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The Task of Mourning A Reflection On Mourning and Melancholia Through The Work of Tomas Lundgren
The Task of Mourning A Reflection On Mourning and Melancholia Through The Work of Tomas Lundgren
Erika Larsson
The Swedish artist Tomas Lundgren’s (-) There are obvious differences between the
series The Task of Mourning () consists of slow contemplation of the past that Lundg-
nearly-but-not-quite perfect reproductions of ren’s series involves, and the process of
photographs from the first half of the twenti- mourning that Freud (and, as we will see,
eth century. Through painting inexact copies others) describe. However, there are also
of photographic remnants from this time in areas in which they overlap. In this article, I
European history, the series can be seen as a will look closer at the points at which these
slow contemplation of this historical period. processes intersect.
As the title indicates, part of what the series Much attention has been given in the last
deals with has to do with the notion of years to archival studies, and Lundgren’s
mourning. In Mourning and Melancholia, work can be seen as part of a tendency of
Sigmund Freud describes mourning as a artists seeking to make historical information
kind of work that needs to be carried out in physically present to be engaged with.
and through time. In the necessarily slow However, connections between such archival
process of mourning that Freud describes, work as a way of working-through cultural
each aspect, each memory, and each associ- memory, and the notion of mourning that
ation of the attachment to a lost object has are opened up by Lundgren’s series, has yet
to be overcome bit by bit. One memory that to be explored. In this article, I examine the
is processed generates the next and so on. dynamics between images, mourning and
*Erika Larsson obtained her doctorate in Art History and Visual Culture at Lund University in with a
thesis exploring the notion of belonging in contemporary photography from an affective, embodied and
non-representational perspective. Today, she has a postdoc position at HDK-Valand Academy, Gothen-
burg University and The Hasselblad Foundation, researching contemporary photographers’ and artists’
engagements with the interwar period. She also lectures on photography theory and globalisation in
relation to visual culture.
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of
the article.
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several mental breakdowns and just before the a kind of working-through particular
outbreak of the Second World War, he took relationships with history, which takes place
his own life. It is a lot to extrapolate all as much in the mind as in the body. Signifi-
these events from the image of the girl in cantly, Bennett points to vision as having a
deep contemplation. Nevertheless, the image different relationship to embodied under-
seems to express the focus of the series as a standings from words, in particular when it
whole, namely the task of engaging in a comes to the kind of experience, which may
process of mourning. not have words that can describe it, but can
still be felt in the body. Writing specifically
about this kind of experience and the
An embodied task process of painting, she refers to the philoso-
pher Gilles Deleuze’s reflections around
As I have touched upon, in all of the images “painting the sensation”. For Deleuze, rather
above, there are aspects of the paintings that than representing particular events or issues,
bring attention to the process of their repro- the task of painting is defined as “the
duction. While at first glance they may seem attempt to render visible forces that are not
like exact copies of the originals, a closer themselves visible”. The process of rendering
look reveals the brushstrokes through which visible such energies becomes at the same
they were created. Lundgren himself describes time a transformation of – or, as I suggested
the manner in which they are created as a slow above, a kind of working-through – these
process of contemplation of the images them- forces. In Lundgren’s paintings, it is in par-
selves as well as of the events in history that ticular the brushstrokes that draw attention
they relate to. In the book Art in Mind, to this process. They make visible the labor-
Ernst van Alpen discusses how art visually ious and embodied process of re-creating
“thinks” about difficult cultural issues. the images in a new media – and the kind of
Rather than representing traumatic or chal- “thinking through the body” that is involved
lenging historical events, he considers par- in this task. They bring attention to the art
ticular art works in terms of how they works as an altogether material and bodily
actively create new relationships, ideas and affair, which is fundamentally rooted in
understandings in relation to these events. sense perception.
