Nowadays, scientists of generational studies are trying to explore the factor of transgenerational motives and how it constitutes itself in the unconcious. To get a glimpse on the meaning of transgenerational motives one has to question the differences between generations, what connecting factors are and which role the concious or unconcious passing-ons have.
The unconcious is able to implement objects of the outer reality in itself — a process called introjection. The opposite procedure is the projection, the exclusion of objects out of the inner reality – the psyche – into the outer one. Contemporary accepted knowledge declares that through introjection traumas are getting imparted to following generations. This unconcious assimilation widens the zone of the related subject by a certain traumata, in case there has been no sufficient treatment afterwards. The scale is active in all social magnitudes. The photographic work »Boots on the ground« was developed in a primaveral-seeming december in Southern Kurdistan and is trying to reveal visual abstracts and moments of a certain assimilation. Currently there are more than 1.3 million refugees seeking for a haven in the kurdish region of Iraq. The refugees are breaking out of the bordering countries Iraq and Syria, maltreated by the Islamic extremist group ISIS. The politicial autonomy of the region gradually developed towards a long craved-for independence, when in June 2014 ISIS had conquered significant territories in nothern Iraq, including the citites of Mosul, the second greatest town in Iraq and Tikrit, situated 200 km south of Mosul. The Iraqi Government Forces fled from the city and the Kurdish Peshmerga took control of the oil hub of Kirkuk, part of the disputed territories of Southern Kurdistan. On 8th of August 2014 the U.S. airstrikes reacted on IS units in the area of Sinjar. Ahead IS killed approxiametly 2000-5000 Yazidi men in the city of Sinjar and sold off thousands of Yazidi women. At least 50.000 Yazidis fled into the Sinjar mountains and had to be evacuated. The United States started arming the Kurdish forces directly. Other western countries followed and shiped weapons in the conflict area. In search of an assimilated ambivalence in that region, all that coexistence of contrasting emotions and thoughts, densify relentlessly to a point, where it triggers. This coexistence of people, generations, systems, languages, religions, elements, structures, rituals, traditions, foods, societies and much more, is stuck in between borders of radicalism, war and suppression. The fear to lose identity enhances the kurdish mentality and patriotism — or so it seems. The fear of loss, mainly transported by the picture of escape, is a great connecting factor of the people living in that culture circle. Getting raised in a mix of cultures, languages and spaces reflects the own self in perspectives of identity. In this confusion one might hide in a shell. But the shell is temporary, consistenly crushing. The kurdish origin became an extreme influencing factor in my every day life. In the winter of 2014 I reunited with parts of myself that where mainly memorized as a child. The impression of the local reality was occupied with a new awarness of escaping. The highly charged moments of people being mostly forced leaving the known towards the unknown, made me realized how encapsulated all these stories and forms of feelings were within parts of myself. The subtext in the photographs is diverse. |