancing that gives us pause to think about the comparison that the author has led us to make: we see how, with each successive technological process, the women who do the hard work disappear, how the work processes of the men who replace them change; the camera captures this as coldly and distantly as the shape of the bricks.
But Steyerl herself, in her film November (2004), referring to the principle explained in her essay and commemorating her friend Andrea Wolf, discusses the image of a hero (a German friend being shot as a Kurdish "terrorist") from a perspective of the implicated object and appears in the image as a witness to the events, reflecting on her involvement. While there used to be possibilities of identification with revolutionary subjects, says Steyerl, "identification, if it is to go anywhere, has to be with this material aspect of the image, with the image as a thing, not as a representation. And then perhaps it ceases to be an identification, but becomes a participation." "Participation in the image, rather than mere identification with it, perhaps cancels the relationship of representation that has hitherto governed politics, and may mean surrendering to the "potential efficacy" of the image". The object displaces the subject. Michael Rothberg7 points out that Steyerl's emphasis on participation over identification can be an implication in the matter of representation. On the other hand, unlike ethnographers, video artists' recording of memories is not only about objective documentation of the event, but also about maximizing emotional impact.
The artist's self-reflexivity and irony add new subtexts to the perception. In the shots, in which Steyerl joins the Kurdish demonstrators, possibly suggesting a connection to the mourners and continuation of Andrea Wolf's cause, there is an off-screen voice: "There is a role of a militant hero, but there is also another role that is much more problematic, that of a sensitive, reserved and understanding filmmaker telling a personal story. Saying “I don't understand anything”, this pose is far more hypocritical than even the crudest propaganda icon." Ironically, exposing the hypocrisy of the sensitive artist, Steyerl applies the critique of internationalism to her own work, and in this sense separates the homage to Andrea Wolf from the unequivocal heroization of revolutionary martyrdom, so often found in the mourning collaborators.
Monumental forms of the video archive
Video becomes a successful new medium to give new forms to the archive. Viriability of artistic media is extended by performative practices that lead to emotionally affecting results.
The preservation of history without central heroic images is the basic idea of the works 2205 State Crimes (2016) and 697 State Crimes (2018) by Santiago Sierra. In the performances, which were recorded on camera, the actors read out 2205 names of people killed during the 2014 Gaza War and 697 names of people killed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the end of the 2014 Gaza War until the end of December 2016. Mentioning Palestinian victims alongside Israeli victims in the Israeli gallery seems provocative, but is consistent with Serra's anti-militarist stance, which aims to honor victims of wartime violence without intentionally taking sides or singling anyone out. Names read out by a soft voice hang in the air, stretching out time, becoming a living memorial. Minimalist images create a powerful impact, monotone phrases emphasize the ordinariness and senselessness of war. Similar thoughts about the ordinariness of war and the impossibility of taking sides in a military conflict occupied me around the same time. In 2014, in the performance They say they lay down their arms, i read out lists of names of those who had died in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, from both sides.
Another attempt to find a new form of archive is the film 528 (2014) by Margarete Rabow. In a play about a concentration camp, Katzbach Rabow writes the names of 528 murdered victims on the public square in Frankfurt using white school blackboard chalk. Each individual image of each name, taken with an analogue 16 mm film camera, becomes a single frame of the video. The result is an abstract film about one minute long in which one of the names can be read at each point of the still image. The compressed archive becomes a concentrated blob of emotion. While Assmann states that what matters is "how the event was experienced, how it is remembered and passed on to subsequent generations", Serra and Rabow, through their inability to show "how the event was experienced" (people were “routinely” murdered) and by placing the emphasis on exactly that (look how ordinarily people were killed, how many of them there were, how meaningless their lives were), carry this inanimate experience into the present moment.