Similarly, in Empathic Vision, Jill Bennett As described above, the images of Lundg-
describes a particular mode of understanding ren’s series do not pertain to one particular
that is engendered through the visual. Here, event, nor one particular nation or group of
she refers to the painter Francesco Clemente people. Rather, they concern a number of
who suggests a kind of “thinking through events and people. What they all have in
the body” as essential to this process. common, however, is that they relate to the
Bennett describes this act as “a process experi- first half of the twentieth century in Europe.
enced not as a remembering the past but as a As such, in addition to the situations that
continuous negotiation of a present with the particular images relate to, what is being
indeterminable links to the past”. In other engaged with in the series is a historical era,
words, the art work (its mode of creation as including the consequences of the events
well as, potentially, its perception) is seen as and ideologies of this time. In each
6 ERIKA LARSSON
photograph that is being worked through, particular manifestations and events. Artistic
some aspect of this common history is pro- practices such as cinema, painting, photo-
cessed – leaving a new, slightly altered graphs, songs, plays and festivals are discussed
version, in a new medium, in its place. As is in terms of how they mourn for historical cat-
also discussed in the theories of van Alpen astrophes. Significantly, he argues for a view
and Bennett, in this embodied process there of memory in relation to such events as
is no separation between collective memory more cultural and collective than individual.
and personal experience. They exist within As I will return to below, he writes about
the same dimension, and the body and its “the work of mourning”, as something that
material surrounding is the site at which this is actively engaged with through different
process takes place. Imagination, memory kinds of embodied acts. In particular, he
and affective experience are equally of the discusses the kind of large scale historical
same importance. In “Archival Impulse”, events “so widely recurrent in the histories
Foster asks if archival art might emerge out of people that pose questions of identity”
of a sense of failure in cultural memory and and that demand ways of “coming to terms
points to a will to “connect that which with the losses they impose and the legacy
cannot be connected” – or a “will to they leave”. He goes on to describe how it
relate”. Furthermore, he describes how is a distinctive feature of such historical cata-
archival art “assumes anomic fragmentation strophes and traumas that they lead to kinds
as a condition not only to represent but to of cultural bereavement for which processes
work through, and proposes new orders of of mourning are often difficult to find or
affective association, however partial and pro- create. On its own, the photograph turned
visional, to this end”. In this way, The Task painting of Speer depicts him as a defeated
of Mourning has in common with other archi- individual, trying to architect his way out of
val works a sense of disorientation in relation being sentenced to death. Together with the
to the events that the archival material relates other images in the series, however, the
to. From this position, there is a wish to reach image becomes a detail of a larger picture por-
another kind of engagement with this traying the atrocities in Europe in the first half
material and history. This is done through of the twentieth century, and the ideologies
processes that resonate as much in the body that underlay these events. The slow process
as in the mind – in the realm of personal as of its production, which Lundgren describes
well as in collective imagination and memory. as an ongoing and always unfinished process
In The Spirit of Mourning, History, Memory in which new paintings can be produced at
and the Body, Paul Connerton argues against any time, can be seen as an example of the
a view of history-writing as legitimation, in kind of embodied cultural practice that Con-
which that which does not fit into the narra- nerton discusses.
tive schema is excluded, and looks at ways
that history is engaged with as processes of
Mourning and emotions
mourning. He reflects on how the memory
of traumatic events is inscribed in human The theories of embodiment and affective
bodies, and how these embodied memories experience that I have considered thus far
are expressed and worked through in are in some ways incompatible with Freud’s
THE TASK OF MOURNING 7
work of mourning” as more cultural and col- describes how “the pursuit of intellectual
lective than individual, Ahmed similarly chal- reasoning apart from emotion will actually
lenges the view on emotions that they are a prevent a full rational judgement – for
private matter; “that they simply belong to example by preventing an access to one’s
individuals, or even that they come from grief”. In other words, the process cannot
within and then move outward toward be carried out without engaging also with
others”. Rather she presents a view of the emotions that come up. Since emotions
emotions as “circulating between bodies and have “this cognitive dimension in their very
signs”. In such a system, there is no structure, it is very natural to view them as
working-through that is strictly personal. intelligent parts of our ethical agency, respon-
While the particular engagements of Lundg- sive to the workings of deliberation and essen-
ren’s series (of the artist as well as the percei- tial to its completion”. Nussbaum makes
vers) are individual acts, the shared references clear that emotions need to be seen as not
that come across in the images relate rather to only an essential part of the process of mourn-
a cultural and collective process of mourning. ing, but also as crucial aspects of our inner life
In this process, the emotions and affects that in general.
