In many post-socialist societies, the artist as a historian has seemingly found a new historiographic writing tool: the body. Since the post-socialist transition, the body has increasingly gained significance as an important instrument for shaping contemporary video installations as ‘mnemonic topographies’. The video piece ‘Imagining the Absence’ (2014) by the Lithuanian artist group ŽemAt provides a rich example of the mnemonic and historiographic complexity of the ‘textual nature’ of performing bodies.