Krapivina, Ksenija. 2024. The Archives and the Critical State of Unrest. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]

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Abstract or Description

This interdisciplinary experimental project problematises the idea of ethical treatment of historical knowledge. Responding to the demands of what Walter Benjamin calls ‘the state of critical unrest,’ the project adopts constellatory logic forming a unity 1 between several artworks and philosophical texts. The artworks chosen for this project avoid direct representation of the violence of the traumatic events and instead proceed as only poetry would, simultaneously exposing and evading their traumatic origins. Despite their many differences, each of them problematises the representation of the traumatic events, while producing the effects of discontinuity and interruption of thematisation and narrative within the official discourse on history. The continual abstraction and subversion of logical connections can disqualify them as strategies for informing the viewer. While the certainty of ‘knowing’ the events in question dissipates, so does the possibility of justifying and rationalising these events, thus the artworks illustrate positive propositions of how to engage with history ethically.

Each of the artworks uniquely challenges the self-sufficiency of the spectator’s position, opening the possibility for an unexpected encounter that can also be called a memory. It does not trigger fear of self preservation, nor does it create a certainty that knowing something can provide, instead, it interrupts the process of rationalisation urging to abandon the comfort of the contemplative state. What is demanded from the spectator is a response to the complexity that unfolds in each of these works. And if through the process of reading one succeeds at reaching ‘the state of the critical unrest’ a possibility of interrupting a vastly bigger mechanism at play within the official archives appears, creating an opening for ethics.

The first chapter of the project deciphers the riddle of The Atlas Group: Secrets in the Open Sea (1994/2004) by Walid Raad while problematising the notion of witnessing with the help of Giorgio Agamben’s book Remnants of Auschwitz (1998). The second chapter attempts to counter the continuous disappearance of the inconvenient past together with Ilya Kabakov’s installation The Man Who Never Threw Anything Away (1986) and Walter Benjamin’s notion of the collector from The Arcades Project (1927-1940). The third chapter engages with the repressive mechanisms at play within the archives looking at Jane and Louise Wilson’s video installation Stasi City (1997) through the lenses of Michel Foucault’s ideas. The last chapter investigates the ideas around inheritance and justice with the help of Arnold Dreyblatt’s opera Who’s Who in Central and East Europe of 1933 (1991) and Specters of Marx (1993) by Jaques Derrida.

Furthermore, the project finds its urgency in the current political crisis in Europe by continuously passing comments on the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The project maintains that due to the continuous refusal to acknowledge the inconvenient history of the Soviet era, Russia has become a state sponsor of terrorism. The project, however, does not seek to evaluate the current events but only to illuminate the paths not taken, i.e., to look for the preventive and counteractive measures that could have shielded any society from the possibilities of whitewashing and glorification of the past dictatorships that only serve the reinstatement of the same regimes of power.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.25602/GOLD.00039150
Keywords:	Archives, Ethics, History, Justice, Memory, Benjamin, Derrida
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Visual Cultures
Date:	31 August 2024
Item ID:	39150
Date Deposited:	09 Jul 2025 10:26
Last Modified:	09 Jul 2025 10:31
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/39150

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