appear are not just contained within one par-
ticular subject, but circulate (as Ahmed puts
Mourning pastness
it) between individuals, images and the
subject matter that is explored. When asked about if there is a returning
In Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy theme in his works, Lundgren’s own answer
and Literature Martha Nussbaum compares is “perhaps death”. In addition to the events
the emotion of grief with the sensation of and atrocities of the first half of the twentieth
hunger, explaining how, while the latter century in Europe, Lundgren’s series is also
tends to be relatively impervious to changes about the passing of time in general, of irre-
in beliefs, the emotion of grief is sustained vocable loss and un-recoverability. In particu-
by a range of beliefs – such as that a loss has lar in relation to the engagement with the
taken place and that this loss has some value found photographs of people that I describe
to the person experiencing the grief. Unlike above, there is a sense of a life having
hunger, a change in the belief will lead to a passed, or having once been but now being
change in the emotion. As directly connected no longer. While there is no common theme
to the value judgements that we have about as such in the subjects of his images, what
the world, Nussbaum describes emotions as they all have in common is that they once
“upheavals of thought” (as in the title of her were, but are no longer. In this way, each
perhaps most well-known book). As such, encounter with the archival photographs,
grief becomes the process through which the and the slow process of reproducing them
cognitions that we have about certain through another medium, is time spent not
objects and subjects in the world are forced only with particular objects and subjects of
to be revalued, or in Freudian terms, redir- the past, but with pastness itself. There is a
ected. Emotional upheaval is not only the contrast between the traces of the past that
consequence of this transformation, but an stand out precisely because of their pastness,
essential part of the process itself. She and the working-through of these traces
THE TASK OF MOURNING 9
which is always a process that takes place in present”. Stamelman continues to describe
the present – a process of intense aliveness, how “the image indeed returns, but it
as opposed to the subjects of the images that emerges from a past whose pastness adhering
are necessarily dead. Lundgren describes to it like some dark shadow, accompanies it
how the time that is invested in observing into the present … ”. In this sense, Holly
something at once brings him closer and goes on to describe the discipline of art
further away from that which is observed. history in general as “eternally fated to be a
The process of engaging with the archival melancholic one, primarily, because the
image, and the time spent observing and objects it appropriates as its own always and
recreating it, is a process of moving closer – forever keep the wound open”. The
while the creation of a new image, which is wound, here, is that distance between the
an almost, but not exact, copy of the archival present and the past, the aliveness of the
photograph, becomes another layer that former and the apparent deadness, or past-
covers the time or the life that once was. ness, of the latter that can never be closed.
Just like there is an unbridgeable gap Bringing also a Freudian perspective into his
between the time of the photographs and reflections, Holly points out melancholy, or
the time in which the paintings were made, unresolved mourning, as that which keeps
there are, as I discuss above, small discrepan- the wound open. Just like Holly describes
cies between the photographs and the paint- how it is never possible to “capture” or
ings. Inevitably, textures, surfaces, and hues “enliven” the object of the past in (art histori-
are rendered differently in the two mediums. cal) writing, the process that Lundgren
As each memory, or image, is worked engages with does not let him bring back the
through it shifts slightly with the process, subjects and objects of the past in the
leaving a new version in the place of the old images that he engages with. However, it
one. As the photographs that he works with does let him spend time with them, to
come from an archive of historical remnants, process a loss which, in Freudian terms, is
the paintings that he produces from these not altogether known to the ego. As Holly
photographs can be said to make up a differ- writes, “(w)riting never cures, but healing
ent kind of archive, an archive of processed comes in degrees”, I suggest the same can
associations. be said about painting.
