[csaa-forum] Dennis del Favero seminar

[James Donald]

UNSW Media Film and Theatre Seminars
Wednesday 17 May 2006
5 p.m. Webster Building 327

Nachträglichkeit
an aesthetics of immanence and trauma
Dennis del Favero


Pierre Janet coined the classic spatial 
formulation of trauma when he argued that in the 
normal course of events, experiences are 
processed through processes that enable them to 
be constituted as narrative. Trauma, however, 
resists such processing. As Jill Bennett has 
noted, trauma for Janet is not so much remembered 
as subject to uncontrolled repetition. "It is 
only for convenience that we speak of it as a 
'traumatic memory' ... The subject is often 
incapable of making the necessary narrative which 
we call memory regarding the eventŠ". If trauma 
is so opposed to narrative representation then 
how can we artistically engage with trauma when 
what characterises trauma is its 
anti-representional and anti-narrative nature? 
Freud, in contrast, coined the concept of 
nachtraglichkeit to suggest the dynamically 
temporal nature of trauma. The paper investigates 
these concepts in relation to a series of new 
media projects undertaken by the artist between 
2003 and 2006. These works do not represent 
trauma in an attempt to induce a traumatic 
experience in an audience, but rather, aim to 
dramatize the productiveness of trauma as it 
engages the past and future through the present.

Dennis Del Favero is a Sydney-based artist and 
research fellow.  His video and photographic 
works have been widely shown in Europe as well as 
Australia.  He has published on digital media and 
he is Managing Editor of the Digital Arts Edition 
series.   He is currently a Queen Elizabeth II 
Fellow and Co-Director of the iCinema Centre for 
Interactive Cinema Research at UNSW, as well as 
Artist-in-Resident at ZKM, Centre for Art and 
Media, Karlsruhe.

www.icinema.unsw.edu.au

-- 
Dr James Donald
Associate Dean (Education), Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Professor of Film Studies, School of Media, Film and Theatre
University of New South Wales
Sydney
NSW 2052
Australia

Telephone	(02)9385 4858
Mobile		0433 126445
Facsimile		(02)9385 6812

International
Telephone	+612 9385 4858
Mobile		+61433 126445
Facsimile		+612 9385 6812

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