In his contribution to a book dedicated to the transformation of the concept of psychological trauma into the concept of cultural trauma, Piotr Sztompka focuses on the potential trauma of the ex-Eastern Block.¹ He connects cultural trauma in the post-socialist region to the political changes, stating that even those changes that are beneficial, welcomed and dreamed about, may turn out to be painful. Emphasizing the significance of cultural trauma, he adds that the wounds inflicted on culture are the most difficult to heal and that cultural traumas may last over several generations. Although he states that »The most traumatizing situations occur when the imposition and domination of one culture are secured by force,« which could apply perfectly to the Eastern Block during the socialist period, he ignores that earlier trauma and concentrates on the time of transition.

»There cannot be any doubt that the collapse of communism was a traumatogenic change par excellence«: Sztompka calls this the post-communist »trauma of victory.« He assumes a clear-cut vision of a clash of two incompatible cultures, the socialist and the capitalist culture, as if they would constitute a binary opposition. This opposing position and the incompatibility are definitely not relevant regarding art and its institution in Hungary. The discrete charm of the post-socialist condition is precisely that it nurtures hybrid phenomena, hardly known and recognizable from the outside. Remnants of socialism could greatly have been interwoven with the elements of predatory capitalism. So, instead of a clash, we find fusion in many cases, providing strange mixtures of elements of both cultures.

»The carriers of cultural legacy and traditions that clash with the new cultural imperatives imposed by traumatogenic change are generations who were socialized, indoctrinated, or habituated in an earlier cultural milieu.« Sztompka draws the consequence that »the powerful impact of a culture derived from earlier history, and internalized by the generations [...] may become much weaker as the new generations emerge raised under different conditions. [...] This process running parallel to the trauma sequence becomes very helpful at the stage of overcoming trauma and achieving final reconciliation of a culture.«² However, from the standpoint of post-socialist experiences, one cannot share this neat vision of the linear and smooth relay of generations, as it is not justified by the much more complicated local context. The obvious presupposition of this idea is that the trauma of that earlier generation fades away with the help of a coping mechanism. This is not relevant with regard to Hungary. Furthermore, this overly idealistic view does not take into account the secondary trauma of the next generation, which does not have a blank page for starting over either.

[b]The Trauma of Collective Memory of the Socialist Past[/b]
As opposed to the »trauma of victory,« I would propose the phenomenon of accumulated traumas as a more appropriate term to define the post-socialist condition, that is, a kind of turbulence of unassimilated, unmourned earlier traumas of the socialist past, overshadowed by new traumas of change, originating in the odd, hybrid transition of the region.

Smelser’s adaptation of the psychological trauma into the cultural trauma in the same book³ as a theoretical framework is a much closer fit to the art scene of the post-socialist reality. His proposition of »acute stress« seems to be quite appropriate to describe the leftover trauma of the local situation. His definition of trauma as a negotiated process that could be blocked by repression and expressed in symptoms seems to be quite relevant. In his concept, a cultural trauma has to be assumed as a fundamental threat posed to the integrity and dominance of different elements of society. In our case, it could have posed a threat to a generation being indoctrinated and habituated in the era of socialism to a cultural institution associated with a group’s identity, or to an attitude, to a way of thinking, or even to an operating art paradigm. As Smelser puts it: »A cultural trauma is, above all, a threat to a culture with which individuals in that society presumably have identification.«⁴

Consensually, a social agent in culture acts to stir up troubling memories. These agents are in many cases artists with subversive ideas and social awareness, those who are ready to interrupt the collective denial and collective amnesia regarding the socialist past. As an effective coping method, they may reverse the trauma into its opposite, providing a healing potential, or they may insulate the trauma from its associative negative connection. The artworks I will analyze could be easily interpreted as an »acting out of trauma,« or they might function as a call for collective memory work, which is, following Smelser’s argument, a constant negotiation, an argument over the meaning of memories, and over the question of what to remember, and how to remember it.

