Gabriel Koureas / Trauma, Postmemory and Artistic Production

The memory void, Jewish Museum Berlin, designed by Daniel Libeskind. Menashe Kadishman, Fallen Leaves [Shalekhet], Installation, 1997-2000

The lecture discussed the complexities of remembering and representing traumatic events for the subsequent generations of survivors of trauma through monuments (Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz), memorial museums (Jewish Museum Berlin, Tuol Sleng Museum, Cambodia) and the work of artists (Alfredo Jaar, Doris Salcedo). It addressed issues of traumatic recall, repetition and temporality, generational trauma, space, photography and the archive in order to argue that the representational strategies adopted by these architects and artists provide through a number of artistic strategies instances through which the traumatic past can be worked through.