Online lecture: Trauma, Transgenerational Memory and Aesthetic Transformation

Online lecture: Trauma, Transgenerational Memory and Aesthetic Transformation by Prof. Griselda Pollock

May 18, 2022, 6:00pm CET

Lubaina Himid, Le Rodeur: The Exchange, 2016, Acrylic on canvas, 183 x 244 cm © Lubaina Himid. Image courtesy the artist and Hollybush Gardens, London. Photo: Andy Keate.

Event Info
Zoom Link: https://uni-potsdam.zoom.us/j/69180693071
Meeting-ID: 691 8069 3071
Passcode: 44746070
Meeting point on site with the research team: Neues Palais, UP_1.02.0.15
Language: English
Invited by: Ulrike Gerhardt, Post-Doc, SNSF-research project Images of History in Contemporary Art

This lecture by Griselda Pollock inquires the main questions and broader issues of Transgenerational Memories, one of the fields of investigation in the research project Images of History in Contemporary Art. Since the late 1970s, Pollock belongs to the most influential scholars in the field of avant-garde, modern, and postmodern art – with a special focus on feminist psychoanalytical approaches in art history as well as breaks and continuities in cultural memory.

Are memories and traumas encrypted or inscribed in art? Can art be understood as a place within which traces of trauma are passed on and even aesthetically transformed? Drawing on psychoanalytic theories, memory research, and aesthetic practices, art historian Griselda Pollock will explore the concept of art as a “transport station of trauma.” In her lecture, she will discuss the works of cinéaste Chantal Akerman (1950–2015), the painters Bracha L. Ettinger (b. 1948) and Lubaina Himid (b. 1954) and present a specifically feminist and art historical contribution to trauma studies.

The online lecture Trauma, Transgenerational Memory and Aesthetic Transformation is an event of the art historical research project Images of History in Contemporary Art funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation in Bern. This event is an addition to the recent workshop Transgenerational Corpographies of Memory at Center Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam, which was held 2021 as part of the research project. Interested people are cordially invited to join our research group on May 18, 2022 at 6 pm at University of Potsdam, Campus I – Am Neuen Palais, building 2, room 0.15 (UP_1.02.0.15) in situ.

Griselda Pollock is Professor emerita of Social & Critical Histories of Art, University of Leeds and Laureate of the Holberg Prize 2020 for her work in feminist art history and cultural analysis. Recent Publications: Concentrationary Art: Jean Cayrol, The Lazarean and the Everyday in Post-War Literature, Music and the Visual Arts (ed. with Max Silverman, 2019), Charlotte Salomon in the Theatre of Memory (2018), Concentrationary Imaginaries: Tracing Totalitarian Violence in Popular Culture (ed. with Max Silverman, 2015), After-Image/After-Affect: Trauma and Aesthetic Transformation (2013).