No Safe Place. Peter Brandt

No Safe Place addresses the subject of trauma and the process of healing as it emerges from the artist’s own experience of being the subject of a violent attack. The book also reflects on the subsequent social expectation to bring the episode to closure and move on, and investigates why healing can be such a difficult and perhaps ultimately unsuccessful process. Through texts, conversations, and Brandt’s artworks themselves, it asks why there seems to be a societal expectation that a person will heal as a matter of course, and how society often places emphasis on the perpetrators of violent crime rather than on the victims. In the context of this, the book also discusses the status of the image as witness.

The book features an essay on ‘The Forensics of Trauma’ by curator Jeppe Ugelvig, conversations between Peter Brandt, author Thomas Lagermand Lundme, and theatre director Iben Hendel Philipsen about their experiences of different types of violent attack, and their subsequent approaches to dealing with the trauma. In addition, texts and full colour reproductions of artworks by Peter Brandt deal directly with his experience of the violent act and the attempt to heal.

DETAILS

• 208 pages

• Hardcover, stitched binding

• Full colour images