Nezaket Ekici reads the poems of her father, a Turkish immigrant, in three languages in the video performance Papa's Poem (2016). The artist commemorates not only the memory of her father and his traumatic experience, not only a specific event, but also an emotionally coloured period of time that she does not want to allow to happen again. She creates a memorial of a great emotional power that can only exist temporarily, during the performance, and is only captured on film as a living sculpture. This shows sculpture, as well as memorial culture, as a flexible design process that constantly "models" both objects (monuments) and individuals (personal positioning). Time is transformed: stretched in the case of the pronunciation of names in Serra's work or the repetition of the poem in three languages in Ekici's work, or condensed, as in Margaret Rabow's work. But if in Serra's and Rabow's work it is safe to say that the artists deliberately distance themselves in order to emphasize the monotony and ordinariness of death, which is their intention, in Ekici's work, where she is an actress playing a part that perfectly captures the emotional gestures and intonation of a particular language, it is the participation of the author that is brought to the fore. We see three deeply disturbed speakers of these languages (German, Turkish, English) with pronounced facial expressions, gestures and intonation, again not without a touch of irony. This small necessary dose of irony adds kindness and neutralizes the pathos of the such phrases as "In your arrogant view there is neither hope nor pity because you have no idea of humanity". The artist describes her involvement by saying in the interview that although she moved away at the age of 3, she feels that she will never leave completely. "There was no integration at that time. The Turkish children were put in a separate class and taught by a German teacher. We didn't properly learn German or Turkish". During the performance she wears a Turkish school dress, which she never wore when going to school in Germany. She doesn't just recite the poem, she performs it with her body, which makes it very intense and emotional. The contrast is enhanced by the perfectly fit dress. It is her autobiographical discourse that establishes a link between two generations, shows the dialectical nature of the relationship between the two successive eras and transcends family memory, affecting the persons who listen.
You called us and received us, celebrating,
now you want us to adjust and play your game
you take away our essence, making us change
In your arrogant view there is neither hope nor compassion,
because you have no idea of humanity
You separate our children into classes
our workers have to live in ghettos
But never the word integration comes from our mouth
Our Name is Auslander, Gastarbeiter
Where is the freedom, where is the democracy,
Where are our rights?
as if we are aliens from alien world,
You, a narcissistic self – important European
Even if we do want to forget what you did,
Is it possible at all to forget?
And if your economy was drawn into a crisis,
Is it our fault?
Is there absolutely no one of you who would think of us?
The sky and the sea are not always blue
Surely you will also experience bad days,
believe it and take note it,
you narcissistic self-important European8
Reconstruction of meanings
If all of the above films attempt to capture reality or create a memorable moment, Hysterical girl (2020) by Kate Novack deconstructs events and rewrites the story of Dora (the real name is Ida Bauer), already told by Freud, through a feminist lens, reflecting on how Freudian hysteria theory continues to shape popular culture. 'By liberating and reinterpreting Dora's voice, Novak comments on the hidden fiction at the heart of the story, namely Freud's own highly distorted interpretation of Dora's experience.' Of all Sigmund Freud's great case histories, only one dealt with a woman: Dora: An analysis of a case of hysteria. In Hysterical girl, the stunning documentary by Kate Novack, a reinvented Dora contrasts her version of the story with Freud's own words. By placing Dora in a contemporary setting and interspersing staged images with shots of contemporary and historical narratives that draw on contemporary psychological thought and feminist discourse, Nowak creates a compelling new document.
In the recreated plot, the reconstructed words of Dora, recorded by Freud, emotionally coloured with the actress's performance, overlap with the voices of modern women who suffered violence, are identified and elevate metafiction to reality. Could Freud have supposed that his daughter Sophie Freud would write in as early as 1993 that Dora's story is the story of a "gifted, intelligent, middle-class Jewish woman who spent her youth in a dysfunctional family in misogynistic and anti-Semitic Vienna, under the emotional oppression of a hostile environment that shaped her life”9.
The feminist lens, like the decolonial lens, is by far one of the most revealing tools for examining representational change in contemporary film. It is enough, for example, to rewatch the film Suspicion (1963) by recently deceased, once an innovator and now a recognized classic Jean Luc Godard, to feel awkward in the scenes with the heroine where violence is normalized and objectification is elevated to a cult. It is obvious that this was caused not only by the demands of the producers, but also by the everyday life of the director himself. Godard's completely constructed world (the plot and everyday life are far removed from reality, the characters lack psychological depth) is broken by this “realistic”, non-harmonious image of women, which certainly corresponds to the social norms of the time. And if Godard is characterized by this absolute construction, Nowak's work can be called an absolute reconstruction: Dora's feelings, misunderstood and unaccepted by Freud, turn out to be absolutely necessary in order to restore the real image, and the situation is exactly as Assmann describes it: "Memory, rejected by historians as an unreliable and distorting source, has been recognised as an important factor in reconstructing the events of the past and has evolved from a competitor to a partner in the writing of history."
