Wiedergutmachungsdrang

Wiedergutmachungsdrang derives from two German concepts: the Wiedergutmachungspolitik, the postwar policy through which the German government sought to repair the damage caused by the Third Reich; and Wiederholungszwang, the Freudian mechanism by which trauma patients tend to repeat certain acts and discourses in order to suppress painful memories. By conflating Wiedergutmachung with Wiederholungszwang, and by turning a “compulsion” (Zwang) into an “urge” (Drang), I refer to present-day tendencies to reconcile with the maladies of the past: post-colonialism, woke, revisionism. These attempts to settle accounts with history are, of course, doomed to fail—for the past knows no forgiveness; it is not even courteous enough to return our calls. By constantly striking the same aching nail, moreover, we may end up suppressing and silencing problems that could otherwise by resolved. 

Wiedergutmachungsdrang is brutally wiederholend across multiple temporal dimensions and media. Musically, it is an assemblage of material from my personal sound library, called The Cabinet—after the curiosity cabinets in which people in the Baroque era stored their valuables and souvenirs, but also after the dark cabinets or closets Locke, Leibniz, and others used as metaphors for memory and the intellect. My cabinet is filled with musical souvenirs recorded on drum machines and synths, as well as other instruments; some sounds date back to my live kits of the mid-1990s, while others are lifted from songs, ads, and news reports from my childhood. These sounds are juxtaposed with video footage from my city of birth, Kortrijk: its annual cycles of fairs and festivities, its Catholic heritage, its lieux de mémoire… A central place is occupied by the neighborhood around the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-ter-Engelen Lyceum (usually called ’t Fort)—where my grandmother once went to school, which two of my children are still attending, and where my wife is teaching. For years, I passed by this school daily, witnessing its tragic collapse in 1984. This is the neighborhood where I once visited the fairground (which is no longer there) and where I said goodbye to my father at the morgue (neither there any longer). 

The resulting montage is full of unresolved memories from my childhood during those Years of Lead, the 1980s. You catch glimpses of my idol, Simple Minds keyboardist Mick MacNeil; the ugly car my parents owned, and the one I wished we had; the radio station where my father worked after office hours; the political circus which my parents (both municipal employees) constantly complained about; the terror of the Brabant killers (Bende van Nijvel); the E3 (now E17) motorway cutting through the countryside; etc.