Pamatyti bylų ūkį: Kęstučio Grigaliūno projektas "Apie meilę"

ENAt the moment of their production Soviet atrocity/repression archives were not intended to be watched at. When their initial status is being subverted, one cannot but ask: what does it mean not only to read these archives, but also to make them visible? What does it mean to look at them and how is the archive’s visuality to be approached and handled? The article scrutinises the second book in the framework of a project About Love by artist Kęstutis Grigaliūnas. The book is a collection of 130 silk prints, the material from files of 130 victims of political persecution, killed in Tuskulėnai estate (Vilnius) in 1944-1947. The main aim of the paper is to show how the visualisation of the atrocity archive, the very scopic regime and its alteration participate in the subversion of the archive and in the creation of new orders of historical memory. This kind of de- and re-archiving relies on the “indexical power” of the photographic image as an intermediary stage in the production of silk prints. Montage techniques introduced in About Love strengthen and multiply indexicality effects in various ways, thus complementing the strategy of making the trauma archive visible, despite that initially it was deprived of presence in the visual sphere. [From the publication]