ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors turn to the methodological aspect of showing, narrating, and displaying historical materials, beginning with the significance of testimonies. In The Lightning Testimonies, Indian artist Amar Kanwar examines the legal, psychological, and social significance of eyewitness statements in a particularly insistent and touching way. The images convey a grandiose ruin aesthetic that plays with faded splendour and long-lost resplendence, floating cobwebs and layers of dust only enhancing a timeless elegance. The political importance of Fast’s interest in examining how personal experiences become raw material for public discussions has sometimes been obscured by the artist’s—or his alter ego’s—supposed rejection of political issues. Nostalgia is caught in several narrative loops that explore and increase the tensions of contradictions and misunderstandings.
