Encounter with trauma — the perspective of art and psychotherapy

Trauma is a term that is currently undergoing inflation. It is exploited in many areas of our experience: personal and institutional. However, its overrepresentation does not go hand in hand with the increase in the cognitive value of what is nowadays associated with trauma and traumatism. Instead of deepening, we observe the flow and blurring of the meanings of this metaphorical and often abstractly understood term.

However, we will not look at the definitions of trauma, the Greek source of which meant “wound”, “puncture”, “bodily injury”. We will be interested in how, with the help of various means of expression, we develop what we consider traumatic. We will look at a variety of languages and forms that are able to describe, touch, represent, reconstruct the psychophysical experiences resulting from the suffered, worn, living, but also fused wound. However, our goal will not be psychotherapeutics — we are not sure whether and how different forms of art are able to close the processes of traumatic experiences. Rather, we will look at what we call wound work (not overwork), look and touch on different forms of expression and description. We will try to use different aesthetic keys that help us to open what is closed and recognize the fact that what is traumatic is part of our experiences, part of what we recognize as our identity or our history carried over many generations (over). We assume that the title Encounter with trauma will be realized during the planned discussion in building relationships and integration, because it is through them: through encounter, integration and relationship that trauma works/discovers/reveals itself in art and connects with living, corporeal, aesthetical-psychological life.

in attendance: Aleksandra Kubiak, Melisa Maras, Mira Marcinów