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{"id":173253,"date":"2022-09-05T19:50:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-06T00:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esse.ca\/?p=173253"},"modified":"2025-10-14T13:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T18:55:07","slug":"laura-magnussons-blue-a-somatic-archive-of-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/laura-magnussons-blue-a-somatic-archive-of-pain\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura Magnusson\u2019s Blue:<\/em> A Somatic Archive of Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Literary scholar Elaine Scarry speaks to the (at times) inexpressible nature of pain: \u201cWhen one hears about another person\u2019s physical pain, the events happening within the interior of that person\u2019s body may seem to have the remote character of some deep subterranean fact, belonging to an invisible geography that, however portentous, has no reality because it has not yet manifested itself on the visible surface of the earth.\u201d1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World<\/em> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 3.<\/span> Blue<\/em> (2019), a fourteen-minute moving-image work, invites viewers to take a deep dive into the complex and multifaceted pain that results from sexual violence.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Laura Magnusson, lauramagnusson.com.<\/span> Very much subterranean, such pain lingers in both the body and the mind. The artwork, born out of a desire to articulate what Magnusson was not permitted to share in court, appears as an embodied testimony to her felt experiences of trauma. By casting her body as a somatic archive and positioning it in a watery environment, Magnusson presents a spatiotemporal reconfiguration of sexual trauma and lingering pain, hence developing a language for what otherwise cannot be expressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Laura_Magnusson_Blue\"
Laura Magnusson<\/strong>
Blue<\/em>, video still, 2019.
Photo: Liquid Motion Film, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Inexpressibility of Traumatic Pain<\/b><\/span><\/p><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Long viewed as the result of experiencing war, natural disasters, or violent events, trauma has come to be understood by the discipline of trauma studies as a complex cultural object, conjuring particular histories and politics.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Eric Wertheimer and Monica J. Casper, \u201cWithin Trauma,\u201d in Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life<\/em>, eds. Monica J. Casper and Eric Wertheimer (New York and London: New York University Press, 2016), 3.<\/span> Never fully fixed, collective and individual traumas fluctuate and evolve, bringing about various degrees of bodily and psychological pain. Often engaged from the vantage point of doubt, pain resulting from sexual violence is immeasurable and non-comparable. As Scarry aptly puts it, \u201cTo have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Scarry, The Body in Pain<\/em>, 7.<\/span> For those who have experienced sexual violence, doubt becomes a barrier to sharing what happened to them and being vulnerable with others. But it is worth pointing out that the language (and, more precisely, the legal jargon) available to speak about this violence can also be encountered as a barrier. Gender studies scholar Breanne Fahs cautions that to rely on terms such as \u201csex offender\u201d and \u201crape victim\u201d is not only reductive and essentializing but also casts rape as an anomaly that is only encountered in exceptional circumstances. The problematic politics of naming invoked in and around sexual offences can perpetuate the hurt and pain entrenched in its experience while downplaying the trauma that it generates.5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Breanne Fahs, \u201cNaming Sexual Trauma: On the Political Necessity of Nuance in Rape and Sex Offender Discourses,\u201d in Critical Trauma Studies: Understanding Violence, Conflict, and Memory in Everyday Life<\/em>, eds. Monica J. Casper and Eric Wertheimer (New York and London: New York University Press, 2016), 62\u200a\u2014\u200a63.<\/span> Redefining and subverting those naming practices, therefore, becomes crucial. Breanne Fahs draws on Scarry\u2019s writings to claim that \u201cnarrating pain can subvert the mechanisms of power that enforce silence surrounding trauma.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Ibid., 68.<\/span> Rearticulation of this same pain, through means of expression such as art, holds the promise of undermining the silent acceptance of sexual assault within mainstream culture while bringing dimensions of trauma to the fore that otherwise might have remained unexpressed. It is important to note here that the inexpressible, as a common trope of trauma studies, is multiple rather than singular.7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Barry Stampfl, \u201cParsing the Unspeakable in the Context of Trauma,\u201d in Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory<\/em>, ed. Michelle Balaev (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014), 16.<\/span> Magnusson dwells in this multiplicity. She kneels on the ocean floor, takes out the mouthpiece connecting her to the oxygen tank, and yells. Nothing comes out except a large burst of air. The pain and the trauma are suddenly made visible. This large mass of oxygen moving rapidly to the surface of the water encapsulates her inexpressible pain and hurt: an attempt to externalize what is now so deeply ingrained in her body. A similar sequence is shown later in the film, but this time reversed. The artist is now swallowing back her cry for help that seemed so liberating, speaking directly to the ongoing nature of trauma and the pain that ensues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Laura_Magnusson_Blue\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Laura Magnusson<\/strong>
Blue<\/em>, video stills, 2019.
