Re-presenting historical trauma: art-making and the affective imagination
| dc.contributor.advisor | Campbell, Kurt | |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Siopis, Penelope | |
| dc.contributor.author | Washkansky, Dale | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-01-29T13:18:18Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-01-29T13:18:18Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2026-01-29T13:17:09Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | Starting with an inquiry into what I speculate to be a portrait family photograph from 1941 taken amidst one of Nazi Germany's mass murder operations in Liepāja, Latvia, I encounter a young girl who looks to the ground and hides her face. Due to this visual obfuscation I direct a plea for her to look up and meet my gaze. The question as to why this photograph was taken shortly before their execution looms large. My yearning to see the young girl's face and know more, coming to some understanding about the circumstances and the people therein, was the impetus to my artistic response – the work of imagining beyond the frame to explore its hauntingly grievous impact. By deploying certain strategies, art, I argue, can offer a novel means to reposition traumatic historical events outside the determinisms associated with conventional practices of historiography, which quell their disruptive temporality, so that they can enter the ambiguous realm of subjective inquiry, where they remain contingent, indeterminate, and open-ended. In search for strategies, I analyse a selection of artworks by Penny Siopis and Anton Kusters that respectively utilise the mediums of film and photography. I discuss how their artworks challenge conventional representations of historical traumas by rousing the forces of the imagination and affect so that each viewer becomes a participant within the indefinite process of making meaning. Crucial strategies that I identify include: activating the vibrant opacity of materiality, haptics, discontinuous narratives, and the dialectics of montage, all of which emphasise particularity, where the subjective imbricates with the historical, social, and cultural. I argue that these strategies demonstrate how the image is never fully formed or static for observational interpretation, but always relational and orientated towards an anterior future, engendering an encounter with heterogeneous, multidirectional time that problematises and disrupts causal chronological logic. Following which, by applying these strategies within my own artistic practice, I demonstrate how the plea, the original point of obfuscation, is thus transformed by my practice from a desire to see into a highly generative re-discovery of the photograph's affective relationality, thus arguing for art's capabilities to potentialise knowledge from un-knowing. | |
| dc.identifier.apacitation | Washkansky, D. (2025). <i>Re-presenting historical trauma: art-making and the affective imagination</i>. (). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Michaelis School of Fine Art. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42758 | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.chicagocitation | Washkansky, Dale. <i>"Re-presenting historical trauma: art-making and the affective imagination."</i> ., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Michaelis School of Fine Art, 2025. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42758 | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.citation | Washkansky, D. 2025. Re-presenting historical trauma: art-making and the affective imagination. . University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Michaelis School of Fine Art. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42758 | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.ris | TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Washkansky, Dale AB - Starting with an inquiry into what I speculate to be a portrait family photograph from 1941 taken amidst one of Nazi Germany's mass murder operations in Liepāja, Latvia, I encounter a young girl who looks to the ground and hides her face. Due to this visual obfuscation I direct a plea for her to look up and meet my gaze. The question as to why this photograph was taken shortly before their execution looms large. My yearning to see the young girl's face and know more, coming to some understanding about the circumstances and the people therein, was the impetus to my artistic response – the work of imagining beyond the frame to explore its hauntingly grievous impact. By deploying certain strategies, art, I argue, can offer a novel means to reposition traumatic historical events outside the determinisms associated with conventional practices of historiography, which quell their disruptive temporality, so that they can enter the ambiguous realm of subjective inquiry, where they remain contingent, indeterminate, and open-ended. In search for strategies, I analyse a selection of artworks by Penny Siopis and Anton Kusters that respectively utilise the mediums of film and photography. I discuss how their artworks challenge conventional representations of historical traumas by rousing the forces of the imagination and affect so that each viewer becomes a participant within the indefinite process of making meaning. Crucial strategies that I identify include: activating the vibrant opacity of materiality, haptics, discontinuous narratives, and the dialectics of montage, all of which emphasise particularity, where the subjective imbricates with the historical, social, and cultural. I argue that these strategies demonstrate how the image is never fully formed or static for observational interpretation, but always relational and orientated towards an anterior future, engendering an encounter with heterogeneous, multidirectional time that problematises and disrupts causal chronological logic. Following which, by applying these strategies within my own artistic practice, I demonstrate how the plea, the original point of obfuscation, is thus transformed by my practice from a desire to see into a highly generative re-discovery of the photograph's affective relationality, thus arguing for art's capabilities to potentialise knowledge from un-knowing. DA - 2025 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town KW - fine arts LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2025 T1 - Re-presenting historical trauma: art-making and the affective imagination TI - Re-presenting historical trauma: art-making and the affective imagination UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42758 ER - | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42758 | |
| dc.identifier.vancouvercitation | Washkansky D. Re-presenting historical trauma: art-making and the affective imagination. []. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Michaelis School of Fine Art, 2025 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/42758 | en_ZA |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.language.rfc3066 | eng | |
| dc.publisher.department | Michaelis School of Fine Art | |
| dc.publisher.faculty | Faculty of Humanities | |
| dc.publisher.institution | University of Cape Town | |
| dc.subject | fine arts | |
| dc.title | Re-presenting historical trauma: art-making and the affective imagination | |
| dc.type | Thesis / Dissertation | |
| dc.type.qualificationlevel | Doctoral | |
| dc.type.qualificationlevel | PhD |