According to Smelser’s adaptation of psychological trauma on the cultural level, the major manifestation of an existing trauma is »a conflict among different groups.« With respect to post-socialist conditions, the presence of »the trauma of collective memory« is justified by scandalous art projects targeting the lost memory of the past on the one hand, and the very emotional receptions and loud protest inflamed by such projects on the other hand. Those are the cases on which I intend to focus. Furthermore, I wish to shed light upon the discrepancies and shifts between the memory discourses in the ex-East and ex-West regarding the socialist past.

For the diagnoses of the very existence of the trauma related to the socialist past in the ex-Eastern Block, we can utilize Cathy Caruth’s valuable attempt to expand the notion of individual trauma to communities and to historical events. She puts an emphasis on the temporal delay of the appearance of the symptoms of the trauma, suggesting that »the impact of the traumatic event lies precisely in its belatedness.«⁵ Her interpretation provides us with a convincing explanation for the phenomenon of total amnesia regarding the socialist past occurring in the first 15 years after the political changes in the region. »The historical power of the trauma is not just that the experience is repeated after its forgetting, but that it is only in and through its inherent forgetting that it is first experienced at all.«⁶

[b]Coping with Trauma through Art[/b]
Cultural globalization reached the Central-Eastern European region right after the collapse of the Soviet satellite system, that is, it coincided with a counter-process in this part of Europe, namely with the de-globalization of the former dominant cultural force, a process of »de-Sovietization.«
At the beginning of the nineties the satellite countries became free from the colonizing foreign power, the Soviet-type socialism. The new democratic countries tried to »clean up« the ideologically polluted public sphere with its powerful images by demolishing statues, removing icons of the former socialist culture and renaming streets and squares. The collection of the elements of the socialist past into statue parks or memorial museums was fueled by the illusion that it’s possible to wipe off the dust of the socialist past and put it aside in quarantine. This illusion, or better to say, desire, was usually accompanied by the intention of repressing the trauma of being oppressed for a long time, namely with amnesia.
The satellite countries felt that Soviet-type socialism was imposed on them and wasn’t their own product. Therefore, the exorcism of socialism in the first years of the transition was characteristic of their attitude. Anri Sala’s Intervista provided a wonderful and honest way to cope with the trauma, but his work remained alone as sole example for a long time. After a few years, the socialist past was forgotten in the Central-Eastern European region. Thus, the coping mechanism of the trauma came to a deadlock in the earliest phase of denial and rejection, and consequently the trauma process could not move further into a healing phase. As an aftermath of the inability to carry through the »trauma process,« the culture of the socialist past became a taboo issue. In Hungary, only a few young artists felt it necessary to analyze the past in the shadow of a new kind of globalization and a new political formation: the deeply desired integration into the European Union.

Tamás Kaszás, who is a citizen of one of the most representative socialist cities in Hungary, Dunaújváros, formerly named Stalingrad, bumps into the traces of the past every step of the way in the city. Dunaújváros was once a window city, with its iron factories, huge housing developments and Socialist Realist statues and monuments all around town, overwhelmed with the symbols of the communist ideology. The water tower, built in 1952, had a red star on its façade until the very last moment, but, as the red star is a forbidden symbol in capitalist Hungary, the star is now gone and there is a lighter patch in its place. The artist would have plenty of suggestions for the city concerning the transformation of the prohibited image, but as the socialist period is too close, he offers instead some ironic images, more appropriate for the time of transition – some global trademarks.

Kaszás’ other unrealized project is also connected to his hometown. The city is near the Danube, which divides Hungary into two economically and socially different regions: the hilly, industrial west bank is more developed and richer than the plain east bank, which is mainly agrarian, poor and has a high rate of unemployment. The artist wished to plant wheat on the heightened pedestal of the group sculpture of Harvesters, made by Hungarian sculptor József Somogyi in 1979. The idea behind the Kaszás’ project was to give work to the seasonal laborers, to the »unemployed« harvesters, and at the same time to provide a virtual bridge between different and separated regions of Hungary.

