Za przesłoną nostalgii. Praca (z) traumą w projekcie DAU Ilji Chrżanowskiego
Behind the Screen of Nostalgia: Working with/through Trauma in Ilya Khrzhanovsky’s DAU Project

Summary/Abstract: The article examines the controversial multidisciplinary project DAU by Ilya Khrzhanovsky. The analysis of the content, production, and reception of its individual parts is set against the backdrop of criticism directed at the project, accusing the creators of DAU of on-set abuse (especially exploiting actresses) and unethical filmmaking practices. The article proposes the hypothesis that the guiding principle of DAU is Freud’s Nachträglichkeit (deferred action), a key concept in psychoanalytic theory used to explain the formation and functioning of trauma, as well as the process of healing. The example of Russian society demonstrates how terror and the collapse of the USSR function as the first and second traumatic blows. The failure to fully process the past results in nostalgia, which acts as a screen memory that conceals the traumatic source of suffering. By materializing the fantasies of restorative nostalgia through the reconstruction of an oppressive reality, DAU retroactively marks the Soviet past, revealing its traumatic core. The project forces viewers to confront the violence that is an integral part of Russian culture.

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