In her description of her doctoral practice “Lost & Shared: Approaches to collective mourning, towards affective and transformative politics” (defence date, Jan 11, 2023), Eliana Ottas writes:
“Taking as a departure point my experience working with war survivors in Peru, this project investigates how art can enable the collectivization of mourning. I connected my interest in the act of mourning human losses with my experiences living in Athens, Greece, where I encountered depression as a common diagnosis on both the individual and collective levels. If being depressed relates to unresolved mourning processes, what are the objects of loss caused by economic crisis and political disillusion? How can art help us to mourn an abstract loss, such as a political project, a certain sense of dignity, a particular relation with time and nature, or a fixed role in the familial structure? How could mourning be shared to allow communities to reframe and re-signify those objects of loss, towards transforming our relation to the economic and political?”
Enjoy the defense, dear Eliana. Thank you for this work.
allonan 