Ilona Németh, a Hungarian woman artist living in Slovakia, deals with personal memories, the mental traces of the socialist past, in her sound installation entitled 27 meters (2004-07). Six people walk 27 meters with her from the town’s landmark and meeting point, the BonBon Hotel, and speak about their feelings and memories in relation to the site. They had very personal stories to tell, indicating that personal memories and personal histories are equally important and as true as the canonized history written by professionals. A personal narrative is another element that was repressed in the era of socialism, as it was regarded as subjective and as such irrelevant for history-writing and art-making practices, and therefore better kept private. Public and private, greatly divided in the old socialist times, were re-connected in this work.

Little Warsaw, a Hungarian artist duo (Bálint Havas and András Gálik), is also interested in our visual environment with its leftovers from different historical periods.⁷ Their Deserted Memorial (2004) project draws attention to the forgotten, neglected memorials, which are now losing their specific context. The artists wanted to collect abandoned memorials, or pedestals, and build a collage from them, a kind of memorial dedicated to memorials. They further developed the idea regarding the public memorial as a ready-made. They took as material the damaged memorial dedicated to the son of Horthy, the governor of Hungary in the thirties and forties. His young heir died in the Second World War, shot down as a pilot. In the socialist era, Horthy was a regretted figure, and his memory was erased. The damaged memorial was forgotten but left in place with its purpose obscured. The shadow, the ghost of the memorial was taken to Holland, and thus the leftover of a Hungarian public memorial entered into a contemporary art context commemorating the lost memory and a forgotten, rewritten history.

In 2004 Little Warsaw took another, much bigger and more significant, public monument (made in 1965, also by József Somogyi) from a small Hungarian town to Amsterdam, to the exhibition »Time and Again.«⁸ The project could be understood as taking the issue of competing ideologies onto the international scene. The question for the artists was whether the competition had ended, and, if so, what happened to Eastern European art and to its distinct utopia? Was it simply left out or, in terms of art, was it melted into global art, without generating special interest? Concerning the different art-making traditions, the question was whether all of them are viable, or do some of them have to be driven out from the collective memory of humanity? And what about postmodern culture, so hungry for selection and diversity: would it embrace the socialist reality, or strongly dislike the gray, monotonous, uninspiring look of communism, as Boris Groys writes in his newest book.⁹ Within the international context it became obvious that Socialist Realism, the region’s cultural heritage, is in an »off-the-wall« position, and that it has lost its relevance. It is not part of the discussion among Western intellectuals anymore, and it is not marketable either on the otherwise colorful, diverse cultural market.

With respect to the local context, the project targeted the artistic heritage of the socialist past, examining whether it is a valid tool for socially committed contemporary artists. As for the local reception of the project, a hidden controversy involving the transition came to light, namely that Socialist Realism did attain a critical position in the hands of socially concerned young artists, while the avant-garde masters, heroes of the counterculture to socialism, acted as the controlling establishment.¹⁰

As for the reactions, one suspects that the message of Socialist Realism and even of its conceptual recycling is that the avant-garde and modernist tradition is handicapped in the Eastern part of Europe, namely that its lineage is discontinuous, as it was rudely disrupted. When the West applies old stereotypes to Eastern art-making practices, it is a kind of reminder of its own privileged position, having a smooth artistic lineage without breakages and interruptions. On the other hand, the lack of Socialist Realism in post-socialist art museums is a correction of this defect, or pathology, a kind of face-lift.

Little Warsaw’s project went against the grain of the collective amnesia with respect to the socialist art-making practice, as they mobilized an effective coping method, converting the forgotten public statue into a contemporary art project. By recontextualizing the statue they intended to untie it from its negative connotation and to give the socialist public statue, stepchild of the time of transition, a second chance to live, to be revitalized and seen in a different perspective. In the case of the petitioners, mostly ex-representatives of counterculture in the time of socialism, one can diagnose the repetition of trauma, the transfer of aggression, as a well-known after-effect of trauma, which means that they were trying to police and control fellow artists the same way they themselves had been controlled by the state’s cultural policy.

