This newsletter can be viewed online by clicking on this link

Houses of Darkness at Pakhuis De Zwijger

War perpetrator stories published online September 15: preview & debate during Unseen

©Jakob Ganslmeier - Poetry is Out of Place

Is it immoral to look at the perpetrators’ perspective of genocide? Does it equal forgiving or could it also provide useful insights? Three WW2 remembrance centres, Westerbork (NL), Bergen-Belsen (DE) and Falstad (NO) have (remains of) the camp commander’s house on their premises. Until recently they remained silent about the houses and the people who lived there. With right extremism and holocaust denial on the rise, time had come to claim the sites and the narrative.

Paradox was invited to develop online stories for a young and culturally diverse audience. The first auto-biographically inspired narratives made with filmmakers Jongsma+O’Neill (NL-US), writer Simon Stranger (NO) and photographers/ filmmakers Jakob Ganslmeier & Ana Zibelnik (DE-SI), have recently been put online. The outcome of the project for Bergen-Belsen by spoken-word artist Onias Landveld (NL) and Jakob Ganslmeier will follow in the late fall. Many stories draw on the past, while referring explicitly to parallels with the (Ukrainian) present.

Paradox is inviting you to a preview of the Houses of Darkness online project. On September 15, Pakhuis de Zwijger, the University of Amsterdam and Paradox will host an event that, next to showing excerpts of the (visual) stories, will be offering a glimpse into the debates, questions, and creative processes that shape the project.

Join the conversation presented by Bahram Sadeghi and Lars Boering jointly looking at how mobile media based visual storytelling has been implemented for sensitive and controversial stories.

Why to look at perpetrators at all? How big is the gap between educational work at memorial centres and the fastly growing online distribution of right extremism? Meet visual artists Ana Zibelnik and Jakob Ganslmeier showing their video installation of Poetry Is out of Place for Falstad.

Creative storytelling duo Jongsma+O’Neill developed an innovative Instagram documentary, fully based on animation by Jure Brglez (SI). His Name Is My Name is the moving story of Eline Jongsma, finding out that her great-grandfather Gerrit Jongsma had been the NSB (nazi) mayor of Krommenie.

What differences in interpretation of the holocaust exist among today’s European population? Who and what shapes the image and the legacy of a former concentration camp and how can artists, departing from the perpetrators perspective, open that up? Find out how spoken-word artist Onias Landveld and photographer/filmmaker Jakob Ganslmeier are addressing some of these issues in a sneak preview of A Mirrored Image, the first part of their work for Bergen-Belsen, to be launched in November.

And meet historians Ingvild Hagen Kjørholt (chair of the Houses of Darkness programme, NO), Rob van der Laarse (chair of the Cultural Sciences capacity group at UvA, NL) and curator/producer Bas Vroege (director of Paradox, NL), drawing the larger picture of the project and its relevance.

Detailed information on programme and speakers as well as booking for the event via the button below. September 15, 20 – 21.30h, Pakhuis De Zwijger, Amsterdam. Grote Zaal PDZ, free entry.

Register NOW
 

His Name is My Name: Instagram documentary by Jongsma+O'Neill

Jongsma+O'Neill - His Name Is My Name

Creative storytelling duo Jongsma+O’Neill developed an innovative Instagram-based documentary, making use of animation by Jure Brglez (SL).
His Name Is My Name is the moving story of Eline Jongsma, finding out that her great-grandfather Gerrit Jongsma had been the NSB (nazi) mayor of Heemskerk. As such, he was responsible of sending a Jewish family to Westerbork, where she, as a child used to go picking mushrooms with her parents.

From an interview with Eline Jongsma in The Guardian on July 17: “This is the story of a man named Gerrit Jongsma. It’s about his crimes, and about how those crimes have been hidden—by his family, by government policy, and by the sweep of time. He was a member of the Dutch SS and a Jew hunter whose signature damned at least one family to their deaths. And he was also my great-grandfather. But until recently, I’d never even heard his name.”

Follow @hisnamemyname


Perpetrator Perspectives at the Falstad Centre (NO)

Houses of Darkness: Perpetrator Perspectives presents a series of interventions at the commander’s villa of the Norwegian former nazi prison in Falstad (NO). Since 2021, German photographer Jakob Ganslmeier and Norwegian author Simon Stranger made several visits to Falstad. Through video installations, texts, and podcasts, they examine and imagine the meanings of ‘perpetrator perspectives’ by asking qustions such as: What are our culture’s images of perpetrators? What binds the generation of post-war children to their home’s distant past? How did the last SS commander at Falstad picture himself?

The exhibition is part of the European culture cooperation project addressing perpetrator perspectives in contemporary Nazi prison camp memorials. Artists and audiences engage in creative explorations of ‘perpetrator spaces’ – the remains of the camp commanders’ homes and offices – at three different European memorial sites: Bergen-Belsen Memorial in Germany, Camp Westerbork Memorial Centre in the Netherlands, and the Falstad Centre in Norway.

Falstad online


 

 Visit

Falstad projects for Houses of Darkness

Falstad projects for Houses of Darkness

Two (visual) podcasts based on texts by Norwegian writer Simon Stranger and a series of video works by Jakob Ganslmeier & Ana Zibelnik entitled Poetry Is out Of Placefor the Falstad memorial centre in Norway were published in July of this year.
The animation for Simon Stranger's works were done by animator Floris Deerenberg (NL), the sound design is by Darius Timmer (NL).

Visit site


The Memory of Kamp Westerbork

The Memory of Kamp Westerbork
8 July 2022 to 5 Nov 2023

His Name is My Name by Jongsma+O'Neill is part of the semi-permanent exhibition at Kamp Westerbork.

Westerbork online


 Coming Soon

Ganslmeier and Landveld at Bergen-Belsen Memorial

Following the Perpetrator Perspectives exhibition opening at the Falstad Centre in Norway, Paradox is preparing another installation. Ganslmeier and Landveld have been collaborating on three video pieces to be shown at the Bergen-Belsen memorial centre (DE), launching on November 26.
A link to the trailer for the first video, A Mirrored Image can be found in the link below.

watch trailer