(Audio-)visual arts and trauma : from the east to the west

Abstract

Which patterns do (audio-)visual works use to tackle the unspeakable events of trauma? How can we describe the relationship between traumatic experience and artistic (audio)visual works? And, are there great differences in the medial forms, in which the arts from the East to the West deal with the rejected experience of the past? This compilation presents the results of the fourth research project between Petro Mohyla National Black Sea State University (Mykolaiv, Ukraine) and Saarland University (Saarbrücken, Germany). Including theoretical reflection on trauma theory, these papers study examples of (audio-)visual art working through trauma in Eastern and Western Europe, North and Central America and the Caribbean. The analysed objects of art embrace films, monuments, photographs, woodcuts and (graphic) novels, dealing with Stalinist repression, (Post) World War II losses, the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, the silenced crimes of the Francoist dictatorship, the persecution, humiliation and criminalization of homosexuals in the US and long lasting state terror in Cuba or Guatemala.