Unlocking traumatic memories through digital stop-frame animation : a Freudian analysis

Abstract

This study critically investigates the significance of a Freudian model in an analysis of artworks included in my video-installation, Loss. A practice-led research approach is followed. The medium employed in creation of the artworks is digital stop-frame animation as video art and video-installation. An application of theoretical positions is integral to my creative work in the way that it evokes, reveals and excavates personal loss and traumatic memories. Video, and more specifically digital stop-frame animation, is argued to be a medium which advances creativity. It is perplexing, multidimensional and unique in the way that it brings together distinctive components of Freudian and contemporary trauma theory. In the research analysis visuals and narratives are used not only to contribute to or further an understanding of Freudian theory, but also to criticise and test the applicability of his theories in modern society. Performative and qualitative research methods as well as self-reflexivity assist in visual and theoretical exploration of the particularities and nature of video artworks produced by technology. These methods focus on digital stop-frame animation, which is presented as a new form of creative expression, and the way trauma, memory and loss are visualised through the medium. It includes processes such as digital painting and drawing using, for instance, a computer mouse and Adobe Photoshop. The video-animations are done by using the layering function, paint-box effects, colour filters and the Liquify tool. This tool is employed as the single means by which moving images are created. Through both the theoretical and practical components of this study it is argued that the digital layering and erasure of images mimic the process of engaging with repressed as well as remembered trauma. The practice of digital stop-frame animation is integrated in Freud’s analysis of traumatic memory, anxiety, repression, screen memories, mourning, melancholia, hysteria, Nachträglichkeit and trauma-dreams. The video artworks emphasise memory as a complex system which triggers the repression of traumatic memories of child sexual abuse, the loss of a childhood friend and miscarriage. A dominant theme that reinforces the conclusion of the study is the extent to which traumatic memory, loss and child sexual abuse are interlinked in Freud’s trauma-model. It is further supported by contemporary theory.