[b]The Secondary Trauma of the West and Coping with It through Art[/b]
The trauma of the West, connected to the collapse of the Socialist Block, is a blind spot in the memory and trauma discourse, as if the West had been immune against its malaise, or as if it had been constantly in the position of a therapist, not taking into consideration the clinical evidence of the »therapist’s secondary trauma.«

Andreas Fogarasi, of Hungarian origin but born and raised in Vienna, made a poetic video about the decay and fading glamour of the Hungarian socialist »Houses of Culture,« or Fun Palaces, the idea of which originated in the Workers’ Club. He represented Hungary at the 2007 Venice Biennial,¹¹ where the pavilion and his work won the Golden Lion Award. Both Hungarian and international observers had very divided opinions on this work.

As the Hungarian public is still suffering from amnesia, the art piece was not much appreciated and valued by the public, including artists and art historians, for sparking such hateful memories. The reaction shows that the trauma is still in its »incubation period,« using Caruth’s term after Freud.¹² She proposes that »trauma is not experienced as a mere repression or defense, but as a temporal delay that carries the individual beyond the shock of the first movement.«¹³

The reversed positions regarding the Western and post-socialist conditions were revealed by the totally opposite attitudes of the local and international scene. As opposed to the local scene, the international one was starving for a memory discourse coming from the region, as if not being able to find »food« to satisfy its craving – which means an art piece in our case – for curing its own trauma. The West had its own loss as well, namely a point of reference by which it could measure itself. Socialism and the Cold War were part of the identification and socialization process of the Western baby-boomers too, even though from the other side. Therefore, existence in the shadow of socialism was mildly traumatic for the Western world as well. As for the art world, the collapse of socialism and the Eastern Block buried under it the very paradigm of modernism as well, with its utopian tenets and beliefs in progress and a more beautiful, peaceful future, echoed by the topic of the 2007 Documenta.

Fogarasi offered therapeutic sessions regarding traumas, the loss of socialism and the loss of the modernist utopia to Western audiences. The latter one was invoked by the architectural installation. The installation and the video piece dealt both with the decay of socialist culture and with the fading away of modernism. Both painful losses were served and awarded accordingly. In Hungary on the contrary, existing as it does in a different phase of the trauma process and suffering from the inability to work through it, neither the work nor the award received proper media attention, including from the art world.

Ilja Kabakov, one of the leading artists of the Russian unofficial art scene, was well aware of the existence of the secondary trauma of the West: his installation in the Russian Pavilion¹⁴ at the Venice Biennial in 1992 could be interpreted within the framework of trauma discourse. His work and attitude coincided with the immediate after-affect of trauma, namely the collective repression »acting as if the trauma did not even exist.« Kabakov’s work »collaborated« in this denial and served as insulation against the traumatic condition. It reflected on the early phase of the »collective memory work,« that is, on the temporary ignorance of the traumatic experience for the sake of self-defense.

On the contrary, Fogarasi’s double-sided work, made 16 years later, demonstrates the inability to work through the »trauma process« in Hungary, from which the analyzed painful debates stemmed. On the other hand, it signals the very end of the related trauma, the successful coping strategies of the West, and the overcoming of its own trauma. The West could greatly benefit from its better skills in coming to terms with the loss, as it had a greater tradition of lying on the couch, that is, being in therapy. I suppose that Caruth’s statement in terms of trauma on the individual level is relevant on the cultural level also: »Trauma is not locatable in the simple violent or original event in an individual’s past, but rather in the way its very unassimilative nature [...] returns to haunt the survivor later on.«¹⁵

I believe that art is one of the best tools for coming to terms with the haunting ghosts. It is the perfect tool for mourning, for expressing emotions of loss, regardless of whether the collective memory of the socialist past generates attraction or repulsion. Caruth’s observation that »in a catastrophic age, [...] trauma itself may provide the very link between cultures« applies to those countries that were once united in the socialist camp, having shared a historical past and common experiences, but whose connection disintegrated after the collapse of socialism.

 

 

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