The World Upside Down : A Digital Assemblage for Witnessing Trauma and Political Loss

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This article explores how static and moving digital images can address trauma from political loss, focusing on the production of The World Upside Down video, which is part of my postdoctoral research. It discusses the strategies used to convey the complexities of collective trauma through language, symbolism, and imagination. The video encourages a Deleuzoguattarian perspective, viewing the image as an interpretive memory assemblage open to eventuality. It gives an account of the delicacy of the artist’s locus in attempting to grasp what Jacques Derrida eloquently describes as our responsibility towards the dead. In the rise of extreme right-wing parties and neo-fascist ideologies in contemporary western societies, this exposition advocates for an antifascist relationship among aesthetics, memory and public space/discourse.