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H2020Individual fellowship2021–2024

SOVEL · Soviet Ellipses: Omissions as Techniques of Border Transgression in Photography, Literature, and Everyday Life

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2021-11-01 → 2024-12-08
EU contribution
€202,159
Participants
1
Scheme
MSCA-IF

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Results in brief

Soviet Ellipses: Omissions as Techniques of Border Transgression in Photography, Literature, and Everyday Life

Soviet Ellipses (SOVEL) examined the creation and representation of ellipsis – or conscious omission – in Soviet photography, literature, and everyday life. The research was based on the premise that the significant accumulation of omission practices during the Soviet era (1917-1991) was not accidental but served as a subversive strategy to circumvent censorship, resist political repression, and cope with trauma-induced speechlessness, all of which had profoundly shaped Soviet society. In a society shaped by repression, censorship, and trauma, voids often stand as the only viable means of articulating that which cannot be expressed. The project aimed to demonstrate how ellipses can function as creative techniques to transcend symbolic boundaries, allowing individuals to express what cannot be explicitly stated, depicted, or described under given circumstances. Adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the study integrated insights from literary studies, border studies, image theory, cultural semiotics, memory studies, and geographic information systems (GIS) to examine the evolution, the transgressive function, and the creative power of ellipses across different media. Taking a diachronic and comparative perspective, it traced how during Soviet rule, omission developed as a transgressive form of counter-practice over time and across cultural and creative contexts.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

This research action at the University of Oslo (UiO) deals with the creation and representation of ellipses (i.e. conscious omissions) in Soviet photography, literature, and everyday life. It sets out from the premise that the accumulation of omission practices during Soviet times (1917–1991) did not occur by accident, but rather served as a subversive strategy to undermine political repressions and the restriction of expression, which had been dominating the Soviet society for so long. The main objective of the action is to demonstrate how ellipses function as techniques that challenge (constructed symbolic) borders in order to reframe our understanding of cultural (counter) practices within Soviet society. By bringing together Literary Studies, Border Studies, Image Theory, Cultural Semiotics, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) the project will examine the making, the accumulation, the function, and the creative power of ellipses with regard to different types of media and in a diachronic and comparative scope. The action thus comprises of (1) the development of a methodological model to analyse how ellipses function as creative techniques aiming to transgress different forms of (constructed symbolic) borders; (2) the subsequent theoretical investigation, interpretation, systematization, and comparison of ellipses in terms of production, representation, and border crossings by means of the model in addition to their contextualization and visualization by means of a digital map. The action draws on broad ranging resources and an interdisciplinary research environment at UiO’s Faculty of Humanities and includes a secondment at Humboldt University of Berlin (HU). The research and training activities, the collaboration with the supervisors and with experts from multiple fields at UiO and HU, and the multi-layered implementation will enable me to enhance my academic profile significantly and will thus be pivotal in order to secure a successful career in academia.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • UNIVERSITETET I OSLO · OsloCoordinatorNorway

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union