This panel examines how visual aesthetic practices—from war photography and documentary cinema to textile work and digital forensics—shape the politics of remembering state violence in the 21st century. Bringing together case studies from Eastern Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, and transnational activist networks, it interrogates how images, objects, and embodied creative practices act as mnemonic infrastructures that make violence visible, mobilise solidarity, and confront the limits of representation in contexts marked by repression, censorship, and disappearance. The papers collectively map a shift within memory studies toward a deeper engagement with visual agency: not only how images reflect historical events, but how they intervene in them, activating new forms of making and articulating knowledge and memory. Topolska analyses war photography within the contemporary Eastern European media landscape, highlighting tensions between desensitisation and affective activation amid digital oversaturation and the rise of citizen witnessing. Zavadski examines the counterpublic emerging around Rufina Bazlova’s Framed in Belarus, showing how participatory cross-stitching enacts transnational solidarity and remembrance of political prisoners through practices with long genealogies in feminist resistance. Douglas traces the reverberation of political aesthetic strategies developed under Latin American dictatorships into Iberian visual activism, arguing that visual forensics constitute a methodology for evidencing absence and articulating alternative futures. Berzosa Camacho demonstrates how Spanish film archives preserve both the propaganda of Francoist developmentalism and dissident cinematic ecologies, revealing the material and symbolic legacies of authoritarian modernisation. These contributions illuminate how visual media do more than document violence: they generate memory publics, establish and/or support transnational lines of solidarity, reconfigure knowledge, and challenge hegemonic narratives. By situating representational and aesthetic practices within broader socio technical regimes of visibility, the panel offers a comparative, interdisciplinary account of how images and material traces become central to struggles for justice, recognition, and the transformation of post-authoritarian memory landscapes.
Anastasiia Serikova, Bielefeld University, Germany -"'Spaces of Discipline and Antagonism' The Representation of War in Ukraine in Russian Museums" Cultural heritage is affected by wars and their consequences in various ways. On the one hand, cultural heritage becomes an object of destruction, protection, or reconstruction in wartime. On the other hand, cultural heritage can be considered as an instrument of war, when it is used for political interests of authorities. The museumification of military artefacts is one of the oldest forms of museum activity. The practice of collecting objects “in hot pursuit” of ongoing wars and organizing thematic exhibitions based on them is deeply rooted in Russian museum tradition. With the begin of the full-scale war in Ukraine, Russian historical museums returned to their familiar role of military heritage-makers. This paper analyses the official narrative of Russian museum exhibitions about the war in Ukraine and tries to outline, what kind(s) of heritage exhibitions representing wars “in hot pursuit” are making. Analyzing quantitative and qualitative data on such museum exhibitions, this study focuses on the visual and material environments created by Russian museums to represent the ongoing war as the spaces of antagonistic memory (Cento Bull, Lauge Hansen 2016). It shows how museum exhibitions construct the figures of the soldiers and the army, the nation, the enemy(ies), and the victim, as well as the connection with the World War II and the depiction of the Russian authorities.
Andrei Zavadski, TU Dortmund University – “Remembering political prisoners through cross-stitching: The transnational mnemonic counterpublic around Rufina Bazlova’s Framed in Belarus” This paper will analyse the practices associated with participants of the artist Rufina Bazlova’s social art project Framed in Belarus. The project is dedicated to Belarusians incarcerated by Alexander Lukashenko’s regime for their political views. It seeks to record the prisoners’ court cases and commemorate them in embroidered portraits. Bazlova creates patterns representing individual political prisoners and/or court cases that convicted them, and volunteers from across the world cross-stitch these portraits at home. The completed embroideries are sent back to the artist, kept in her archive (now comprising over 650 works), and shown at exhibitions. Moreover, Bazlova organises cross-stitching workshops that bring together people who spend an afternoon with each other, (learn to) cross-stitch depictions of political prisoners, and discuss political events in Belarus and beyond. My research looks into why people decide to participate in this project, what they do when they engage in the practice of cross-stitching, and what this means in terms of their learning about Belarus, remembering its political prisoners, and expressing solidarity with other victims worldwide. Observations during Bazlova’s workshops, interviews with long-distance participants in the project, and analysis of Bazlova’s archival materials, including participants’ own feedback, allow me to argue that Framed in Belarus gives rise to a transnational mnemonic counterpublic. The paper will place this counterpublic within the tradition(s) of textile work as practices of subversion (Parker 1984), resistance, and remembrance, including the textile work practices of the suffragettes in the United Kingdom in the early 20th century, arpilleras in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, Judy Chicago’s feminist needlework collaborations of the 1970s, and the the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
