Phantom Images, Phantom Limbs, Phantoms of Empire

Abstract

Kader Attia’s Refléchir la Mémoire (Reflecting Memory, 2016) and Cyprien Gaillard’s 3D motion picture Nightlife (2015) engage the politics of memory by invoking the musical practice of dubbing to convey a sense of haunting. Yet this is not a haunting that simply conjures ghostly voices, images or sounds from the past. It is, instead, a practice of mixing, remixing and distorting − making something hidden or invisible critically present. Rather than attempting to restore or repair those who suffer from historical or even physical traumas they focus on transformations that are not simple acts of self-overcoming nor reclaiming one’s sense of self, but ones that complex set of affective relations. These remediated voices and images do not conjure ghosts to make singular demands on the present but produce ghost effects that generate multiple possible readings of the always present politics of memory.