Contusions
2010
By Aukje Lepoutre Ravn
“In the video Contusions loss of recollection is at stake, but intertwined with the obstacle of how impossible representation of the traumatic experience seems to be. You see Brandt rocking gently and dreamily moving to the sound of his own narrative voice, remembering and reflecting on what happened in Rome that day. In what looks like a slow and hazy hypnotic dance, you get the impression that Brandt is trying to transcend himself back to the moment of the attack to remember details that are not clear in his immediate recollection. Here the difference between memory and recollection suddenly becomes very clear, because while the memory is spontaneous and concrete, recollection is to a much higher degree susceptible, manipulative and constructed”. (Aukje Lepoutre Ravn, extract from I Died in Italy But No One Knows It – Survival, change and trauma treatment in Peter Brandt’s art, in the book I Died in Italy But No One Knows It, page 53, 2010).
Contusions, video, B/W, sound 4:10 min. 2010