Photos: Liquid Motion Film, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Ongoingness of Trauma: Somatic Archive and Waterscape<\/b><\/span><\/p><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When dealing with sexual assault, the legal and institutional apparatus is concerned with a clear and rationalizable sequence of chronologically ordered events\u200a\u2014\u200aWho did what? What happened first? Are there any visible bodily traces of the assault?\u200a<\/em>\u2014\u200aand is interested in presenting a lone standing truth<\/em>. The legal apparatus, therefore, forces a linear temporality onto the sexual assault that took place, which denies the ongoingness of the pain and trauma that results from it. It casts the pain in the past, restricting it there, at a safe distance. Identify a culprit, demonstrate and decide on their guilt, determine a sentence if need be, case closed. But the case is far from closed for those on the receiving end of the violence and abuses. The hurt cannot be undone, and the body remembers and keeps score long after the traumatic event.8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Bessel A. Van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma<\/em> (New York: Penguin Group, 2014), 21\u200a\u2014\u200a22.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decolonial scholar Julietta Singh writes about a body archive<\/em> as \u201ca way of knowing the body-self as a becoming and unbecoming thing, of scrambling time and matter, of turning toward rather than against oneself.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Julietta Singh, No Archive Will Restore You<\/em> (Santa Barbara: Punctum Books, 2018), 29.<\/span> Even though Singh expresses the desire to disappear unwanted bodily entries from her body archive, she recognizes that however hurtful and damaging those intrusions were, they come to co-constitute the body and, ultimately, the self.10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Ibid., 32<\/span> This points to a somatic understanding of the body that goes far beyond its mere objectification and disconnection from the mind. Rather, a somatic body\u200a\u2014\u200aor soma\u200a\u2014\u200ais an interconnected whole that holds together self, body, thoughts, emotions, memories, actions, and feelings.11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Staci K. Haines, The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice<\/em> (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2019), 73.<\/span> Always in the process of becoming, the soma receives the pain from traumatic events and archives it as part of the whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Blue<\/em>, Magnusson interestingly foregrounds the soma\u2019s complexity in a waterscape. Neither a safe nor threatening space, the watery environment is presented as an ecosystem that both visualizes and responds to her pain. As such, the somatic archive is always intimately tied up with the outside world, so it is fitting to see this exteriority in continuation with the embodied pain that she feels.12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Singh, No Archive<\/em>, 57.<\/span> The many ongoing reverberations of sexual violence are made visible and identifiable under the weight of water: movement met with resistance, loneliness and isolation, apathy and anger. What\u2019s more, water\u2019s temporality counters legal time by promoting circularity, overlaps, ongoingness (forward and backward). The editing of the film, too, signals the many temporalities enshrined in sexual violence trauma: at one time, screaming in despair; at another, calmly lying down covered in sand from the ocean floor, then rising to the surface. The many stages of dealing with trauma are not linear or sequential. Rather, different states of mind and pain coexist with, overlap, and overpower one another. This complexity is in turn echoed in the understanding of water as method<\/em> and milieu<\/em>. The ocean in Magnusson\u2019s work serves as a disorientation device that allows for the ongoing trauma to be engaged differently. Deprived of her senses of hearing, tasting, and sight, she meditatively concentrates on her breathing, her survival. This sensory deprivation forces her to look inward and engage the trauma head-on. By doing so, Magnusson seemingly answers media studies scholar Melody Jue\u2019s question, \u201cHow would ways of speaking about (x) change if you were to displace or transport it to a different environmental context, like the ocean?\u201d<\/em>13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - Melody Jue, Wild Blue Media: Thinking Through Seawater<\/em> (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020), 6 (emphasis in original).<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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\"Laura
Laura Magnusson<\/strong>
Blue<\/em>, video still, 2019.