Participation, polyphony
Quite unexpectedly, the genre of animation becomes a breakthrough in the documentary field, expanding the boundaries of the latter and being the first to declare the absence of the author’s monopoly on the stylistic unity of the visual series. Anidok (animated documentary film), which has grown into a whole genre, collages the author's documents with the archival ones, unites several authors in one film, multiplying points of view of an event and its interpretations.
The author's voices of implicated subjects united in an act of solidarity in the film Räuber und Gendarm (2020) become a political gesture and turn the document into a political instrument of incredible power. Original non-animated video of Timothy Ware-Hill’s poem was created in response to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. It immediately went viral precisely because of the open maximum level of the author’s involvement in the event, which evokes empathy. This is how director Arnon Manor responded, and by inviting artists from all over the world to interpret each phrase, he made them not just silent witnesses, but also actors of a political event. Here, not only the film itself, but also the process of working on the film become a commemoration. Animated art and production mixed with activism create a powerful in its emotional impact performativity. Participatory animation is so far the only one of all types of film industry that destroys hierarchical capitalist production systems.
It is probably difficult within the scope of a single article to cover and analyze all the new forms of commemoration in documentary cinema and artistic video, as well as to encompass the diversity of the chosen commemorative events. I do not address topics such as interactive documentary films, autoethnographic film-essays, or new queer films, but there is an evident trend of challenging the established canon. In the debate over whether the author's perspective is always subjective and the variety of artistic means blurs the line between truth and fiction, I align with those who believe that the author's personal involvement as an "implicated subject" leads to a deeper exploration of themes such as memory, identity, and trauma. This enriches the documentary genre with personal testimonies and new interpretations through artistic means. Personal, intimate, and immediate statements contribute to a deeper understanding and empathy among viewers and serve as a powerful tool for commemoration and historical reflection.
Literature:
Aleida Assman, History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony. Poetics Today 27:2 (Summer 2006) doi 10.1215/03335372-2005-003, (2006), by Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics
Aleida Assman, The Long Shadow of the Past: Memorial Culture and Historical Politics / by Boris Khlebnikov. - M.: New literary review, (2014).
Assmann, A. Shadows of trauma: memory and the politics of postwar identity. Fordham University Press. 2016.
Assmann, A. The new Unease with the Culture of Remembrance: An Intervention. C.H.Beck oHG, München. 2016. 978-3-406-69243-7.
Freud, Sophie, Fischer, Erica, Im Schatten der Familie Freud. Meine Mutter erlebt das 20. Jahrhundert. Claassen-Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-546-00398-5.
Hito Steyerl, A thing that looks like you and me. (2010). https://www.e-flux.com/journal/15/61298/a-thing-like-you-and-me/
Julia Barbara Köhne (ed.), Trauma and Film: Staging a Non-Representable. (2012), Kulturverlag Kadmos Berlin
Leenhardt, J. 1973. Lecture politique du roman: la Jalousie d’Alain Robbe-Grillet. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. p. 55
Maier Ch.S. A surfeit of Memory? reflections on history, Melancholy and Denial // history and Memory. vol. 5, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1993): 136-152
Many thanks to Regina Kouts, Toronto, for her assistance with the translation.
Michael Rothberg, The implicated subject. Beyond victims and perpetrators. (2019), Stanford University Press, Stanford, California
Michael Rothberg, The implicated subject.Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2019. | Series: Cultural memory in the present | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018050186 | ISBN 9780804794114 (cloth : alk. paper)
Minette Hillyer, Camera Documents Made at Home: Visual Culture and the Question of America. Film History, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2015), p. 51
Minette Hillyer, Camera Documents. Made at Home: Visual Culture and the Question of America. Film History, Vol. 27, No. 4 (2015)
Paul Henley, Jean Rouch. Sharing anthropology, in Beyond observation. Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526147295.00018
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents (New York: Norton, 1961), pp. 58 – 9, 92.
Ziya Ekici, author's translation