The volume examines the documentary practices of film, theatre, and literature from the 1960s to the 2020s in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and the Baltic states. 

Methodologically innovative case studies consider contemporary ‘witness art’ – for example verbatim theatre based on interviews with people participating in political protest and war. The contributions expand on the political, medial, and aesthetic developments that shaped Soviet attitudes towards the arts and show how these concepts still influence contemporary practices. The essays are written for scholars and students of literature, culture, sociology, film, theatre, and trauma studies, but also for general readers interested in the documentary arts.  

The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has reinforced a dynamic that had already gained traction due to the political transformations post-1991 and the Euro-Maidan. Ukrainian documentary art has become a tool to witness rapid change and to counteract media warfare. Artists have reacted by creating works that address traumatizing experiences by keeping records and analyzing the ongoing events at the same time. The essays reflect on documentary approaches that are proving to be collaborative artistic tools in violent times.

Considered one of the most influential theatre practitioners of the 20th century, Polish director Jerzy Grotowski revolutionized contemporary theatre in multiple ways. Perhaps best known for his notion of ‘poor theatre,’ Grotowski went beyond the confines of conventional theatre to systematically explore the possibilities of the human being in a performative context. In Grotowski’s Bridge Made of Memory, Dominika Laster analyzes core aspects of Grotowski’s work such as body-memory, vigilance, witnessing, verticality, and transmission, arguing that these performance praxes involve a deliberate blurring of the boundaries of the self and other.

This comprehensive study traces key thematic threads across Grotowski’s research, examining lesser-known aspects of his work such as performance compositions structured around African and Afro-Caribbean traditional songs and ritual movement as well as textual material from the Christian Gnostic tradition. As an active process of research and questioning conducted through the “body-being” of the performer, Grotowski’s work represents a practical realization of the often highly theoretical and abstract discussions of one of the field’s main preoccupations: embodied practice as a way of knowing.

Visuality of Violence unpacks the way visual documentations and depictions of the practice of racial violence are used in imperialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism in the United States. Ofelia Ortiz Cuevas traces the continuity of racial value through the shifting narratives of race by examining the long-running TV series, COPS, and the museum exhibition, Without Sanctuary, which features photographs of lynching. These case studies provide an innovative holistic mapping of the policing and incarceration of Black and Brown people.  

Addressing the frequently ignored experiences of Asian and Native Americans, among others, in its comparative undertaking, Visuality of Violence exceeds intersectional mapping to uniquely charge the spectacle of racial violence as a foundational practice in its continued presence in contemporary society. Cuevas argues that the visual presentations of the racial body throughout history requires a reckoning and acknowledgement of the material and legal effects of the images, narratives, and practices used to maintain hegemonic racial order and inequality.

In holding a theoretical mirror to history, Visuality of Violence reveals liberal mythical reliance on the ideals of western law and its rationalities as the location of justice and freedom, thereby presenting its readers with a new understanding in the quest for peace and liberation.

In the series Critical Race, Indigeneity, and Relationality