Making silence speak through repetition: reconstruction and re-enactment as a means to materialise erased history and sometimes correct it

How do we revisit and repeat past events of which there is no trace? What does repetition look like to those whose histories and experiences have been erased, denied representation, silenced?

This paper explores tools available to media practitioners wishing to represent pasts that were erased or indeed never acknowledged or represented to begin with. Through my own practice research work – and drawing on theory concerning re-enactment, reconstruction and criticality in media – I explore effective ways to repeat the past, interact with it, intervene on it and ultimately restage it in the present moment as a way to achieve forestalled representation and occasion meaningful public and critical engagement with it.