In the process of slowly creating new Furthermore, Holly writes about a kind of
images from the photographic archives that “contemplative paralysis”, which stems from
Lundgren carries out, something is gained the recognition of the ultimate impossibility
but something always remains missing. In of making one’s words in the present
the article Mourning and Method, Michael connect with historical images. This reaching
Ann Holly talks about mourning (and melan- for correspondence or understanding – but
choly) as an intrinsic part of dealing with not quite succeeding – is the same kind of
images and objects from the past. In her dis- gap that can be found in Lundgren’s meticu-
cussion, she quotes Richard Stamelman who lous and almost-but-not-quite precise
writes about that aspect of the past that copying of the images of the past. Also for
remains missing, as “that which cannot Walter Benjamin, who writes about melanch-
return, that which cannot again become olia specifically in relation to history, this
10 ERIKA LARSSON
discrepancy is what is found at the core of the mourning as Freud and others describe it. I
condition that he refers to as acedia. Benjamin have described this task as a kind of
describes acedia as “the heaviness at heart (…) working-through events or attachments of
which despairs of mastering the genuine his- the past, in a process in which one image or
torical picture, which so fleetingly flashes memory begets the next, and so on. At the
by”. He goes on to describe how the theolo- same time, I have described how the process
gians of the Middle Ages considered this the can be seen rather as consonant with a state
primary cause of melancholy. In the version of melancholia, or a refusal to severe certain
of the historical materialist position that he attachments. In any case, both mourning
proposes, the focus is not on adding to or and melancholia – and the work of art itself
revising existing narratives of history. In – are seen as emotional and embodied pro-
fact, the focus is not on any kind of narrative cesses, in which cognitive associations are
or storytelling at all. Rather, the aim of the intertwined with affective and visceral
historical materialist is to engage in encoun- forces. Like Gerard Richter’s (-) early
ters with remnants of the past, of “holding paintings from photographs, Lundgren’s
fast to a picture of the past”, and not letting paintings include both the blurriness and
it just “flash by” in a stream of forgotten the sharpness of the original photographs.
images, or get buried in the narratives of While some of Richter’s paintings are
history telling. Just as Freud describes the altogether blurry, in Lundgren’s work, the
task of mourning as necessarily time-consum- forefront of the images tend to be sharp
ing, Benjamin talks of halting the whizzing by while the background recedes into different
of history, and engaging with its remnants in levels of blurriness. The lack of sharpness
moments of Stillstellung (translated as stand- serves as a metaphor for memory, or rather
still or zero-hour), “where thinking suddenly the limitation of memory. In this way, the
stops in a constellation overflowing with ten- paintings become public memorials of
sions”. This is not a moment in which some- history, including both the image (the
thing is identified and categorized, but a memory) itself, and the impossibility of
moment to remain in and in which whatever remembering the past. In the case of both
appears (within or beyond thought) is Richter and Lundgren, the significance of
worked-through. For Benjamin, acedia des- these acts of remembering/forgetting lies in
pairs of grasping and holding the historical their carnality and affectivity rather than in
image as it flashes by, precisely because this terms of conscious processing. Observing
is the process through which its energies are the acts that make up these processes bring
resolved. to the forefront dynamics around embodi-
ment, materiality, mourning, and images –
and how these notions interact in relation to
Conclusion
collective memories. From this perspective,
Elaborating on the title of Tomas Lundgren’s what takes place in Lundgren’s series
series The Task of Mourning, in this article I appears as, at the same time, a process of
have explored ways in which the slow letting go, and a clutching onto, ideas and
process of contemplation of the past that affective attachments related to this collective
the series involves is akin to a process of history.
THE TASK OF MOURNING 11