Abstract

There are historical events that remain charged with trauma, thereby resisting the logic of causal progress conventionally ascribed to historical narratives. As obstacles to cohesive representations of history and national identities, these events remain ambiguous and problematic. Prompted by art historian and philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman’s proclamation “In order to know, we must imagine for ourselves” (Images in Spite of All. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012, p. 3), I argue that art, by not being intent on resolution or certitude, can offer opportunities to re-present, re-imagine, and re-think traumatic histories. In this article, I bring a selection of films by South African artist Penny Siopis, namely Obscure White Messenger (2010), The Master Is Drowning (2012), and Communion (2011), into conversation with the installation The Blue Skies Project (2018) by Belgian photographer Anton Kusters. I investigate how they engender affective encounters that probe the limits of the known. This is made possible by the artworks’ tangential approach to the events, activating the viewer’s imagination. The imagination facilitates a subjective, contingent, and indeterminate inquiry into the unknown, which the discipline of history often precludes. As viewers are tasked with the work of making meaning, I argue for the unique potential of art and the imagination as highly generative sources for engendering varying and differing expressions of knowledge that remain open-ended. Central to my argument is the way in which the artworks discussed grapple with the dialectics of the image, with the imbrication of the evidentiary and the imagination—knowing and un-knowing.

摘要

有些历史事件仍然充满创伤，从而抵制传统上归因于历史叙述的因果进展逻辑。作为对历史和民族身份的连贯表现的障碍，这些事件仍然是模棱两可和有问题的。受艺术史学家和哲学家乔治·迪迪-休伯曼 (Georges Didi-Huberman) 的宣言“为了了解，我们必须自己想象”（Images in Spite of All . Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2012, p. 3）的推动，我认为艺术不是专注于决心或确定性，可以提供重新呈现、重新想象和重新思考创伤历史的机会。在这篇文章中，我带来了南非艺术家佩妮·西奥皮斯的精选电影，即《Obscure White Messenger》（2010），Master Is Drowning (2012) 和Communion (2011) 与装置The Blue Skies Project对话(2018) 由比利时摄影师 Anton Kusters 拍摄。我调查了他们如何产生探索已知极限的情感接触。这通过艺术作品对事件的切向方法激活观众的想象力而成为可能。想象力有助于对未知事物进行主观的、偶然的和不确定的探究，而历史学科通常会排除这种探究。由于观众的任务是创造意义，我主张艺术和想象力的独特潜力是高度生成的来源，可以产生各种不同的知识表达方式，这些表达方式仍然是开放式的。我的论点的核心是所讨论的艺术作品如何应对图像的辩证法，以及证据和想象的重叠——知道和不知道。