Folterbilder und -narrationen

Images of torture and of agonized bodies are known from the antiquity on up to the present, but in the past 10 to 15 years these images and narratives became increasingly present in literature and film. This increased production of torture images in the realm of media exists in a contradictory relation to scientific results from psychological and medical research about somatic, psychic, social and particular cognitive impacts of torture to the victim. Memory performance and the ability to remember become profoundly defective through extreme traumatization. Traumatized persons are able to reconstruct a narration from sensory-affective memories only successivly and gradualy. Where do these representations„ of the “non-representational„ then emerge from? Which translations, transformations and transmissions exist and how do we react toward these narrations? Cultural narrations often use traumatic events as an anchor. How can we understand this tension? What is the relation between psychic and media representations of torture? What kind of relation exists between image, narration and scenic representations of torture in reality and fictional productions? “