Remains

2023

A seemingly random, dense and confused accumulation of living debris scattered over the surface of the conscious; this is what the trauma leaves behind: disturbances in the natural landscape. The trauma-debris only emerge when the suffering is re-enacted, when the wind disperses the sand, when the low tide undresses the shore. Their fragmental nature is a synonym for their violence. Sharpened dry bones, freed by the weight of water and sand, they flung in the wind wounding the body around. And once the blow stroke and the storm vanished, they are buried again under the sand and water. It is the psycharcheologist work to follow the traces and to excavate accordingly to resurface and reconstruct the bones, the ruins to offer a sense to the inexplicable, to link them and secure them. An essential process, a necessary work because the storm always promises to come back if no voice is given to the fragments — if not a trauma-monument is erected, the wind will keep hurling the razors. Ruinophilia is Traumaphilia, which goes beyond masochistic pleasure. Appreciating the ruins in their reconstructions is the only way to escape repetition. Loving, embellishing, and exploring the trauma-structure is to appropriate the misplaced and tame the wild. New generations are exhibiting a fascination with ruins and trauma that is spoken and placed under the sunlight. A sign of hope for the collective trauma-structures that the 21st-century explosions are disassembling — despoiling their memento — threatening ourselves with the condemnation of tragical historic recurrences.