Iona Ogilvy-Stuart, School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies

Traumatic Knowledge and Encryption

Trauma exerts an invisible pressure on psychic life and language often fails to contain and represent traumatic traces. So what does artmaking offer that language cannot?

Jean Jacques coined the term “le differend.” It is translated as that which cannot be phrased causes the perpetual search. This term becomes relevant to traumas aching presence and how it desires the relief of signification. Language seeks to define and create edges around an experience, whereas visual representation is able to mobilise the static site of trauma and transfer it into materials which contain its presence yet allow it an existence outside the rational confines of language.

Using psychoanalysis and neurobiology this talk attempts to outline how trauma operates in the mind and how artmaking can offer a catharsis and containment.

BA in Fine Art and Contemporary Cultural Theory, Second Year (she/her)
I am currently undertaking a BA in Fine Art and Contemporary Cultural Theory. My current interests surround Post-Structuralist theory on unconscious, and understanding how cultural conventions mould a gendered experience that reach into the mesh of the unconscious.