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Memory and Imagination: Artwork as a Form of Testimony

Abstract

As the generation of witnesses is passing away and the testimonies of Shoah survivors are replaced by an inherited, culturally constructed memory - post-memory – art becomes a meaningful landmark in the landscape of memory. Although the narration of history - being the researchers’ discourse rather than an objective view - has been considered to a certain extent fictitious, the difference between real and fictional, between remembering and creating, becomes today - at the end of the era of eyewitnesses - more and more vague. Thus, art work should take on the role of a vicarious witness to a greater degree than previously. A special duty of art is to restore a discarded memory - such as the memory of the pogroms against the Jews in 1941 in North-Eastern Poland. Only in a few of the dozens of towns where pogroms occurred have memorials been built, and even fewer are inhabited by communities who are prepared to accept a difficult memory. The text is an attempt to define the role of art in the recognition of difficult issues of memory and the potential role of art as a testimony in a changing social context. The works of artists who deal with the subject of memory and social trauma and the role of art in restoring memory are also discussed.

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Details

Category:
Monographic publication
Type:
rozdział, artykuł w książce - dziele zbiorowym /podręczniku w języku o zasięgu międzynarodowym
Title of issue:
Memory, Forgetting and Creating strony 88 - 94
Language:
English
Publication year:
2016
Bibliographic description:
Kabrońska J.: Memory and Imagination: Artwork as a Form of Testimony// Memory, Forgetting and Creating/ ed. Wojciech Owczarski, Zofia Ziemiann, Amanda Chalupa Gdańsk: Gdansk University Press, 2016, s.88-94
Verified by:
Gdańsk University of Technology

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