20260730T110020260730T1230America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires5.11. The Politics of Visibility: Visual Practices of Memory and Aesthetic Resistance Across Post-Violence ContextsA110MSA Buenos Aires 2026buenosairesconference@memorystudiesassociation.org
Beyond Reconciliation as Programme: Comparative Perspectives on Polyphonic Memories and Dissonance in Post-Conflict Cultures (Argentina, Basque Country, Germany)
Individual paperArt, Literature, Film, Media, and Other Representations00:00 Midnight - 00:00 Midnight (America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires) 2026/07/30 03:00:00 UTC - 2026/07/30 03:00:00 UTC
How do artistic representations from three memory contexts—Argentina, Basque Country, and Germany—expose the gap between reconciliation as political discourse and the complexities of lived memory? What conditions enable democratic memory cultures that productively engage with difference and dissonance rather than impose premature consensus? These cases reveal diverse reconciliation discourses referring to fundamentally different violent pasts, requiring reconstruction in their specificity and contextuality. The paper pursues a contrastive exploration of similarities and differences, considering the relationship between aesthetic and political discourses, realizing a comparative cultural analysis of selected literary texts and films (focus on film) addressing the Basque conflict, Argentina's military dictatorship (1976-1983), and Germany's Nazi. Central methodological tools include formal analysis of aesthetic imaginations—examining how narrative strategies, visual language, and genre conventions shape memory representations—placed in relation to non-aesthetic (political, legal, historiographical) discourses. Combined with discourse analysis of cultural, intellectual, and political debates, the study examines how these works negotiate competing memory demands and expose what political reconciliation discourses suppress. Cultural productions across all contexts reveal that reconciliation as political programme systematically underestimates post-conflict memory's complexity. Literary („Twist” Cano/España, 2013, e. g.) and filmic narratives („Das schreckliche Mädchen“, Verhoeven/Alemania, 1980; “Maixabel”, Bollaín/España, 2021; “El diálogo”, Azzi/Racciopi/Argentina, 2014) demonstrate that sustainable democratic memory cultures require sustained engagement with dissonance, difference, and irreconcilable positions rather than premature resolution. Debates about ‚memoria total‘ and polyphonic approaches highlight how genuine inclusivity demands space for conflicting narratives and recognition that some wounds resist closure. The comparative perspective shows that productive memory work depends on conditions rarely acknowledged officially: temporal patience, institutional commitment to pluralism, affective legacies, and acceptance that living with unresolved tensions may be more democratic than enforced harmony. These cultural texts offer crucial insights into what reconciliation actually requires—not as endpoint but as ongoing, contested process honouring complexity over simplification.
Patrick Eser Associate Professor, UBA, Universidad De Buenos Aires / DAAD / University Of Kassel
Reinterpreting Memory: Visual Representations of the Holocaust in Romania through Shifting Political Contexts
Individual paperArt, Literature, Film, Media, and Other Representations00:00 Midnight - 00:00 Midnight (America/Argentina/Buenos_Aires) 2026/07/30 03:00:00 UTC - 2026/07/30 03:00:00 UTC
This presentation examines how visual representations of the Holocaust in Romania—across film, photography, museum exhibits, and public monuments—have been reinterpreted and reshaped in response to the country’s changing political landscapes from the postwar period to the present. It explores how collective memory and state narratives have influenced the visibility, form, and meaning of Holocaust imagery, reflecting broader struggles over national identity, guilt, and historical accountability. During the communist era, visual depictions of the Holocaust were often subsumed within narratives of antifascist resistance, erasing specific Jewish suffering in favor of a homogenized story of victimhood. In contrast, the post-1989 transition to democracy enabled a gradual but contested reexamination of Romania’s role in the Holocaust. Monuments such as the Bucharest Holocaust Memorial (2009), alongside visual art and documentary projects, began to foreground Jewish and Roma experiences that had long been marginalized. The presentation analyzes key visual case studies—ranging from propaganda photography and state-approved exhibitions —to trace how images both reflect and challenge official histories. Drawing on visual culture and memory studies, it argues that these representations not only document trauma but actively shape public consciousness of the Holocaust. Ultimately, the talk considers how current political trends, including nationalist revisionism and transnational remembrance initiatives, continue to reframe the visual memory of the Holocaust in Romania. By situating visual reinterpretation within the country’s shifting ideological contexts, this presentation illuminates the dynamic relationship between politics, art, and historical memory.
