Group Panel "Representability and the History of Violence" at the Conference “Open Spaces” by the German Society for Theater Studies (GTW)

Together with our collaborators Darija Davidović (Berner Fachhochschule der Künste), Martina Groß (Universität Hildesheim) and Diana Rojas-Feile (Berner Fachhochschule der Künste), we (Felipe dos Santos Boquimpani, Balindile ka Ngcobo and Leon Gabriel) co-organised a shared panel at the biennal conference by the German Society for Theatre Studies which took place from 12th to 15th of June, 2024.

Abstract of the shared panel:

Content Notes: Physical, psychological and sexualised violence, war and death, racism, sexism

In view of power-critical and decolonial issues, various political crises and ongoing wars, works that deal with current but also past violent conflicts and oppression are increasingly being shown in the scenic arts. The embodiment of the history of violence and the entanglement from which it derives challenge aesthetic discourses as well as the writing of history. With good reason, mere depictions of violent acts are often understood as a problem for representation – if not unrepresentable at all. At the same time, many artistic works deal with the possibilities of making silenced and suppressed voices audible. The stage is understood as an archive against forgetting, which can give space for people and events that have been denied by hegemonic power structures. Which spatially conceived relations concerning violence become recognizable in aesthetic form, production method and effect? Where do artistic processes in dealing with violence open up discourses and where does this as well as the idea of ‘open spaces’ as such come up against limits?

The panel’s different inputs deal with: dramaturgical and ethical considerations concerning biographical narratives, e. g. regarding the war in Ukraine; undoings of the ‘Strong Black Woman’ trope that emerged as defense mechanism such as in the South African context; historiography as a (critical) aesthetic practice that considers the gaps in archives and the lack of subjugated positions; the political (in-)translatability of Brazilian Black and Indigenous tactics of resistance, counter-violence and flight from Brazil; challenges of fieldwork and stagings on the forced recruitment of children and adolescents in the post-war context of Colombia; (European) aesthetics’ inherent violence of objectification in comparison with ‘social environmental’ artistic engagement.