Photo: Liquid Motion Film, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This displacement is made tangible by the showcasing of a small, maquette-like house that Magnusson carries around the ocean floor. The house is covered in snow and bordered by pine trees, in stark contrast with the warmth of the Cozumel ocean floor, thus displacing the original setting of the assault into the depths of the ocean of Mexico\u2019s eastern coast. She proceeds to bury the house in the sand, covering up the painful memory. \u201cIn pain,\u201d Singh writes, \u201csomething had been uncovered that could not be covered over again.\u201d14<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 14 <\/a> - Singh, No Archive<\/em>, 60.<\/span> However deeply the house is hidden beneath the sand, the trauma cannot be repressed and buried within the self; it always resurfaces somehow. At times covered in sand, with her head sticking out and her arms slowly emerging from beneath the ocean floor, Magnusson\u2019s own body plays off of this concealing\/revealing motion inherent to experiencing pain. Upon closer look, her body seems to have doubled. We notice a small figurine in the doorway of the house. Bearing a marked resemblance to Magnusson, the almost-naked figurine is neither in nor out, standing firmly in the threshold and liminality of the transient space. Magnusson inserts her fingers around the figurine and dislodges it from the doorway so as to get it out of this transitional state. She is here tending to her former self, the one that suffered the assault and that still lives within. Not only do watery space and time allow us to rethink pasts and past selves, they also offer themselves up to processes of becoming, leading to unknown futures and future selves.15<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 15 <\/a> - Cecilia Chen, \u201cMapping Waters: Thinking with Watery Places,\u201d in Thinking with Water<\/em>, eds. Cecilia Chen, Janine McLeod, and Astrida Neimanis (Montreal: McGill-Queen\u2019s University Press, 2013), 288.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Laura Magnusson<\/strong>
Blue<\/em>, video still, 2019.
Photo: Liquid Motion Film, courtesy of the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The parka now floats on its own, suspended by the water, and then slowly sinks to the bottom of the ocean. As the fur bordering the hood sways gently in the water\u2019s current, the body of the coat takes on awkward shapes, as if contorting in pain. Like a snake that sheds its old skin to start anew, it eerily echoes Singh\u2019s words: \u201cLest I forget, though, that we also shed ourselves over [Note count=16]time.\u201d[\/NOTE] 16 <\/a> - Singh, No Archive<\/em>, 32.<\/span> The ocean receives the pain, absorbs it, allowing for an articulation of trauma and a renewal of the self.<\/p>\n

Jo\u00eblle Dub\u00e9, Laura Magnusson<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blue all over. Montr\u00e9al-based artist Laura Magnusson wanders\u200a\u2014\u200acrawling, kneeling, lying down, walking\u200a\u2014\u200aon the ocean floor in clear water. Dressed in a parka and winter boots, she walks on the sand, seventy feet beneath the surface near Cozumel, Mexico, carrying an oxygen tank. Later, we see her in dark, murky waters surrounded by shimmering, silver fish. Even though she is not alone, encircled as she is by those watery others, Magnusson\u2019s facial expression and body language seem to convey distress\u00a0and\u00a0pain.<\/br>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":172617,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[882],"tags":[],"numeros":[3686],"disciplines":[],"statuts":[],"checklist":[],"auteurs":[938],"artistes":[3694],"thematiques":[],"type_post":[195,319],"class_list":["post-173253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post","numeros-106-pain","auteurs-joelle-dube-en","artistes-laura-magnusson-en","type_post-principal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173253"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271273,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173253\/revisions\/271273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"numeros","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/numeros?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"disciplines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/disciplines?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"statuts","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/statuts?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"checklist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/checklist?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"auteurs","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/auteurs?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"artistes","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artistes?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"thematiques","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thematiques?post=173253"},{"taxonomy":"type_post","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.esse.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/type_post?post=173253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}